Zion's South Guardian Angel (SGA) sitting at 7140' is one of the most difficult peaks to access anywhere. It sits like a castle, surrounded by massive sheer walls on all sides, and it has a mote made of creeks! It sees practically no visitors nor hikers each year. My goal was to just see how far Mike and I could get. We started on the Northgate Peak trail pretty late--11:30AM . We had to hike a couple of miles past the North Guardian Angel peak before having to descend an extremely steep, dangerous, loose chute which gave us access to the middle of the Subway hike. From there we had climb up and out the other side to gain access to a ridge, then another wash, bushwhacking, and cross-country climbing to some more slickrock ramps, and then finally the site of the white ramp leading up to the SGA! All this in 3 hours--now it's time to turn around and beat the sun back to the car. There were some tricky 4th class moves, but it goes fairly straight-forward--just very long and difficult. We'll try it again next year.
There's the summit so far away, with the Subway still below. I made it to the bottom of the white ramp (just left of summit) before running out of sunlight.
From SGA, looking cross canyon to the NGA.
Near where I stopped. If only I had another 30 minutes to scramble up the remaining 600'--oh well--something to look forward to next year!
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