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In the high plateaus of Utah
lies a kingdom of towering rock in the rugged badlands.
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From a maze of narrow canyons
to a sea of soaring spires...
it is one of North America's last great wild lands.
Home to one of the world's
most spectacular natural structures...
a lifeline to the desert's parched creatures,
a place where canyons are carved from chaos...
one of the world's roughest natural wonders...
This is the Colorado Plateau.
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Zion National Park...
A geological treasure,
stretching across nearly 230 square miles,
of Southern Utah's Colorado Plateau:
more than 100,000 square miles of high desert plains,
sprinkled with pines and junipers.
It is a high altitude desert plateau
bounded by the Rocky Mountains,
the Great Basin and Sonoran Deserts.
The Colorado Plateau straddles Utah, Arizona,
Colorado and New Mexico
and has a land mass larger than the entire United Kingdom.
Zion is defined by a landscape
of deep canyons,
majestic arches
and towering sandstone walls.
It is like a wild gallery of sculpted rock.
Elevated as high as 4,000 feet above sea level,
Zion National Park is the second-tallest point
on the Colorado Plateau.
Its canyon walls stand taller
than the world's highest skyscraper.
>> I love being completely surrounded
by the rocks and the canyons
and just being a little tiny piece of this vast area.
>> Millions of years ago, a shift in the earth's crust
pushed huge swaths of rock upward,
lifting Zion to its current elevation.
This uplift was the first of many events
to shape Zion's landscape.
Streams, pouring off the plateau,
cut into ancient rock layers.
Sediment and large boulders were carried downstream,
sculpting a magnificent canyon.
One waterway is still carving its path through Zion.
The Virgin River.
This is the lifeblood of Zion's ecosystem
and the architect of its mighty canyon.
Though averaging only 100 feet across,
the Virgin River is astoundingly steep:
dropping 7,800 feet along its 160-mile path.
An average descent of 50 feet per mile.
By contrast,
the Mississippi River drops just one inch per mile.
As the river descends into the valley,
it gains speed, hastening erosion
as if cutting into a cake to expose its many layers.
The Virgin River slices through the canyon.
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At Zion, water is everything.
>> The Virgin River itself truly is the lifeblood of this region,
it's how we still today are able to grow gardens
and have agriculture
and it plays a very big role for the last 10,000 years
in human inhabitants here in this region.
>> In the 1850s,
Mormon farmers settled in the valley of the park,
building communities along the river.
The canyon floor was farmed until the 1900s
when Zion became a national park.
Named by these Mormon pioneers,
"Zion" means a "place of peace and refuge".
The Virgin River is an oasis in the middle of a dust bowl.
Rimmed by the Mojave and Great Basin deserts,
Zion lies at the intersection of three separate ecosystems.
The park blooms with more than 900 plant species
found nowhere else in Utah.
The river flows year round providing vital drinking water
to a surprisingly wide diversity of wildlife.
Five-hundred more species of animals
live along its banks than in the surrounding desert.
In the southwest, water is a cherished commodity.
Down in the valley, southeast of Zion,
a long and arid stretch of land, called a Dry Wash,
lies in the foothills of the high plateaus.
With less than 1 inch of rainfall a year...
The soil is robbed of color.
The air deprived of moisture.
The land, bone-dry.
But not for long...
Summer months bring heat.
They also bring the North American monsoon.
>> The actual overall weather pattern of the area
completely shifts.
And that's actually where the word "monsoon" comes from.
It's an Arabic word from " mausim "
which actually means "season".
So it's a seasonal shift in the wind patterns
in the entire region.
>> Ancient traders sailing the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea
were the first to describe this weather spectacle.
They observed a system of alternating winds
across the tropics.
In winter, the wind blows dry
from the mountains to the northeast.
In summer, it gusts from the opposite direction.
A difference in temperature
between warmer land and cooler sea
causes wind to flow from the moist ocean to the dry land,
creating the seasonal monsoon.
>> This wind pattern shift sucks moisture up
from the tropics up into the southwest
and when the moisture comes up into this area,
it combines with daytime heating
and you get these really large thunderstorms
that form over the higher terrain.
(Rain pouring)
>> Heavy thunderstorms in the high terrain
dump as much as 2 inches of rain in just 2 hours.
Spread over a 20-square-mile dry wash,
millions of gallons of water flood this parched land.
>> All of that water has time to accumulate
and start running down this wash.
