Zion Trail Closed Because Of Rock Slide; Park Celebrates Anniversary

A rock slide has prompted officials to close the Riverside Walk trail in Zion National Park. The paved trail follows an easy route along the Virgin River toward the mouth of the Narrows. The park posted the message below on Twitter. Hopefully, the trail will be reopened within a day or so.

The Riverside Walk will be closed until further notice due to a rockfall.

Zion Park celebrates its anniversary today. This is also from the Park's Twitter feed:

Today in 1919, Zion National Monument was declared “a national park and dedicated as such for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

Electric car charging stations are showing up in a few of our national parks. This Huffington Post article talks about how parks are using electric vehicles, and how they are using solar energy to power charging stations in Zion and Yellowstone National Park. Here are a couple quotes:

The historic Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch, a year-round field campus, is an off-the-grid facility that is also the home of a low-speed battery electric utility vehicle used by National Park Service staffers. The remote campus derives its power from an onsite solar photovoltaic system, and the EV charging station draws its electricity from the solar array. This means that the EV is running entirely on a clean and renewable energy source: the sun.

About 650 miles south of Yellowstone lies Zion National Park, another relatively remote area where an electric-vehicle charging station can be found. Zion is located in southeastern Utah, about 165 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The Zion Park Headquarters features a solar panel array that provides shade to the employee parking area. The parking lot is equipped with EV charging stations that are used to power current and future Zion electric vehicles.