If you read my first post about this trip, you’ll know that our Zion adventure came in the middle of a very busy semester during my PhD program, so I didn’t do the ~ best ~ job researching and planning beforehand. I’d done some cursory reading on how to make sure that the water level isn’t too high; otherwise, the Narrows is impassible. But it had completely slipped my mind to think about the water temperature. Or question my assumption that a canyon/river hike is the same as a normal hike. I can only imagine that the poor NP ranger we asked about water level and the conditions of the Narrows the previous day was giving us weird looks for looking as if we wanted to hike 9 miles in 45-degree water wearing only leggings/shorts and a t-shirt (which, in fairness, was our original plan).
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