Desert duet in Zion and Bryce - Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park

Sunset, Nov, 1996 by Matthew Jaffe

Winter is one of the best times to visit southwest Utah's most popular national parks

The conversation goes something like this:

"Ooooh. Will you look at that track."

"That's a big paw. No coyote there."

"Maybe it's just a dog."

"That would be a mighty big dog. A. dog would leave claw marks, too."

Pause.

"A mountain lion? Right here?"

"Yes sir. And now."

Tom and I look down at the tracks. Neither wind nor sun has worn away the distinctive prints. They're clean and fresh and deep in the snows along the Middle Fork of Taylor Creek.

It's winter in the Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park. In summer, this place is crawling with hikers looking to dodge the even worse crowds in Zion Canyon, about an hour southeast. Now it's just us and the lion - wherever it may be. As much as we didn't expect it, the lion certainly wasn't expecting us. Not at this time of year.

Tom, who was excited enough just looking at a raven through the lodge window as we ate breakfast, picks up the pace and begins running through all sorts of scenarios. If it's a mother with a cub, look out. If the lion tracks intersect with the deer tracks we saw a ways back, we're going to see an unholy mess in the snow. Check the trees: it'll see us before we see it.

I'm jazzed.

We continue upcanyon toward our destination, Double Arch Alcove. So do the tracks. Back at the trailhead, the temperature had been in the mid-50s, but here, in the shade of the canyon walls, it's colder and the snow is deeper, tinged with pink, not blue, as it picks up light reflecting off the red sandstone cliffs.

After detouring around a small waterfall, we end up high on a slope above the creek, unsure if the break we see ahead in the trees marks the trail.

Dropping back down to the creek, we find the tracks again - should have stuck with the lion. It's easy to picture the big cat walking through these snows. The tracks come in regular sets of two. In front of each print is a little drag mark, made as the lion picked up its paw. Little divots here and there mark the drop of a tail.

The tracks zigzag back and forth across the creek for another 1/2 mile, then head toward a narrow gap in the canyon wall and disappear. Disappointed, I conclude that while you can't really know a mountain lion until you've walked a couple of miles in its tracks, even then you might not see it.

ZION CANYON

I had arrived a few nights earlier, adding Zion to my list of world wonders (including Yosemite and Monument Valley) that I've entered first at night. Still, the moon had been bright enough to cast shadows of the monoliths across the valley floor.

Driving an ancient (847,000 miles and counting) orange Chevy Blazer, with enough gear to make a militiaman red, white, and green with envy, Tom had reached the canyon floor and set up his camp hours earlier. I'm staying at the lodge, where I treat Tom to dinner. We agree to meet the next morning for a quick hike to the Emerald Pools.

I awaken to Zion in all its splendor. No, I don't get that grand display of snow on red rock that I'd been hearing so much about, not down here in Zion Canyon, and not in a drought year. But there it is: a couple of hundred million years or so of rivers flowing, water seeping, and wind blowing through sandstone deposits on the edge of the Colorado Plateau.

The temperature rises slowly from the upper 30s, as thick clouds hover above a ridge known as the Court of the Patriarchs, which is barely dusted with snow. If there's a more beautiful place on earth this morning, so be it.

I struggle to take it all in, to make sense of the sheer majesty of the canyon. I fail miserably and can only make a mental declaration along the lines of "Now this is what a national park should look like."

Indeed, Zion is one of the big boys, pulling in 2.5 million visitors annually. Most of them pack into Zion Canyon, overwhelming its beauty and turning this most blessed of landscapes into a shopping center parking lot. To help ease the problem, the National Park Service has started work to eliminate cars from the canyon and to begin a shuttle-bus system.

But this is winter, and there are virtually no crowds, even at Emerald Pools, one of the canyon's most popular attractions. Tom and I head for the waterfall at the upper Emerald Pool, passing few other hikers. Once there, we watch the water float down in lacy veils onto a glacierlike chunk of ice that has formed at the waterfall's base. Rainbows appear and disappear as the sun and clouds play a coy game of peekaboo. The red cliffs dim or fire with every change of light.

Later in the day we hook up with the park's Denny Davies for a hike up the Watchman Trail. Here, too, the trail is virtually empty, making it easier to appreciate the big views out across the Virgin River to the red-streaked Altar of Sacrifice, part of the formations known as Temples and Towers of the Virgin.

Centuries before Mormon settlers and others gave the rocks in Zion Canyon such biblically inspired names, Native Americans - from Anasazi to Paiute - lived here. The Paiute also revered Zion but called it Mukuntuweap - loosely translated, "place that you go in and come out the same way." Or, in real estate parlance, cul-de-sac.