Avalanches in the Desert

Puzzled. I hadn't been hiking for very long on an small ledge elevated above the canyon floor when I started hearing a deep rumbling that sounded an awful lot like thunder. It was raining softly, just enough to require a pack cover and a rain coat, but not hard enough to indicate a thunderstorm was coming. My eyes swept the skyline above the towering canyon walls that surrounded me on all sides, noting the bright gray underside to the rain clouds, but nothing more ominous than the drizzle I was dealing with anyway. Looking a second time, I noticed what looked like smoke or mist rising above a cliff, then, before my disbelieving eyes, a great chunk of ice and rock broke off the cliff face and thundered down onto the canyon floor hundreds of feet below.

The sound itself was enough to get me to pull my camera out, and when the ice started to move, I started documenting the occasion. I honestly have no idea if there are such things as avalanches in the desert, but if the definition of an avalanche is the movement of ice, rock and snow from a higher elevation to a lower one, then I heard and saw my first avalanche. It was terrifying. Even more unsettling was that I knew my destination lay at the foot of the very cliffs that had just let that thunderous monster loose.

I was on my way to Upper Emerald Pool in Zion National Park this past winter, wanting to get in a few more hikes before I had to return to reality after a week of playing in the desert. I had started my hike early, and as far as I knew I was the only person on the trail, and the only person to have witnessed the avalanche. I'm sure the near-constant rain had weakened the rock and ice, and it was only a matter of time before they came tumbling down. Water in all forms created the deep canyon that I was exploring, and I witnessed the erosion process first hand. Extra-vigilant and hyper-aware of my surroundings, especially the cliff directly above me, I kept moving up the side canyon toward the upper emerald pools and the promise of winter waterfalls.

My trek took me across Middle Emerald Pool and above the hundred foot waterfall that fed Lower Emerald Pool and the icicles I had visited the day before. Soon after the middle pool, my hike began to feel more like an alpine hike than a desert one. Ponderosas towered above me, and the air became scented with pine resin and water. A stream bubbled nearby, the same one that fed the perennial pools in the hot desert canyon below. The air became colder, too, though the rain never changed to snow. I wasn't quite high enough in the canyon for that.

Due to the trees, I almost didn't realize how close I was to the canyon walls, and only when I scrambled down a series of boulders and found myself on the small pebble beach of a cold, clear pool did I see I had reached my destination. Upper Emerald Pool, so named for the algae that grows in the summer months, was crystal clear and so cold it had ice chunks bumping against its bank, while evidence of scattered snow and smashed rocks on the ground around the pool attested to a long fall from the cliff-face above. A rope-thin waterfall, flowing from a small cleft in the cliffs, showered the center of the pool and I hung back, having no desire to get close enough to feel the spray or to put myself much farther into the range of falling rocks and ice. The rain had slowly grown stronger and it wasn't long before I took my leave of the lonely pool, listening closely for any more thundering rumbles the whole way.