Zion in the Off-Season

Zion in November is a different park. The cottonwoods have gone gold and dropped half their leaves. The river is glass. The shuttle is not running. The famous overlooks are nearly empty by mid-afternoon, and the canyon is doing the kind of late-fall work — long shadows, low sun, deep cold pockets — that the summer canyon is incapable of.

The trade-off is light. You have about eight hours of usable light per day, and the best of it is in two narrow windows at the ends. You have to plan a four-day trip as eight separate two-hour photo sessions and accept that the hours in between are for walking, eating, and sleeping in the truck.

I have been making the November Zion trip almost every year since 1997. It is the only place outside Colorado I keep returning to, and it is the only place I am willing to make the seven-hour drive for without a guaranteed photograph at the end.