The easiest mile in Zion that still stops you cold
I have walked a lot of hard country in this park over the years, and here is something that surprises people: the trail that hands out the most beauty for the least sweat is the flattest one on the map. The Riverside Walk runs about 2.2 miles round trip — a mile up and a mile back — and nearly every foot is paved concrete. The National Park Service clocks the climb at only around 150 feet over that whole first mile, so this is not a hike so much as a stroll with a jaw-dropping ceiling.
Because it is paved and mostly level, the Riverside Walk is about as close to wheelchair-accessible as a slot-canyon approach gets. I say 'about' on purpose: the concrete is genuine and the grade is easy, but the paving turns irregular in places, there are minor drop-offs toward the river, and a chair will usually want a helper along for the bumps. Families with strollers, tired knees, grandparents who gave up on switchbacks decades ago — this is your trail.
The trail is open year-round, though the Park Service closes sections in winter when ice makes the shaded concrete treacherous. Water and restrooms wait at the trailhead, and no pets are allowed, same as nearly every trail in Zion Canyon.
Named for the coyote at the end of the road
Everything about this walk starts at the Temple of Sinawava, the last stop on the Zion Canyon shuttle — stop 9 — and the literal end of the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. In the busy season you cannot drive up here; you ride the shuttle to the turnaround, step off, and the pavement begins where the road runs out. It is a fitting trailhead, because the Temple is a great natural amphitheater of sheer sandstone, walls curving up on every side like a cathedral.
The name is the good part. Sinawava comes from the Southern Paiute, who lived in and around this canyon long before any wagon rolled in, and it refers to their coyote spirit — a powerful trickster-creator figure who runs all through Paiute story. The early park promoters, fond of grand names for these formations, borrowed it for this amphitheater at the head of the canyon. So before you take a single step, you stand in a place named for a Native deity, staring up at walls the Paiute knew intimately — a good deal more interesting than 'shuttle stop 9.'
From the turnaround, the paved path sets off upstream along the east bank. The canyon, grand and wide all the way up the drive, quietly begins to pinch in — you are watching Zion Canyon squeeze down to a slot before your eyes.
Where the walls start to weep
Look up as you walk and you will start seeing them: hanging gardens — improbable green cushions of maidenhair fern, monkeyflower, columbine and moss clinging to bare vertical rock, water dripping straight off the lip above. In a desert this dry, a wall that drips is a small wonder, and there is real geology behind it.
The great cliffs here are Navajo Sandstone, petrified sand dunes thousands of feet thick and, crucially, porous. Rain and snowmelt that fall on the high plateaus soak into that sandstone and percolate slowly through it — a journey that can take decades. The water sinks until it reaches a harder, tighter layer beneath, the Kayenta Formation, a mudstone-and-shale unit water cannot easily pass through. Blocked from going down, it travels sideways along the top of that impermeable layer until it reaches the open cliff face, and there it emerges, all at the same elevation, in what geologists call a seep line. That is why the gardens grow in horizontal bands rather than at random — they mark the boundary where the porous Navajo meets the stubborn Kayenta.
Once the water seeps out, life pounces: plants root in the eroded drip-lines, and ferns, columbines and shooting stars follow into the crumbled trails they leave behind. It is the same plumbing that feeds the more famous Weeping Rock across the canyon, only here it comes as a long, quiet parade.
Gateway to the Narrows
For all its charms, the Riverside Walk carries a nickname that gives away its real job: the Gateway to the Narrows. The paved path ends after that mile where the Virgin River fills the canyon floor from wall to wall. That is the start of The Narrows, the legendary hike where the route *is* the river and you wade upstream between walls that soar a thousand feet and close to twenty or thirty feet apart in places.
Most everybody who walks the Narrows starts here — it is the on-ramp, so you meet both the folks on an easy paved stroll who turn around at the water and the ones in soaking boots headed up into the river. Standing at that threshold, watching the pavement give way to running water and the canyon clamp down to a slot, is one of the great little moments in the park.
Here is where I play the wet blanket, because that river is beautiful and dangerous in the same breath. This is flash-flood country: a storm you cannot see, miles up the drainage, can send a wall of muddy water down this canyon in minutes. Check the flash-flood potential the rangers post that day, and if the river runs high or the color of chocolate milk, stay out of it. The paved walk stays safe; the river beyond it demands respect.
Who you'll meet along the way
The Riverside Walk is also one of the best wildlife-watching strolls in the canyon, because it is slow, shaded, and follows water. Mule deer drift through the cottonwoods, often close enough to stop a whole line of hikers, and the rock squirrels have grown bold as brass from generations of dropped sandwiches. Feed none of them — a fed squirrel is a biting squirrel, and the bites are more common out here than the bears you will not see.
A few plain pointers. Ride the shuttle up early or late; midday in summer the turnaround is a crush of people. Wear shoes with grip because that concrete gets slick where the seeps cross it, and take the spur paths down to dip your feet. It is an easy mile — but give it two hours anyway, because this is a place that rewards going slow.
Nearby — make it a loop
The Riverside Walk is a chapter, not the whole book, so build a day around it. It is the natural warm-up for Zion National Park: The Narrows, which begins exactly where this pavement ends. On the ride up and back, the shuttle passes the trailheads for Zion National Park: Weeping Rock, where the same Navajo-over-Kayenta seep geology drips off an overhang, and Zion National Park: Emerald Pools, another water-and-hanging-garden classic. The whole approach runs up the Zion National Park: Zion Canyon Scenic Drive, and the amphitheater at the top is worth its own look as Zion National Park: Temple of Sinawava. Afterward, ride the shuttle out to Springdale: Galleries & Dining for a cold drink at the park's doorstep.