Top 5 day hikes in Zion National Park, from a paved mile to the chains

This is the last mile of canyon before the walls give up pretending to be a valley. The trail is paved the whole way, hangs off the left bank of the Virgin River, and passes seeps where water pushes out of the sandstone and grows a hanging garden on a vertical wall.

The park publishes an unusual amount of detail about the surface, because it has surveyed this one for accessibility: 154.2 feet of gain over the mile, a typical grade of 4.6 percent, a typical width of 77 inches, and short sections that pitch up to nearly 26 percent.

It ends at a set of stairs down into the river. That's where The Narrows starts. Most people take the photograph, turn around and go back. That's a full outing on its own.

Go early or late. The canyon is deep enough here that direct sun only reaches the floor for a few hours, and the shaded version is the better one. No pets on this trail, or on any trail in Zion except the Pa'rus.

Observation Point sits higher than Angels Landing and looks down on it. The Park Service publishes no elevation for either, but on USGS elevation data the gap is about 700 feet. That's the view: the fin, the canyon behind it, the road threading the floor, and the whole shape of the place in one frame rather than glimpsed between walls.

The famous way up is gone. In August 2019 a slab broke off Cable Mountain, about 3,000 feet above Weeping Rock, and NPS now calls the East Rim Trail between Observation Point and the canyon indefinitely closed. Weeping Rock Trail and shuttle stop 7 did reopen in September 2025, but that was a separate closure, from a November 2023 rockfall. Hidden Canyon and the climb to Observation Point are still shut.

So you come in the back way, from the plateau. The park gives the East Mesa Trail as 6.8 miles round trip with 300 feet of elevation change and about three hours of walking, which for a rim viewpoint straight over Zion Canyon is a strange bargain. The road has already done the climbing.

The road is the price. NPS says the East Mesa Trailhead is only reachable by high-clearance or four-wheel-drive dirt roads off North Fork Road, which is a real problem for a small rental car and a worse one after rain. Get the right vehicle when you book it, not the morning you drive out there.

The other option from the east is the full East Rim Trail from the trailhead on State Route 9, which the park puts at 10.6 miles one way to Observation Point and 8 to 14 hours round trip. That's a full day out and then some, so plan it as its own outing.

A sandstone fin standing out into the middle of the canyon with a trail up its spine. From the Grotto it's 5.4 miles round trip and 1,488 feet of climbing, and the park says most hikers take about four hours.

The first stretch takes you to Scout Lookout at the base of the fin. The park's own trail survey puts that at 1.9 miles and 1,187 feet of gain, though its 5.4-mile round-trip figure implies nearer 2.2. The last of the climb is Walter's Wiggles, 21 switchbacks laid out by Zion's first park manager. None of it needs a permit.

The last half mile is what the permit exists for. Uneven steps cut into the rock, chains anchored intermittently along the route, and what the park describes as exposed edges and sheer drop-offs of as much as a thousand feet on each side. NPS puts one to two hours on that half mile alone.

Permits have been required past Scout Lookout since April 2022, through two lotteries on Recreation.gov. The allocation is big: the park issues more than 200,000 Angels Landing permits a year, and the day-before lottery runs every single day.

Scout Lookout is not a booby prize. It's most of the climb, the same switchbacks, the same view down the canyon from the foot of the fin, and none of the paperwork. Plenty of people who hold a permit get there and decide that's far enough.