The Riverside Walk in Zion

The Riverside Walk is the most-walked mile in Zion National Park, and it is worth doing on its own terms rather than only as the approach to something harder.

It runs about a mile each way — 2.2 miles round trip — from the Temple of Sinawava, the last stop on the canyon shuttle, upstream along the North Fork of the Virgin River to the point where the pavement ends and the river becomes the route. It is flat, paved the whole way, and listed by the park as wheelchair accessible with assistance.

What you are actually walking through

This is the top of Zion Canyon, where the gorge has closed to a fraction of its width downstream. The walls rise steeply on both sides and the trail runs in their shade for much of the day, which makes this one of the few comfortable midday walks in the park during summer.

The feature worth slowing down for is the hanging gardens — mosses, ferns and wildflowers growing straight out of the rock face, fed by water that fell as rain on the plateau above and has spent years working down through porous Navajo Sandstone before seeping out where it meets a harder layer. The seeps run year-round, which is why the vegetation here looks nothing like the desert twenty minutes down the road.

Where it ends, and the decision it presents

The paved trail simply stops at the water. Everything upstream is the Narrows, walked in the river itself.

That makes the Riverside Walk unusually useful for a mixed group: everyone can do this mile together, and the people who want to keep going can carry on into the river while the rest turn back with a genuine walk behind them rather than a consolation prize. If you are undecided about the Narrows, this is the way to see the water, the cobbles and the temperature before committing.

Practical

• The Temple of Sinawava is the final shuttle stop, so allow for the ride each way — outside a short winter window, the shuttle is the only way up the canyon.
• Dogs are not allowed, here or on any Zion trail except the Pa'rus. That catches people out on what looks like a paved stroll.
• Paved does not mean featureless: sand blows across it, and the surface can be wet where the seeps run.
• Go early or late if you want it quiet. As the shuttle's last stop it collects everyone who rode to the end of the line.
• Do not drink or filter water from the river — harmful cyanobacteria have been found in the North Fork, and recreational filters do not remove the toxin.

Together with the Pa'rus Trail, this is one of the two genuinely easy, genuinely accessible walks in Zion Canyon, and the two of them make a good half day for anyone not looking to climb.