The last day of the hiking adventure included a return trip to Zion. Since the Thanksgiving holiday had passed and shuttles were no longer running, we were able to drive our car anywhere inside Zion we wanted.

We drove back to the entrance to the Narrows. The Narrows is a hike IN the Virgin River. I was able to hike it years ago and its one of my all-time favorites. The water was cold and it was snowing so we had no plans to hike it on this trip, but we still hiked the 2 mile round trip to the entrance to check it out.

After that, we made a stop in town for coffee and headed back towards Vegas. On the way, we planned to stop at Fire of the Valley State Park, which is in the Lake Mead Recreation Area.

The first thing we did was hike to the Fire Wave.

 

Needless to say, its a pretty cool place.

Across the road, there were some more trails that supposedly led to some cool slot canyons. We bushwhacked and followed a wash down to the valley floor, but didn’t find anything of the scale of Peak-a-boo and Spooky.

On the way back up, I found this cool arch.

 

Last, I scrambled to the top of the highest thing I could find in the area. The view over the valley was pretty impressive.

On the way out, we noticed a rainbow in the distance over the valley.

And that concludes the trip. From here, it was a short ride back to Vegas and then a week of Amazon conferencing.

After the conference, I did make a run up to Squaw Valley to ski a few days with my friend Alain. Squaw was great. The snow conditions were fantastic for early season. The food was amazing (especially the Irish Pub). The beer selection was great.

Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Squaw Valley Ski Resort – we got to stay right in the village.

And finally, here is my first big jump at Squaw. The cliff is about 7-8 feet high, so not too crazy. I had a moderate amount of speed. Make sure to watch through the end.