If you can imagine
this is about the size of a 6-lane freeway.
And right now it's bone dry,
I mean the ground is just--
there's just very little moisture here at all.
It can go from the conditions that we have now to--
I could be under 3 or 4 feet of water right now
where I'm sitting, almost instantaneously.
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>> Flash flooding,
a sudden, destructive rush of water,
provoked by heavy rain.
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>> This massive torrent of debris laden carnage
just comes tearing through these washes.
And you'll just see this dark wall of debris
come rolling around the corner
and the only way to describe it is a tsunami on land.
Branches, boulders,
entire trees become debris...
left behind in the destructive path of the flash flood.
>> There's a lot of evidence here in this wash
of a flash flood that came through here.
If you look around, there's tree branches,
there's bushes,
things that just don't belong in the wash.
And, you know, even this pine cone right here
is a good example of debris that can be carried down a flood.
There's no pine trees for 30 miles of this location.
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There's a quote around here:
"There's two easy ways to die in the southwest:
thirst and drowning."
>> The walls of the canyon tower more than 2,000 feet high.
The trails wind for hundreds of miles.
Southern Utah's slot canyons attracted venture seekers
year round.
But they become a deathtrap, prone to flash flooding.
>> That is a dangerous place to be
and you can lose your life in that situation,
which happens every few years out here.
People will die in the slot canyons
and the reason for that is,
in a slot canyon there's nowhere to go.
You're literally in a groove
that's been carved in the sandstone hundreds of feet deep.
You can touch both walls and see miles ahead of you
and there's a flash flood approaching you from the back,
you only have one option: to run away from it.
And you're not gonna outrun a flash flood.
If you're gonna come hike into the backcountry
in the southwest,
know your weather forecast for that day.
>> The destructive power responsible for taking lives
is also the creator
of Southern Utah's striking canyons,
carved into the landscape with abrasive force.
On an average day, the Virgin River
flows at forty cubic feet per second.
>> For a large part of the year, it's not flowing very high.
There's not a lot of this erosion happening.
But when a flash flood happens,
it can really intensify the river,
and that's when it starts picking up more of the material
from the bottom of the river
and really carving the way at the sandstone walls.
>> During a flash flood, the river can swell up
to 200 times its original volume, in minutes.
Strong enough to carry a boulder the size of a car,
fierce enough to rip full-grown trees out of the ground...
the Virgin River moves debris
at a rate of 300 million tons a year,
carving out the canyon walls and floors with every deluge.
Scoured by wind, sculpted by water,
and wrinkled with time,
Zion's cliff face tells the story of its creation.
More than 200 million years ago,
as the ground rose and fell,
the landscape changed:
transforming shallow seas
into one of the world's largest sand dune deserts.
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Groundwater filled with minerals
seeped through the layers
binding sand particles together like cement.
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Over millions of years,
desert sands turned to sandstone,
as sediment transformed into rock.
In the eastern corner of the park,
a natural wonder bears witness to Zion's desert past:
Checkerboard Mesa -
named after its distinct crisscross pattern.
The engravings etched into the rock
tell the story of Zion's geological history.
Horizontal ridges reveal the region's past life
as a sand dune.
More than 200 million years ago,
ancient winds blew across the desert,
piling sand dunes one on top of another.
Hardened over time to stone,
these ripples were preserved
in the sandstone walls of Checkerboard Mesa.
When the desert sun retreats,
temperatures drop by as much as 60 degrees.
Water rolling down the mountain freezes in its tracks,
leaving behind deep vertical fractures,
like cracks in pavement after a harsh winter.
In the mid-sixteenth century,
Spanish explorers arrived in the American southwest
in search of gold and gems.
Instead, they discovered the geological treasures of Zion.
Among the canyons, plateaus and arches,
explorers found isolated flat-topped mountains.
Fascinated by their form, they called them "mesas",
meaning "table" in Spanish.
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Hidden amid Zion's geological grandeur
are hundreds of natural arches
chiseled into jagged canyon walls.
Tucked away in the remote
northwestern corner of the park
rests one of Zion's most spectacular wonders.
Suspended high above the rugged cliffs,
a ribbon of rock stands proudly against the canyon wall.
Stretching more than 280 feet,
the Kolob Arch is one of the longest natural arches
on the planet.
The arch is nestled in Zion's Kolob Canyons,
a remote 50-square-mile expanse,
where soaring cliffs and deep slot canyons
stand largely undiscovered.
