When planning out our road trip, we considered driving the hour and a half to Bryce Canyon from Zion to explore for the day. Bryce is at a much higher elevation and we knew it was going to be pretty cold with a lot of snow. I packed a full suitcase of snow gear in case we decided to venture to Bryce Canyon. So when the forecast for Zion looked like heavy rain the entire day, we decided to make the trek to Bryce. It looked like a snowstorm was headed for Bryce in the afternoon, so we tried to get up and head out pretty early. We were a little nervous about making the drive to Bryce since our tour guide the day before had advised against it. However, we decided it was worth a shot since there isn't much to do at Zion unless you want to hike in the rain.
The drive into Bryce was really pretty and the roads were all clear. We would go through parts with tons of snow and parts with no snow at all. We also drove through these little tunnels in the road which was fun.
As soon as we got closer to Bryce we had very little visibility in the car. We could not see more than 15 feet in front of us driving in. We were a little worried we would get there and not be able to see anything at all!
We took a picture at the entrance sign to the park.
We drove to the visitors center and asked about best hikes and where to rent spikes. They directed us to a little shop outside of the park. We headed there and rented our spikes. They did not have small enough spikes for Caitie, so they tried to tie hers together a little bit.
We drove back in to the park and then put on our snowsuits and spikes and got ready for the hike. It was about 30 degrees when we started the hike with no sun and no visibility. The view below was our view at Sunset Point. We decided to brave it anyway and hiked down into the canyon to see if it would clear up a little bit.
Most of the park signs were buried by snow, but we had been told to look for Thor's Hammer on the hike. We thought this was it, but weren't sure. We were sad not to get a great view of it because of the limited visibility.
Once we started to get down into the canyon it started to clear up a little bit. We started to get wonderful views! The kids also loved jumping on the sides into the snow. Conor made snowballs and then dove into the snow every minute or two. It made the hike a little bit longer than it normally would have been.
The switchbacks on this trail were crazy! We took the Navajo to Queens Garden Loop and then also hiked the sunrise to sunset trail on the way back. All in all it was about a 4 mile hike for the kids.
While we were on the trail part of the trail collapsed above us because of the weight of so much snow. It was a little crazy to witness. We learned later that day that the trail was shut down completely after we hiked it.
The trail was really beautiful, especially in the snow.
We got a great view inside the canyon and took a family picture.
We started our descent up and it was really a struggle for the kids. Caitie struggled the most because her spikes would not stay on and she kept falling on the climb up.
This is how all of the kids felt about the climb up. It started to get a little hot with all the snow gear on when working so hard to get up the mountain!
It started snowing pretty hard while we were climbing up the last portion. We were happy that we had beat the snowstorm because it really started coming down as we were making our way to the car.
We went to Ruby's Inn for lunch after the hike. It was definitely an interesting place! We finished up the junior ranger booklets and went back to get our badge.
We made our way back to Zion to see lots of waterfalls and lots of rock slides in the park.
We headed back to the apartment and decided to pick up some dinner at the grocery store. We had some heavy appetizers for dinner and it was delicious! We were all exhausted from a fun filled day!
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