routinely in a 12-hour day and a fast biker can do the whole trip in a 6 or 7 hour day.
Upon returning to the Visitor Center that evening, we found that Steve, Debbie and Dave Ogden had gotten their overnight permit. At that point however, only the three who had not done the trip up through The Narrows were interested in doing the backpack. So they set up a car shuttle and made the 1.5 hour, 35 mile drive up to the Chamberlain Ranch trailhead for the North Pork route. (In the future you can avoid the car shuttle by making arrangements the day before for the Nat'l Park van service to take you to Chamberlain Ranch. You can then meet your cars at the end of The Narrows). Taking two days for the descent gave Steve's party plenty of time to leisurely follow the 16 miles of canyon to the Temple of Sinswava roadhead et the road's end which is about four miles north of the Zion Lodge.
The first couple of miles is along open country side and then the stream enters a narrowing canyon. The rest of the trip is a continual display of impressive rock formations, stream crossings, and narrow canyons. Much of the trip you are in water so the going is slow. Taking our time, we worked our way over two interesting waterfalls and through numerous pools of water before reaching the main channel of Deep Creek late in the afternoon. Deep Creek provides 60% of the river's water so there is a major water flow increase at that point. A short distance downstream near the Kolob Creek tributary, we made camp and enjoyed having time to relax and enjoy the spectacular scenery of the deep canyon.
Sunday we had an enjoyable day exploring Goose Creek. A small water flow and lots of plant growth gave Goose Creek a much different appearance then the main channel which probably gets swept out by more frequent high water flows. We reached Big Springs above the main narrows by late morning where a huge water flow out of the canyon side provides en interesting feature. The Narrows below Big Spring is a fascinating trip where at several points it is narrow enough to almost touch both canyon walls. The water was not a deep this time, generally nothing more than waist deep whereas last time there were two points where we bad to swim short distances. While hiking the trail back to the roadhead, Dave spotted a porcupine high in a tree top adjacent to the trail.
In addition to the North Fork route, there are four other tributaries which can be followed to reach the Virgin River from the Kolob Plateau: Deep Creek, Kolob Creek, Goose Creek and Orderville Canyon. Gordon MacLeod considers Orderville Canyon one of the best canyon traverses. Near the Goose Creek Intersection, we met a backcountry ranger who had traveled each of the other routes. They all sounded interesting and gave us something to put on
 
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