Overlooking all of Zion,
Kolob Canyon's tallest peaks
soar 8,700 feet above sea level.
In the 1850s, Mormon settlers arrived at Kolob Canyons.
They used the area for timber and grazing stock.
Astounded by the soaring walls of sandstone,
settlers called these canyons "Kolob",
a word derived from Mormon scripture,
meaning "residence closest to heaven",
Along the jagged walls of Zion.
future arches begin to take shape.
The formation of an arch begins with water,
trickling into cracks along the surface.
Water freezes and expands each ridge
applying pressure to the structure.
Eventually, the fragile sandstone gives way,
crumbling and flaking.
While tougher strips of rock remain,
forming a natural arch.
In architecture,
the arch is the most stable load-bearing structure.
But over time, the erosion that created these arches
will eventually destroy them.
In the heart of Zion's main canyon,
perched high in the clouds,
more than 1,400 feet above the canyon floor,
is one of the world's most extreme hiking trails,
Angel's Landing.
>> It's a 1,400-foot elevation gain from river level here
all the way up to the top,
and the last half mile of Angel's Landing
is a vertical drop on both sides.
So you're pulling yourself up a series of chains
to get all the way out to that edge.
>> In 1916, on an exploration up-canyon,
the Methodist Minister Frederick Fisher looked up
at the monolith and proclaimed,
"Only an angel could land on it."
By 1926, a trail was cut into solid rock,
leading hikers up to the heavens.
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Down in the valley, ringed by towering rock,
seeps and springs trickle down sandstone,
collecting at the canyon base.
The Emerald Pools.
Hanging gardens bloom from the jagged walls,
watered by moisture seeping through the sandstone,
and a gentle mist of spray from the falls.
Junipers and towering ponderosa advance thirsty roots downward
in search of nutrients.
Water weeps into the canyon, streaking the rock face black,
while droplets dance on fallen boulders below.
>> It's a little surprising for some people who come here,
and, you know, they expect to see a barren landscape
but really, it's like a little oasis in Zion.
>> Water, carving its path through Zion's porous sandstone,
hits an impenetrable roadblock...
a rock layer called the Kayenta Shale:
sandstone packed with silt, mud and clay,
resistant to erosion.
Forced to change its course, water gushes out of the rock
in a series of cascading springs,
spraying the canyon's parched walls
on its descent into the Virgin River.
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Down in the valley,
towering walls tightly envelop the Virgin River-
creating a 15-mile maze of winding trails, through water.
The Zion narrows.
A gorge, 2,000 feet deep
but only 20 feet across,
zigzags through the park:
One-hundred times deeper than it is wide.
Whether hiking in the Virgin River...
or climbing 2,000-foot cliffs...
Zion is a playground for those who seek adventure.
More than 160 miles of hiking trails
wind through Zion National Park.
From short, single-day hikes to backpacking trips,
spanning several days,
some choose to sightsee vertically.
2,000-foot canyon cliffs
entice thrill-seekers from around the world.
Treacherous multi-day climbs are made more daring
by the slick rock surface of Zion's sandstone walls.
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>> I like to get out into the back country.
I like the wilderness locations.
I really enjoy being able to spend a whole day here
and not see anyone.
If you just put a little bit more effort forth
and hike some of the more strenuous trails,
you can find complete solitude.
>> Zion's landscape of soaring cliffs,
forested plateaus
and deep gorges
extends beyond the boundaries of the park.
To the southeast lies Canaan Mountain Wilderness area,
a high and wild plateau of slick rock
dotted with ponderosa pines.
>> It's a multiday backpacking trip
across a waterless expanse of sandstone.
So it is very, very strenuous and it's just very difficult
because you do have to pack in a lot of water
and then filter the tiny amounts of water
that you can find along your way.
There are hundreds of miles of established trails
and slot canyons and peaks
that are still waiting to be explored.
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>> Zion is a wild and remote paradise
for hikers and explorers.
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Down in the valley,
the morning sun pours light on the canyon's western wall,
igniting Zion with a golden glow.
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In the foothills of the shaded canyon,
mule deer graze,
savoring the coolness of early dawn.
Named after their greatest desert adaptation,
these deer have a set of large mule-like ears
atop their heads
that functions as a cooling system.
Blood vessels, close to the skin's surface,
release body heat into the surrounding air.
