We pulled into the park visitor center right at 9am. Inside, we asked a ranger about our planned hike. The ranger said that few had hiked the Narrows for a couple weeks. It was too cold. The water was 54 degrees. We’d need a wetsuit. More importantly, there was a foot of snow on the upper part of the hike, which made the access roads impassable. He didn’t recommend the hike. We asked him what he did recommend - “Baja, Mexico, Joshua Tree.” We didn’t find it very funny and decided to look for other advice at the Zion Lodge a couple miles up the road.  

At the Lodge, we walked to the front desk and had our hopes crushed. There was no shuttle, not even one to the trailhead we didn’t plan on starting from. The road to our planned trailhead was closed, so we couldn’t even drive there. We wouldn’t be needing wetsuits after all. We asked about other trails. It was snowing at all the higher elevations (“a blizzard at Bryce Canyon”, 90 miles away), the lady at the desk said, so we’d better be prepared for that. She pointed out a couple of 15-25 mile hikes that made sense for our planned Sunday departure. Being well beyond sensible, we chose a 37 mile hike that started up in the snow at about 7300 ft and - to make it easy - ended back in the valley at about 3500 ft.  
 
The lady at the desk coerced a shuttle driver to take us up to Kolab, the far western side of the park about an hour and a half away, while we gathered our equipment. On the trip up, the driver mentioned that he had hiked the Narrows five weeks ago, crossing the river at least 100 times without a wetsuit, implying as he spoke that the water wouldn’t be too bad. A couple miles from the Kolab visitor center, the snow started. At the visitor center, it looked like a White Christmas. We began to wonder what our trailhead at Lee’s Pass, 1000 ft higher, would look like, especially with 20-30 mph winds kicking in. 
Dean in the Snow

Snow covered Mountain

In light of the weather, we planned an easy hike the first day, mostly downhill and only 8.7 miles to a campsite the ranger suggested, Campsite C. After getting our permits, the driver took us up a narrow winding road covered with several inches of snow to our trailhead, Lee Pass. We climbed out of the van, setting our gear down and getting a feel for the snow and wind that we would soon hike through. In a recurring theme on our backpacking trips, we realized as we were getting on our winter clothes that we’d forgotten to fill our water bottles. Fortunately, two people were hiking out of the trailhead as we were getting ready and, implying that we were crazy to hike in that weather, they gave us a gallon of water. It was 1 pm and we had 8.7 miles to our planned campsite. 
 


Snow covered Finger Canyons