R and Square Search for Adventure and then.....an Emergency Room

On Thursday of last week we headed to the beautiful Zion National Park to take a stab at conquering the Zion narrows. This is a 16 mile, two-day hike across slippery terrain; in fact, about half of the time hikers are in the river. The van we hired dropped us off in the middle of nowhere at about 8 am on the first day. Unfortunately, about four hours later, Square fell and nastily broke and twisted her finger (not pictured...but trust us when we say that it was the most deformed finger either of us had seen). Since it was impossible to hike all 16 miles to civilization in the remaining daylight and hiking back was not an option, we tied Square's broken finger to one of her good ones with the string from our waste pack. Square bravely hiked the remaining miles to camp.

Square and R had packed very light for this long journey so it was not a fun night at 60 degrees with only one sleeping bag (that was slightly damp), no pillows, and no sleeping mat. R woke up at least twenty times that night, hoping to see daylight above the tent. In fact, once he dreamed that he saw daylight, then awoke to find there was none yet. This dream is the only evidence that R slept at all. Finally, when it became light outside, R and Square stayed in the tent for about an hour since it was too cold to emerge.

Square finds it essential to point out that during the second day of hiking, she hiked faster than R. She even engaged in cheerful banter with fellow Narrows hikers before shocking them by eventually revealing her mangled hand. Finally, the two exhausted hikers emerged early in the afternoon. After the only "clinic" in the town adjacent to the park turned out to consist of a single surly employee in a trailer, the two continued to the metropolis of Hurricane, Utah which had an emergency clinic (open, you guessed it, six days a week) containing an X-Ray machine but no actual doctors to set a broken bone. The two hikers, by now weak with hunger, pressed on to the nearest emergency room in the nearby megalopolis St. George.

After dropping an exhausted Square at the hospital, R, still clad in a dripping wet sweatshirt in the 102 degree heat, was thrilled to find a Five Guys, check into a local roach motel and dip into the pool, while Square was informed that her finger would require surgery. Not wanting to go under the knife with the only reliable support being R, Square opted to have her finger set and do the surgery in Virginia.

All in all our time in Zion was amazing and we are now heading back East slightly bruised and battered, but still planning on hitting up Coral National Park, Mesa Verde, and Dunes National Park.