The Trail

Here are a few shots showing the trail that took us up to Angel's Landing:

I took this picture before we were up very far, but I liked how the trail blended into the natural rock. The view is up across several switchbacks. The people coming down were laughing at those of us just starting out, jokingly saying "You're almost there!"

This next picture is of a section of trail called "Walter's Wiggles." The wiggles are one of the CCC-constructed feats of shear effort, a collection of 22 very short switchbacks that scale a near vertical rock face. Here, you are looking from the top down to the bottom of the wiggles. If you enlarge it, you can make out people at the bottom.

And here is a view of the lower part of the trail, seen from higher up. As an interesting aside, park workers were in the midst of trail maintenance on the day we hiked. They had several ATV-type vehicles outfitted with small truck beds, and a couple of other machines that could haul rock or dirt. On one section of the trail that had been concreted to prevent erosion, I could see the imprints of horseshoes. I imagine mules or donkeys were used for heavy hauling before the advent of the smaller utility vehicles. If mules can work daily in the Grand Canyon, I guess this would be small potatoes for them :)

Here's one of the trail machines, I almost forgot I had taken a picture of it, and picture of the horseshoe imprints: