Mid-April in Southern Utah/Arizona/Las Vegas

[Seth Cunningham]

Folks, I need help!  I’ll be taking a last minute work-trip to Las Vegas and can manage about 5 days off to go play starting April 19th.  I’ll have a rental car, so can drive anywhere reasonable.  Never been to southern Utah/Arizona, and GCNP/Zion seem to be the obvious choices.  Basically, if you had access to snow camping gear, a mountain bike, a road bike, a packraft, how would you spend 5 days in southern Utah?  The kicker is getting permits/dealing with crowd-rage to do the first time tourist things like the GC corridor trails, Angel’s landing, narrows, etc.  I would rather spend my time seeing some cool out-of-the-way places.  Here are some guidelines:

• <= 5 days, 15-25 trail miles/day.
• Big day hikes also O.K., but for example, not in shape for R3 or trans zion, but could easily do either as an overnight in summer conditions.
• Off trail navigation, snowshoe, light scrambling, packrafting class II+, mtbing, bike-raft-packing all options
• Moderate technical risk. I’ll be solo, so short cruxy scrambling fine, hours of talus/scree/4th classing on shitty rock not so much.  Same with paddling, canyon exploration, and steep snow travel.

Some current Ideas (may or may not be possible due to snow/melt conditions/ permits):

Grand Canyon – 3 day –  Royal Arch route.  Can I get to the trailhead in a rental?

Grand Canyon – 5 day –  Bright angel/N kiabob > N. rim > nankoweap > Hayduke Trail section 11 > to S. Kiabob > South Rim.  This would be one sweet trip if I could swing it.

Zion – Take a 3 day canyoneering course, dayhike the touristy stuff.  looks like subway/narrows will be out due to runnoff.

Looking forward to some ideas.  Whatcha got BPL?

[Seth Cunningham]

Some other considerations:

I have a climbing background and have done a handful of 3A/B canyons.  A canyoneering course is really attractive as a way to learn some new skills + see a few canyons.  Canyoneering solo is obviously a no-go.

What are my chances of getting something interesting if I show up at the Grand Canyon backcountry office on Wednesday afternoon and just ask what they have?

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