Permits and Politics - Watchman Trail, Lady Mountain, Hidden and Echo Canyons - September-October 2013

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courtesy RHanel

Back at the campground

Upon returning to our campsite, I once again checked my e-mail, in hopes of getting a message stating that we had won a spot in the last-minute permit lottery for the subway for October 2. But alas, no luck.

That had been our final attempt at getting a permit for the Subway, so that was it. It was just like 2011: No Subway for us, once again. I began casting about for an alternative that our group might be interested in. Orderville Canyon caught my attention - another interesting "wet" slot canyon that is far less popular than the Subway, but which still sounded quite fun. When I inquired at the Zion NP backcountry office, they said that Orderville Canyon was wide open - no permits had been reserved yet, and we could have one right now if we wished. Great! I immediately paid for a permit and returned to our campsite to let everyone know the good news.

Pizza Dinner

We didn't particularly feel like a boil-in-the-bag camp dinner tonight, so we opted instead to head into Springdale and have pizzas at the Zion Pizza and Noodle Company. Before heading in, some of us decided to stop at a local outfitter's shop and buy some neoprene socks. The nights had been quite cool, and if we were going to be doing a wet canyon the next day, a little insurance against the cold might be nice.

It was a beautiful clear evening as we headed into the restaurant for our hot pizza dinner.

Last Look at Zion

Now, you may have noticed that the title of this entire trip report is "Permits and Politics". By now, you've probably figured out what the "Permits" part of that title is all about: our seemingly neverending quest to get a permit to do the Subway. You may not have yet figured out what I meant by "Politics". I've kept mention of that out of this report, until now.

It so happened that, during the time period within our trip fell, the two main political parties in the US were at complete loggerheads over a recently-passed law that affected various aspects of health care. As part of that rather extreme disagreement, the question of whether or not to approve legislation to pay to run US federal government agencies was up in the air. The deadline to approve this legislation was midnight on September 30 - midnight this very night. If the legislation was not passed at that point, the federal government would have to "shut down".

Now, the National Park Service is a federal agency, and a federal government shutdown would mean that all units of the NPS would close. I had known of this possibility from even before the start of our trip, but wasn't entirely sure if it would actually come to pass, and so continued to plan our trip on the assumption that it would not.

In addition to checking to see if we had won our Subway permit applications, I had also been carefully watching the news - and it wasn't good. Tensions were rising and time was running out, and it now was actually starting to look as if this shutdown thing might happen. I did some more searching to see what the actual impact of park closures would be, and the result was also not good: the parks would in fact literally shut, with gates closing, campgrounds shutting, and access to trails and backcountry barred. According to one report quoting Zion national park's superintendent, even "stopping at a pullout in the park and taking a picture" would not be allowed. Seriously. Seriously?

Watching CNN's "shutdown countdown clock" as we ate our pizzas at Zion Pizza and Noodle was depressing. There was now only hours before midnight and there was no movement to a resolution. With heavy hearts, we returned to our campsite, noticing at the entrance that all of the envelopes for reserving a spot were now gone, replaced by a "do not pay for a campsite beyond September 30" sign.

This was real, folks. We were going to be literally kicked out of Zion National Park.

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