I know that I haven’t been visiting the Capitol Reef National Park as well as I could. I have been doing this for the past two national parks, so why should I change now? I was following the driving route and just stopping wherever I would see something interesting. The next stop on the route is the Narrows. Although I didn’t actually get to fully experience the Narrows in Zion National Park, I was very much aware of it. I was actually surprised to know that there is a similarly named place here at the Capitol Reef National Park. The main difference between the two is that the one at Capitol Reef National Park doesn’t have any water.

The idea behind the Narrows is that you get to go through a very narrow canyon that was carved out by a river. In the case of Zion National Park, there is the Virgin River that did that and continues to carve through the canyon. However, the Narrows at Capitol Reef National Park has a dried up river bed. I have no information as to whether there is water at different times of the year but at least when I was there in November, the river bed seemed to be bone dry.

The hike starts off at the car park and there is basically just one way to go. The dried river bed is initially wide and you won’t even think why they would have called it the narrows. However, there are very steep cliffs on one side of the river bed. There are parts of the trail where the walls are very high and practically vertical. I was wondering why they would be called the Narrows if it is just one side of the trail that has the walls until I got to the actual Narrows. As you might imagine, there are sandstone walls on both sides of the trail and it is quite impressive to see how deep the ancient river has carved out this canyon. I know this is different from an experience of the Narrows at Zion National Park but this is the one I can do.

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