To get to the trailhead, there is a about a 10 mile drive up from Virgin, UT. The road winds gradually up a plateau and 6,700 feet in altitude the scenery changes from what might be more typical of Arches rather than Zion’s. During the drive up, Team COKE regaled us with stories of their former trips thru Subway, including one where K had run the final ½ mile steep ascent and then the final mile on the plateau to the trail end in the dark and then drive the 10 miles out of the canyon to get in cell phone range just a few minutes before 10 pm to keep my Mom from initiating the call to Search and Rescue which was their emergency plan if they didn’t make contact by 10 pm.
At the trailhead there was another large family in the parking lot preparing to start. Not wanting to get bottlenecked behind them at the rappels, we took off quickly after ensuring that we had packed our camelbacks and multiple water bottles, power bars, the climbing rope and harness, our compass and map, cameras, dry bag, and cell phones. For we flat-landers the bigger question was if our red blood cells packed enough stamina to handle the long hike at altitude.
From the Wildcat Canyon trailhead, the initial mile of the hike runs thru alpine forest.
There the trails meets the Northgate trail and begins a long, gradual descent through a slick rock gulch. Fortunately team COKE was able to use their previous experience to find the cairns marking the trail.
We then passed back into forest and then to an even steeper gulch.
Reaching the bottom, we then had to climb back up the other side of the gulch to a beehive shaped hoodoo. Another long gradual descend eventually brings us back to top of the first major obstacle.
The get down from the plateau into the confluence of Russell Gulch and the Left Fork of North Creek requires climbing about 300’ down a narrow chute using a “rock and root stairway”. There is significant exposure at the top of this descent, and being oversensitive to heights this gets my heart racing quite a bit. As we descended, we occasionally dislodged rocks that then skittered down the chute. This became a concern when we heard the group behind us reach the top of the chute, but we reached the bottom without incident. We are 2 hours and 20 minutes into our hike at this point.
Once at the bottom of the chute, we stopped for a short snack break and then began to hike down the riverbed a short distance to the first rappel point. I should mention that all but one of the rappels in the Subway could potentially be downclimbed or jumped without being roped in, but the Park Service has grown weary of rescuing hikers who do this because the landings are often in water with submerged rocks leading to many broken bones or sprained ankles. To speed our rappels, we simply tie the rope in a bowline around the climber and K wears a climbing harness for the belay, then self-rappels by doubling the rope. The first rappel requires a sideways climb and then dropping off an overhang to get to the bottom, the angle and the narrowness of the opening, along with the overhang make it a bit awkward, so a bit of assistance from those already through helps.
Now we are walking thru the canyon itself. The scenery is simply fantastic. In some places we can wade and others w have to swim. Because the water in this section is quite muddy, you can’t see the how deep the potholes and pools are, so the lead hiker acts as the guinea pig. If swimming is required, we put the electronics and rope in the dry bag to keep them safe. (This cuts down on the number of pictures we take since it is such a pain to pull the camera back out of the dry bag.) On rappels or thru swimming sections, we take off our packs and ferry the packs to the next dry spot to keep them as dry as possible. Except my pack, I figure it has nothing that would get hurt if it gets wet and its easier to swim with it on my back rather than holding it above the water. However, on one swim I realize that my camelback hose and mouthpiece are completely submerged in the brackish water. I wonder if this means I have been ingesting gardia as I drink from it.
The longest swim is thru a narrow slot with a round rock lodged above. The water is quite cold here. Swimming while trying to keep the other backpack dry is tricky because while the water is over our head in most sections, in two very narrow slots there are submerged rocks that require crawling over and I am forced to let the pack float in the water for a few seconds while clambering over the rocks. We are 4 hours and 30 minutes into the hike when we have finished ferrying all our gear thru this obstacle.
We reach keyhole falls, perhaps the most fun rappel/swim of all. You drop into a waist-high pool, then drop down thru a series of waist or deeper curved pools carved by the water. We lose one of our climbing quickdraws when C tosses it down to me and I drop it in the water. We can’t see the bottom and after feeling around with my feet for awhile, realize that it has probably been flushed into the next pool which is neck deep and there is no chance of finding it.
Eventually we reach a place where the water becomes extremely clear and remains so for the rest of the hike. We are never really sure why the water is so brackish in one section and so crystal clear in the rest. Water temperature also varies tremendously from section to section.
The final and longest (~30 ft) rappel is reached by crossing over the “waterfall room” on a narrow log jammed by a flash flood above the waterfall and then rappelling on the far side. We then hike back thru the chambers to reach the beautiful waterfall room. The crossing, rappel, and wading takes us awhile to navigate and the group behind us reaches the jammed log while we are exploring the waterfall room, which conveniently helps in pictures to illustrate the crossing. We are 6 hours into the hike when we leave the waterfall room.
We then pass thru more spectacular subway like tunnels and then out into open canyon. Here the rock of the riverbed becomes a brilliant copper color. In a number of sections there are cascades, a few of which make great waterslides.
The canyon opens up further and now we often have a choice between the water route down the river bed or and a sand/bluff route along the riverbank. The water route often proves quicker but jumping thru the boulders into water of various depths begins to become more and more tiring as time goes by. However, in the first few hours, the sandy path often requires climbs high above the riverbank into scrub brush which also requires a lot of energy, so it’s never a clear choice which path to choose. We initially think that we only have an hour or so of hiking before the big ascent, which team COKE has warned us to save our energy for, but as time passes and we continue to be bounded on both sides by vertical canyon cliffs, we realize that we still have a long ways to go. My legs are becoming tired and my old running shoes have almost no traction on the slippery rocks, so several times I slide down several feet and end up slamming my ankle and big toe into sharp rocks. This makes walking less pleasurable. JP is doing much better, but his allergies are stuffing his nose and cracking his voice. I stop taking very many pictures because it’s too much work to pull the camera from the safety of its padded bag and dry bag.
After another hour of hiking, we begin to worry that we have missed the exit trail. Somewhere during our time in the Subway we have lost our map that has the GPS point for the exit trail, so we can’t determine our position relative to the exit. The canyon walls are less vertical here and we think that if we get by the next fin we may be there. We do remember that the exit point is 2200 feet lower in altitude and so using the GPS we determine we have descended only 2000 feet. We continue on down the trail. K decides to run on ahead to see if he can find the exit trail. After another 30 minutes or so, we begin to worry where K has gone but shortly our shouts are answered by his call. The exit trail is just a little further down. We take a short break for our weary legs to rest before we begin the steep ½ mile climb out of the canyon.
We are happy to be on a well defined trail again, even if the trail ascends steeply. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to push off during the climb with my injured big toe, but found I could just flat-foot the climb. However, looking upwards it was not obvious how the trail was going to get us out of the near vertical wall at the very top. Team COKE assured us that it did.
We climb up and up on rock slab steps, but as we approach the top the trail became dusty loose rock. I tried not to think about the steep 200-300 drop-off on the left-side of the trail. We reached the top, and then hiked about another mile along the plateau to reach the parking lot. We have succeeded. It is 9 hours and 38 minutes after we began our hike. JP has done a fantastic job, and probably capable of at least another couple of miles if really pushed.
