Where else in America can you experience the glitter of Las Vegas, the spectacular color of Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park and the exhilaration of Brian Head Resort skiing all in the same day?
No place, but Southern Utah/Eastern Nevada of course.
Mother Nature used her palette to splash a rainbow of colors on a wide swath of Southern Utah.
Fortunately, American lawmakers were wise enough to protect a big chunk of this region with the formation of Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks.
This region offers travelers some interesting possibilities.
You can stay in Las Vegas and enjoy the glitz and the gambling and still get in some spectacular snow skiing at the Brian Head Resort about three hours away and the parks, about two hours away. Or, you can stay in Brian Head and enjoy the skiing and visit Las Vegas and/or the parks (about 1-2 hours away.
Family oriented Brian Head offers arguably the best beginner and intermediate ski runs in America, including a terrain park and tubing area. The complex has a dual mountain facility, with one mountain devoted exclusively to beginner/intermediate skiers. The other mountain (Giant Steps) offers beginner, intermediate and advance skiing. The grooming on both mountains is fantastic, with the Giant Steps slopes providing wide, sweeping corduroy groomer runs that a pure joy to experience. Some black diamond runs are available to the more advanced skiers.
Brian Head has the highest elevation of any of Utah's ski areas (about 9,600 base and 11,307 at the top) and receives on average more than 400 inches of snowfall per season.
Brian Head offers numerous moderate to low-cost hotel/motel accommodations and restaurant/shop outlets. The hotels include the convenient and moderately priced Cedar Breaks Lodge. The town also has many small specialty food shops.
Zion and Bryce, located only about an hour apart, each have only one major lodge and getting a reservation there is not something you can do on short notice.
However, the parks are only a couple of hours away from Vegas, or you could elect to stay in Cedar City, Utah (a city of about 22,000 some 40 miles southwest of Brian Head) or Saint George, Utah (a town of about 60,000 near the Utah-Nevada line) and be only an hour or so from either park (and less than two hours to Brian Head or Vegas).
A visit to the parks is a major joy in any season.
The majestic colorful peaks, valleys and streams offer visitors
visual pleasures, whether bathed in snow or bright sunshine.
The parks offer armies of eroded rock pillars, called hoodoos, rise like clusters of sentinels, displaying a rich array of pastel colors -- red, orange, salmon, cream, blue, yellow, lemon, peach, etc. The limestone and sandstone cliffs, soaring hundreds of feet into the air, get their colors from such minerals as iron and magnesium.
Dubbed "Unkatimpe-wa-Wince-Pockich ("red rocks standing like men in a bowl") by the Paiute Indians, the park land is estimated to be more than 50 million years old. Because the two parks were being "loved to death" by visitors, the National Park Service decided to limit auto traffic during the busiest months (mid-May to early September) by instituting special free bus shuttle service to the parks. The buses have large windows to allow good views of the beautiful scenery and drivers provide interesting information about various locales. Stops allow passengers to get out and take pictures.
It costs $5-$20 per car to enter the parks ($50 annual pass).
Bryce is the more compact of the parks and can be covered in a day or less. Zion is more spread out, covering about 230 square miles. The shuttle bus runs last anywhere from 1-2 hours. Hiking and backpacking permits are also available.
Both parks, located about an hour from each other, have only one hotel within their park boundaries and reservations usually must be made months in advance. However, there are also several motels near the parks (and the nearby communities of Mount Carmel Junction, Springdale -- located on the free bus shuttle route -- and Panguitch).
For more information:


www.brianhead.com/
www.nps.gov/brca.
www.nps.gov/brca/
www.nps.gov/zion/
www.zionlodge.com
www.zionpark.com

This story was published on 21 Feb 2003.