Walter's Wiggles on the Angels Landing Trail in Zion National Park, Utah

© Dennis Frates/Alam

The long and wiggling path

In 1926, Walter Ruesch, the first superintendent of Zion National Park in Utah, oversaw the construction of this section of the Angels Landing Trail, one of the park's most ambitious trails. Although he had no previous engineering experience, Ruesch planned the steep 21-switchback path out of Refrigerator Canyon up to Angels Landing. The section of the trail, now affectionately called Walter’s Wiggles, was first built to enable horses' access to Cabin Spring. One of the most difficult and dangerous sections of the Angels Landing Trail, Walter's Wiggles was resurfaced in 1985 in a project that required 258 helicopter flights to haul in concrete for the job.