Subway Adventure

We have been planning to hike the Subway down in Zion's National Park for awhile, and Monday was the day. It was my first time leaving Treyden overnight, but I survived. Andy and I went down Sunday night with 3 of his brothers, and 3 of his nephews. The youngest was 7. We camped that night, then started the hike about 9:00 Monday morning. If you are not familiar with this hike it's about 10 miles, through an awesome slot canyon. I had not done it before and was loving it. There were some places where you swim for about 30 feet in water deep enough you can't touch, and in a slot canyon small enough that your shoulders are touching both sides. It was so cool! Plus there were some other places where there were some natural water slides, drop-offs big enough you needed a rope, and BEAUTIFUL scenery. It really was a fun hike, until we hit the last technical dropoff. Then I looked up at the sky, which had been beautiful all day, to see dark gray clouds...not good! Again, for those of you not familiar with slot canyons, rain and slot canyons don't mix! When it starts to rain much in a slot canyon, flash floods are almost a gaurantee. Luckily after this point the canyon widened out a little, but we were still following the river. About 10 minutes later it started pouring rain, and hailing marble sized hail. We ran for cover under a rock ledge about 10 ft above the river to wait it out. After a couple minutes, I looked around at the cliffs of the canyon, and could see 3 or 4 gushing waterfalls where there had previously not been anything. I knew all that water was going to come straight down the river where we were. It was the most scary feeling I have every had. After about 10 minutes of rain, we heard a loud noise, and the river instantly rose about 2-3 feet in a matter of seconds. At that point we decide to seek higher ground. After close to an hour of waiting the rain started to lessen, so we decided we needed to start making our way out of the canyon. The tricky part was that normally you walk in the shallow river for most of the way out, but now with the river rising so much and going so fast we had to make our way along the sides of the river. Eventually we all got out about 30 minutes before sunset. It was the most scary situation I have ever been in. I am just so grateful we were not 20 minutes farther back inside the narrow slot when the rain started. We would have had no place to go. In the end it turned out to be a fun and memorable experience, but I sure am glad we lived to talk about it!

Andy standing in front of some of the beautiful rock walls. Some of his brothers and nephews are coming down the hill behind him.

Paul, Shiree, Andy, and Spencer in one of the narrowest part of the slot. This is the one where you had to swim 30 ft in deep water. It was so cool!

Some of Andy's brothers and nephews in the subway part of the hike. This is where the hike got its name. This is also about 5 minutes before it started raining.

Shiree about to go down one of the natural waterslides. It was fun!

If you can see the waterfall in this picture, it shouldn't be there! This is just one of them we could see when it started raining. The picture doesn't do justice to how much water we could see pouring off the canyon walls. It's ironic that it's such a pretty picture, when it was such a scary situation.

Andy overlooking the canyon we were just in. At this point we only had about 10 minutes left of the hike. Yay!