Well, we made it! Up at 6:30, at the park gates before 8, and then going up Angels Landing. 5.5 mile round trip, and a 1500 ft climb as well. We were at 4000 feet to start with. Quite a bit was paved, but proper steep in places, as it snaked its way up the cliffs, with effectively vertical drops on one side for the first part, then it ducked into a canyon, and then went up Walter's Wiggles - a mad set of switchbacks. There was a small plateau at the top, and that's where the fun started....
You had to make your way along rock angled at about 45 deg, holding onto a chain. There's probably 30 foot of angled rock below you, and then about a 1300 foot drop. Of course, there were people coming back, so every so often you had to figure out a way to get past each other. Nicola and Annie didn't fancy it, which was a wise decision for them, as there were even freakier bits later on. Elliot and I pressed on, up to the top of one crest, and you then had to go down (which was worse!), and along the side of a ridge, up onto the top, with drop-offs on each side, and now the chain was strung between poles for you to hold on to. There was then a series of scrambles up more rock, with more chain to get to Angels Landing proper. There were a lot of people doing it, so traffic jams sometimes came up, plus a few of them were quite mental - we saw at least 2 with papoose / rucksack babycarrier things. Well worth it though.
Doing the last stretch took just over an hour, I guess, and then we returned to the plateau, where the ladies had found some of the last-remaining shade. Then, we hiked back down, but the sun was more or less overhead at this point, so proper hot. There were still maniacs heading up it at that point, but I wouldn't have liked to be in their shoes.
We read afterwards that 5 people have died on Angels Landing in the past decade or so ( **excluding** those that have died in 'suspicious circumstances' !!) Bizarrely though, 7 people have died at Emerald Falls (the place we went the day before), which seemed to make no sense to us...
Pretty tired after that, so chilled in the van for a bit. Nicola and Elliot fancied a swim in the park pool, but there was a bit of thunder rumbling through, so they closed the pool as people get hit by lightening?
There's a strange cinema at the entrance to the park, and it runs either a mocumentary about the park, or normal films. The ladies and I fancied the former 'Treasures of Zion', and Elliot the latter: Antman. So, I went to both. The Zion film was very funny (unintentionally) with a slight overdose of the Noble Savage thing, intercut with some bizarre climbing and hang-gliding scenes, all done in a very 90s stylee. Some beautiful footage though, and I'm sure there was a grain of historical accuracy in there somewhere.
Antman was excellent, a superhero film that didn't take itself too seriously, with an action packed finale that took place on top of trains moving at high speed. Only thing was, it was on top of Thomas the Tank Engine.
Nicola and Annie went shopping while we watched this. Good night all round.
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