Ok and now to finish my rendition of my fabulous weekend adventure in southern Utah with my great friend Alicia Baker and her gang!
First we knocked off dreamy hike Kanarraville Falls and on day two: The Subway! Which is even more amazing! It's a permit hike so it can sometimes be the luck of the draw winning the lottery but so worth it once you get to do it!
We started out really early to try and avoid some of the crowds and were pretty glad we did since we maybe saw 4 groups! It was also a little overcast and rainy in the morning and considering this is a desert canyon... some people may have been scared off.
While we did keep our eyes cast towards the Heavens looking for rain, we weren't quite ready to abandon our lucky permits! And it was worth the gamble since we got rained on for about 5 minutes and then it was sunshine from there.
Here's the deets on this hike:
You get to the Subway off Kolob Terrace Road so a little bit different of an entrance than the main Zion park entrance. Key note: Kolob Terrace Road is NOT in Kolob canyon.. lol we may have had a small (1.5 hourish) detour since we went to Kolob Canyon first...
There's two routes you can take:
The technical version top- down which requires some canyoneering skills and swimming in very cold murky water at some parts
OR
UP-down which is how we did it. The distance is actually a bit shorter and the deepest we ever had to get in was about knee deep. (granted this could change depending on the season) This was still a strenuous hike however.
It's about 9 miles round trip with the only real elevation gain or loss within the first mile. That being said I don't recommend this for younger kids as parts of the inclined hike were pretty steep.
A lot of the hike is picking you way along the river in and out of the water, around larger (deeper) pools, and climbing over boulders. In some cases we'd get stuck and have to find a different way around and just about everyone from our party had a battle wound to tell for the day.
I skinned up the front of my right shin pretty good falling down a boulder.
Also not going to lie but the climbing over boulder portion of this hike felt a lot longer than we expected so keep in mind it does slow you down even if you're an experienced hiker.
After a nice long while you get to the cascade portion of this hike which. is. STUNNING. Seriously you get to walk up this peaceful falls like the ones pictured above and the canyon is just open to the sun and the rocks are colorful... and *sigh* it's dreamy.
Then after the last big fall you round the corner and... there it is.
In a lot of the pictures you don't get the sense of just how many pools line the subway.. there's a lot! And most about a hot tubs bit deep but some are up to your chest or deeper! Not to mention the water does actually flow down continually and there's not really a dry space left to put your stuff down if you had that in mind.
At the back end of the Subway you get this cool little slot that has a waterfall tucked back behind there. It is fairly deep and it was somewhat chilly while we were there so I opted out dunking myself in the water to see it, but the tough boys on our trip got in and said it was really cool!
And of course the Subway itself really is a photographer's dream. You can capture the light just right that it illuminates the whole structure. Seriously if you ever get the chance to do this hike, DO IT!
We made quick work of getting back and left feeling extremely victorious even with out battle wounds. We were pretty tired admittedly so we packed up and headed home.
Definitely an amazing trip and I'm so glad I got to go!
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