The mule deer's grey coat blends in with desert shrubbery
to provide camouflage from potential predators:
cougars, coyotes and, for young deer, eagles.
In fall and winter,
mule deer survive on a meagre diet of desert shrubs.
The changing seasons and summer monsoons
bring a feast of greens.
As the desert sun climbs above the canyon,
mule deer take shelter
in the shadows of the soaring sandstone walls.
Like all desert creatures,
they have mastered a game of hide and seek,
with the beating rays of the daylight sun.
Down on the simmering canyon floor,
a gopher snake seeks refuge,
retreating into fleeting shade,
afforded by the tangled branches of the desert brush.
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As the evening sun descends,
the silhouette of Zion's majestic mountaineer
is burned into the desert sky.
The bighorn sheep -
one of nature's most talented climbers...
Bighorns inhabit the steep, soaring mountains
of eastern Zion.
This seemingly inhospitable landscape of vertical rock
is home.
Elevated more than 2,500 feet above the valley,
these rugged cliffs are a safe zone.
With ledges as narrow as 2 inches,
scaling a mountain this steep is a treacherous task
for large predators, like coyotes and mountain lions.
But for the bighorn sheep,
it provides a quick escape route.
Desert bighorn sheep are born equipped
to scale these steep mountains.
Their outer hooves are like toenails,
formed to hook onto even the smallest of rocks.
In the 1960s,
desert bighorn sheep were extinct at Zion.
Early pioneers brought livestock
and with it, diseases that decimated the wild sheep.
Eventually, the species vanished completely from the park.
A decade later, the national park service
reintroduced this icon of the Rockies
back into Zion's canyons.
Today, the population is at more than 500
and growing every year.
After a day of rest, in the canyons' shaded caves,
desert bighorn sheep emerge from hiding.
Mothers and their young assemble on a mountaintop
to feed in the final hours of daylight glow.
Bighorn sheep find safety in numbers...
Females, called ewes,
band together in herds of up to 15.
Groups of males are much smaller,
with as few as 2-5 members.
The sexes only get together during breeding season.
>> Springtime here in Zion is a very neat time of year
for looking at the desert bighorn.
They have lambs right now
and you can see the families on the rocks,
you can see the lambs
trying to learn how to make their way
across the landscape following their parents.
>> Protective mothers supervise their young, watching,
as they take their first steep steps into the world.
Cautious lambs tread carefully across the rock,
hesitant to make their way down.
While others throw caution to the wind
and learn to run before they walk.
Soon, these lambs will develop their signature horns.
Males will grow a large, curling rack
that weighs as much as 30 pounds.
The females don't quite live up to the bighorn name.
Theirs are much smaller and don't curl.
Rams use their horns as weapons
during the rut of mating season.
The horns of desert sheep are also everyday utensils:
they are used to break open cacti -
a desert plant that keeps the sheep hydrated
when water is scarce.
In the cool setting sun, bighorn sheep are in no rush
slowly nibbling on nearby shrubbery.
Well-adapted to the desert,
bighorns can go a week without drinking,
sustaining their body moisture from their food alone.
In times of need, a desert bighorn can lose
as much as 30% of its body weight in water -
almost as much as a camel -
and still survive.
As the setting sun shades the canyon,
bighorns take a final nibble
before heading back up canyon for the night.
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East of Zion,
nature slowly sculpts intricate formations
from the limestone walls of Utah's highest plateau.
At a towering elevation of more than 6,600 feet,
the Paunsaugunt Plateau is blanketed by snow.
More than 16 feet
collect on the plateau each year.
Paunsaugunt means "home of beavers",
named by the Paiute,
the indigenous people of the Great Basin area.
Bristlecone Pine Forests - alpine meadows -
lakes and streams,
stretch 25 miles long and 10 miles wide.
Carved into the high plateau of deep green forest
is one of Utah's most stunning natural treasures...
Bryce Canyon National Park.
A sea of soaring spires
extends across 56 square miles
of Southern Utah's Colorado Plateau.
The park curves along a semicircle
referred to as an amphitheater.
Down in the bowl,
the bright orange pinnacles of Bryce
shift shapes and shades
as nature's spotlight moves across the sky.
>> When you step onto the rim of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater,
it's really a scene that's not like anything
you've ever experienced anywhere.
And it's just a feeling of awe
that nature can create some place
that is just so spectacular.
