Zion - Ragnar Relay

This past weekend I ran a Ragnar Relay Race near Zion national park. Given the proximity, I of course took the opportunity to visit Zion as well. A little foreshadowing: the majority of the hikes, including Angel’s Landing and The Narrows, are shuttle access only.

I went into the park on two different days. The first day was the day I drove in, so it wasn’t until mid afternoon. I met up with my brother and we made our way down to the visitors center. This is also where you park, and take the shuttle as mentioned earlier. The parking lot was PACKED, luckily we were both able to find a spot, and ended up doing one of the 2 hikes that did not require a shuttle.

The next day, I went into the park by myself around 10 a.m. with the plan of doing Angel’s Landing. I tried on twice to get a parking spot, but both times was unsuccessful. I was not the only disappointed visitor desperately trying to find a spot. This was on a week day by the way.

It ended up being a chance to explore though. I just went to different pull offs along the main road through the park. One of the pull offs had some area that looked worthy of my exploration, and my ancestoral instincts were correct. I stumbled across a pretty cool slot canyon!

The rest of the pull offs I went to were mainly just scenic points to snag a quick pciture.

Then I did the Ragnar Relay. There were not any vikings there, it is a decieving name.

A Ragnar Relay is a trail race between teams. Each team is composed of 8 members (unless you are extreme – stupid, then you can do 4) and each person has to run 3 loops, see the table below for loop details. Only one person on the team runs at a time. When they finish their loop, they hand the bib to the next person and they embark on their loop. There are no breaks once you start. This means that everyone ends up running in the middle of the night at least once. I ran around 11pm and again at 5:30 am. The night run was super cool. I loved the cool breeze, the stars, and the lack of a brutal sun beaming down on you.

Here are the loops, and my times on them:

Here is me finishing my last loop: