ZIONS: Angels Landing

Day One (afternoon) my mom was kind enough to stay back at the hotel with the napping kids while my dad took us girls up Angels Landing. I vaguely remembered this hike from when I was 13 or so but wow, that is one crazy hike. Kellie & my Dad took some pretty sweet pics from this hike so these are all courtesy of them... Here's a pic of the beginning of our hike from the Grotto headed up the Switchbacks.

And this is where we're headed... the very top point on the right -

Towards the beginning of our hike...

Getting our five minutes of sunbathing in...


This is where we were headed... (I was blown away by the effort that was made in creating this trail, INSANE!)

Kate's head with my legs, the picture-taking stop on the way up. Can you see my awesome knee bands, pretty much my knees are shot from years of Cheerleading.

Posing on the way up (heading up Walters Wiggles, a set of 21 switchbacks)...

We made it to the top of Scout's Lookout! But the hike is not over yet...

Here's what the last bit of the hike looked like (stole this picture from my sister's blog). Once you get to Scout's Lookout, you have 1/2 mile left of chains in the rock with straight drop-offs on both sides of you, a little bit crazy. One person dies each year on this hike and it's no wonder why, one slip up or messing around and you're done.

All the way up to Scout's Lookout I was LOVING the hike. Until we started up the chains and I started tripping. I had a crazy episode of Vertigo two weeks before Zions. It had mostly cleared up but I would still have random periods of dizziness/spinning of the room. So it was either my leftover Vertigo or crazy height-fright cause I thought I was gonna die, and that was not me! I felt dizzy, wasn't confident in my balance, and seriously thought I was going to fall off the edge...ugghhhh.

WE FINALLY MADE IT!!! Here's my one picture of me at the top to document that I made it.

The rest of the crew on the edge of the cliff. If you can't tell, they are sitting on a slanted rock that drops 1200 feet to the ground, I thought they were gonna die! I mostly kept my head down when we were on top because it was all just spinning.

My DAD, our fearless leader. Us girls did love our dad-time on these hikes. I love this guy!!!

Dad & Kellie on Top of the World!

I smiled for one last pic before we headed back down, you can see part of the trail behind me which drops off on both sides. Crazy enough, I was fine on the way down, wasn't freaked out at all: confident in balance, wasn't so dizzy, etc. My family asked me if I'd ever do this again and I said 'heck no' but after we made it back down I decided I would maybe try the part to Angels Landing one more time, to see if it really was my leftover Vertigo or weaksauce-ness.

We headed back down, had a delicious dinner, and rested our aching muscles in the hot tub...just what we needed!
Grandparents with their grandkids -

Lincoln and Cooper in their matching suits -