>> More than 50 million years ago,
an ancient lake covered this land.
And its unique pinnacles
were nothing more than sediment on the lake bottom.
Layers of calcium-rich mud, silt and sand
settled at the base.
Iron-rich minerals dissolved in the water
and seeped through the sediment, like food coloring,
rendering it a deep orange hue -
the signature shade of Bryce's brilliant peaks.
Over millions of years, the calcium-rich sediments
solidified into limestone and mudstone.
The building blocks of Bryce canyon.
These colorful layers of sediment surfaced
as the ancient lake was drained
by the uplift of the Colorado Plateau.
Despite its name,
Bryce is not considered a real canyon
because it was not carved by flowing water.
Its towering spires were chiseled
by the freezing and thawing of rain and snow.
At nearly 9,000 feet above sea level,
Bryce is the highest point on the Colorado Plateau.
On a clear day, the view from Bryce
is a breathtaking 150-mile expanse
of rugged cliffs and desert plains.
But, as the elevation climbs, the temperature drops.
With the setting sun,
temperatures at Bryce can plunge by as much as 40°F.
Winter nights can get as cold as -30°F.
Snow, thawed by the warm sun, then freezes overnight.
Bryce canyon goes through 200 of these cycles each year.
Snowmelt trickles down the walls of Bryce,
pooling in the rock's vertical ridges.
As water freezes overnight,
it can expand by as much as 10%.
Bit by bit, ice pries these cracks open,
expanding them slowly, like potholes in a city street.
Eventually, openings are cut right through the rock
and holes, called windows, form in the walls of Bryce.
When a window grows too big, the top stretch of rock
linking the two vertical walls collapses.
From small pebbles
to large, boulders the size of a minivan,
the rocks of Bryce come tumbling down
to be washed away by snowmelt and flash flooding.
Left behind are bizarre and mesmerizing pinnacles:
hoodoos.
Like a fingerprint,
every hoodoo in Bryce canyon is unique.
These orange pinnacles, shaped like totem poles,
vary in size.
Some are the height of an average human,
others as tall as a 10-story building.
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The Paiute, a nomadic tribe
that inhabited the Paunsaugunt Plateau of Bryce,
believed these soaring pinnacles
were solidified remains of people,
turned to stone for their evil deeds,
frozen for eternity by a vengeful god.
Early Spanish explorers
believed that Native Americans worshipped these stones.
The Spanish called them "hoodoos", in reference
to an African-American spiritual tradition.
As the evening sun descends,
the hoodoos of Bryce burn red against a crisp blue sky.
Crowded into 2 miles of Bryce Park
is the largest concentration of hoodoos on the planet.
Each layer of rock that makes up Bryce Canyon
erodes at its own pace,
sculpting the unique curves of every hoodoo.
Mudstone is the softest and most easily eroded.
It is usually the narrowest part of every pinnacle.
Limestone is the toughest,
it is the wider, top block that caps the hoodoo.
Acting as a protective layer,
limestone shields the mudstone below from erosion.
But even this protective rock eventually erodes away
and the hoodoo becomes nothing more than a pile of dirt.
As old hoodoos vanish, new ones are created.
Eventually, the erosion that creates these hoodoos
will also destroy them.
It is estimated, in fewer than 3 million years,
the hoodoos of Bryce will disappear:
worn down by wind, water, gravity
and the ravages of time.
From the colorful pinnacles of Bryce,
to the deep and winding narrows of Zion...
The high plateaus of Utah
are a natural and geological treasure.
>> It's premiere country, premiere landscape,
just beautiful formations to come see.
A once-in-a-lifetime place.
>> The highest peak of the plateau offers a front row seat
to one of nature's most beautiful spectacles.
>> When you first walk up
to the edge of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater,
it's just an absolutely awe-inspiring experience
to see these thousands of brilliantly colored hoodoos
right in front of you.
>> A rugged landscape
of soaring cliffs and boundless canyons...
>> The vastness of Zion is what makes it special to me -
the reminder that I get every day that I'm a speck.
I'm so tiny in the grand scheme of things,
and I love being completely surrounded
by the rocks and the canyons
and just being a little tiny piece of this vast area.
>> This wild stretch of Southern Utah
is a window into its rich geological past.
Zion's walls reveal the history of ancient desert dunes.
The forces that continue
to carve through the high plateaus of Utah
remind us that the story of this majestic land
is still being written.
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