Last weekend I finally got to hike the Subway. I have been wanting to do this hike for about 4 years. Whenever my group of friends went to Zion to do the hike I could never go though. Finally the stars all aligned and I was able to go down. What a beautiful hike!! It is a 10 mile hike through some of the most beautiful country. Here we are at the beginning of the trailhead ready to begin our adventure. There were 9 of us all together. Luckily I was not the only newbie to the hike. Andrea and Jenny had also never hiked the Subway. The guys all had though and knew exactly what they were doing. A couple of them were real life savers, but will get more to that later.
This is how the hike started, really what you would expect a hike at Zion to look like. The Scenery was always changing though. For me this was the easy part of the hike. I was bound and determined to keep up with the fellas' and not slow anyone down.
We finally came to what I guess you could call our first obstacle. You could either jump in the water from the top of the boulder or you could try and down climb. Typically there is not enough water to jump in, but most of us figured that would be the easiest of the two options. Don't let this picture fool you though. That boulder seemed a lot bigger when you were standing on top of it. The trick about jumping in was there was only a small area in which you could jump and not hit any rocks. The two guys, Brett and Jake, standing in the water are marking the area we had to jump into.
When I jumped in I jumped a little too close to Brett and scraped my arm down the rock. Luckily I only received a few bruises. Andrea also jumped to close to Brett and hit the rock with her knee. We were hoping it would be nothing too serious but upon closer examination found she had cut her knee pretty deep and would not be able to finish the hike.
It is hard to tell in the picture but the cuts went almost to the bone. Luckily Brett was there to save the day. He was an EMT and knew exactly what to do. Sadly that meant Andrea and Brett were going to have to hike back out rather than continue on with us. She ended up needing four stitches and was in a lot of pain. I think we all felt a little weird continuing on without Andrea and Brett but as rude as this sounds I was so glad we did.
We finally made it to the actual Subway part of the hike. This slot canyon was amazing, so beautiful!!
There was lots of swimming and walking through water. I was so glad I had a wetsuit! Not as glad now that there are pictures of me in a wetsuit though. Really could there be anything less flattering :)
Isn't this just Beautiful!
Between the four cameras we had on the hike we probably have about 1,000 pictures. I am having the hardest time deciding which one to show you. This is already such a long post and I could just keep going. Don't worry though I will wrap things up here soon.
Other than the blasted blue rocks and the climb out of the canyon this was the most difficult part of the hike for me. Once again the picture makes it seem like nothing. We had to use rope to climb down the rock here. The only problem is I am terrified of heights! Not only am I terrified of heights, I have never done anything close to rappelling before. Let me just add, Jenny was nervous about this part as well. That made me feel mildly better, I wasn't just some nut case who was afraid of nothing.
Luckily the guys were able to rig a harness out of some webbing they found, got a carabiniere, tied some special knot and made it nice and easy for me to go down. I could not have found a better group of people to do this hike with.
Hmmm....I am really thinking I should get this one framed! All I can say is wow! I don't think I could make that face again if I tried.
Yay! Back into dry clothes!
Finally climbing the switchbacks out. I honestly think I took maybe 20 steps and then had to stop and rest. I was so tired, my legs were just shaking. Remember how I said I did not want to be the one to slow everyone down. Well let's just say somebody has to be last and that person was me. Brian, Dan, Ian and Jenny were great to stay with me though.
Now that I am sitting on my soft couch in my cool air conditioned house I can say I loved hiking the Subway. In fact I loved it all the way through until we hit the Blue Boulders. Had you asked me then I would have told you I would never do this hike again. All in all though, it was so worth it. I had so much fun and made some great memories.
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