Click on the image to load the panorama in a lightbox-style window without leaving this page. To view it fullscreen, click the fullscreen icon on the far right of the control bar of the panorama once it loads. The iPad / iPhone link is at the bottom of the page of the full blog article

This is one you really should view full screen and zoom in on different sections. Click on the “fullscreen” icon to the far right of the tool bar in the flash viewer to go fullscreen, click on the “+” button to zoom in. (you can also use your scroll wheel or keyboard to zoom in and out – the control and shift keys control the zoom)

About Scout Lookout

From Scout Lookout you have an amazing view of Zion Canyon and the Virgin River running through it.

The hike to Scout lookout is 1.9 miles with 1,000 feet of elevation gain. The hike has a few scenic stopping points, and a big chunk of the elevation gain takes places in the “Walters Wiggles” portion of the trail – a series of 21 switchbacks that were cut into the rock in 1926.

About this panorama

This is the highest resolution one that I have yet put up on the web. It’s stitched at around 300 megapixels, and if you are using the flash viewer for it you can zoom in quite far. As you pan around, you will see people starting the hike up to Angels Landing and grabbing onto a cable. The Angels Landing trail is closed for a little while (expected to re-open late October, 2010) while the cables and chains are being replaced with new ones, but even with new chains it will still be a tough hike with sheer drops. So in other words, don’t bring your kids up it.

Things to look for

I didn’t notice it at the time, but if you pan up and zoom in, you can see a bird in the sky. (it’s pretty small even when you zoom all the way in so it’s hard to tell exactly what kind of bird it is – looks like a bird of prey of some sort). If you zoom down and follow the river around the Big Bend you can pan up and see the parking lot for the Weeping Rock trail. As you pan around a bit more you can see the Great White Throne. If you happen to have someone who knows the names of the different features in Zion better than I do – you can hear them point them out to you while you pan around too.

If you look by the toilets you’ll notice the black metal drums that are accumulating waiting to be taken away via helicopter. The hike down from this point lasts only about an hour, so the bathrooms are great for anyone who can’t hold it for an hour… and for everyone else they stink up the area on hot days and motivate you to go explore other areas of the park.

That big pile of bags contain my canyoneering gear and hold my camera stuff while I’m doing a canyon. If I’m doing a wet canyon, I’ll have dry bags for everything – and if I’m doing a wet and cold canyon I’ll have all that stuff plus a drysuit and very sore shoulders.

I thought about blurring out the part where some dork named “Lee” scratched his name into the rock, but I left it in there so we can all look at it and say “What kind of a loser scratches their name into a rock?”. Seriously – don’t ever do that. If you ever see someone do that, get them to stop.

The links!

Flash version

If clicking on the image at the top of the article doesn’t work, or you don’t feel like scrolling back up there, you can view the full 360 panorama of the view from Scout Lookout in Zion National Park

iPad / iPod Version

You can use a special HTML5/CSS 3D viewer of the iPad-friendly panorama of the view from Scout Lookout in Zion National Park

Android Version

If you are on android, you can use the normal full flash link (as long as you have installed the Flash player on your Android phone) – and if you are side-by-side with an iPhone user you can rub in the fact that yours will zoom in farther since it will dynamically load images as it zooms whereas the HTML5/CSS3D viewer cannot.