Lodge (Employee) Canyon

On September 1st we had our Labor Day holiday so we hiked Lodge (Employee) Canyon. Kat, Leslie, and I joined Robert and Kody, Seth and Alex, and Larry and Ross (Robert’s brother and his son.) We drove out to Zion Canyon while it was dark and started our hike just as it was getting light, but before sunup. The hike starts between the long tunnel and the short tunnel, in the first wide spot in the road east of the long tunnel. We hiked for a ways up a little sandy wash, and then when we came across a little rock cairn we turned and climbed up the slickrock hill. Boy was that a killer – it was very long and steep and if I didn’t exercise every morning I’m sure I would have had a heart attack and died. Even so it wore me clear out. Fortunately this was on September 1st and it was our first cool day of the year – we all would have died if it had been hot and sunny. At the top of the sandstone hill we could either turn and go west and hike out Spry Canyon, or turn north and go out Lodge Canyon, which is what we did. The hike wasn’t through a slot canyon so much as just a narrow pass in the hills, following a dry sandy stream bed down to the edge of the cliff. Once we hit the cliff we had a series of 6 or 7 rappels – the first into a big crack in the canyon. We took three 300-ft ropes that we doubled up to climb off – we found that our first rappel was about 145-ft, so we had a short tail, but the second was about 155-ft, so we slid off the end of that rope. Eventually we came to the last big cliff, which was 400-500 feet tall. So the first step was to rappel down about 20-30 feet and then walk across the face of the cliff to a narrow ledge where we unhooked and then crossed to another face where we tied on for another 150-ft rappel, and then climbed down for a ways in a crack and then tied two 300-ft ropes together and hooked on for the final 300-ft rappel over a big grotto with waterfalls and greenery – that last rappel was quite a beautiful scene. The photo above is one that Robert took of me, in that final rappel. Once we were all down from that, we bouldered our way down the stream until we came out behind the employees lodge, just south of the big lodge, (hence the name of the hike) where we caught the shuttle bus back to our cars. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend the hike for future reference.