By Rope And By Swim: Descent of Subway Canyon

The author, helmeted, strikes a defiant pose in the middle of Subway Canyon

They had dry bags. We had garbage bags. They had wetsuits. We had rain jackets and fleeces.

The two brothers Andrew and I met in the parking lot looked a lot better prepared to go through the freezing pools of Subway Canyon than we did.

Hypothermia is not the first thing that comes to mind when most people think about Zion National Park in the southwest corner of Utah. More likely they think about the park’s desert landscape, the bleak edifices of stone baking in the sun. But there is cold there too. When we visited in May, the park still held snow patches in its 8,000-foot highlands. The meltwater inevitably channeled down the drainage into the canyon where Andrew and I planned to go, and would force us to wade or swim to get through. We wrapped our clothes in not one, but two garbage bags to keep them dry (the bags reeked with an industrial-sweet odor.) Hopefully, everything would be dry when we needed it to be.

Subway doesn’t just have cold swim sections, it also required that we bring rope for a couple of rappels off cliffs. The swimming and rappelling would make for a fun obstacle course provided that we didn’t freeze to death before we made it through.

Both the guidebook and the park ranger at the visitor’s center recommended wetsuits for anyone going through in the spring. The ranger didn’t stop us though. We might be in for a rough time, he told us, though he didn't think we were going to die.

We left Andrew’s car at the end of the canyon and then hitched our way toward the Wildcat Trailhead where our journey would begin.

We were about to start down the trail, when a rental car pulled into the parking lot behind us.

Two guys jumped out: brothers. Both looked very fit, had sun hats, high-performance outer-ware, and no shortage of confidence.

“Hey, are you doing The Subway,” one of them shouted.

“Yeah,” Andrew said.

“Oh cool,” the guy said. “Would you guys mind if we came with you?” It was almost a question.

He made his case quickly. They had food, water, rope and wetsuits. They had both tried to find the entrance to the canyon the day before, but had gotten mixed up on the directions and ended up wandering through the trees all day. Now they wanted another set of eyes to help them find their way, oh and a ride back to the trailhead too. We had a guidebook with us, so that put us a little ahead of the game.

The brothers offered to let us keep the rope Andrew was carrying in their car so that we can lighten the load.

Once we started down the canyon with one rope, we would have to stick together. I had some trepidation about this but we went with it.

Meanwhile, daylight was burning, so we saved the getting to know you stuff for the hike. As we scrambled down the trail, I learned that the brothers were from Manhattan, where they worked in radiology. When they weren’t scoring girls or hitting clubs they liked to go on adventures — places like Columbia, Central America and Rio where they went diving and explored caves. While Andrew and I were spending a month of tenting for free in National Forests and eating out of cans, these guys moved fast, flying into Vegas, getting the rental and staying in hotels. They’d also found a place that rented wetsuits, which was something Andrew and I might have considered.

Though I worried about the cold ahead of us, it was hard to imagine that while we were under the hot desert sun. Juniper and Pinyon pine trees grew out of the dry, rocky soil  and our footsteps sent up clouds of dust.

When I stopped to take a leak, a whiptail lizard raced out from behind a rock to drink from the warm stream. It skitted away just as quickly. Maybe the flavor wasn’t to its liking or maybe the towering biped that the liquid came from scared it off.

We stopped several times along the way to double check directions. It was easy to see how the brothers had become confused the day before. Eventually, we made it to an overlook where there was a steep, crumbly descent to the canyon bottom.

The creek was down there. It wasn’t a large flow of water, but in time, it had succeeded in carving through hundreds of feet of stone. The waters were dark, shaded by the canyon walls.

The first crossing

We took a rest by the edge of a murky pool. There was no way around so we would wade. One of the brothers offered me a bag full of watermelon slices.

“Here take some.”

I turned it down, perhaps unconvincingly.

“C’mon. It’s really good. I brought too much of it and it will go to waste.”

I grabbed a slice and savored the sugary liquid. It was good.

I turned toward the pool, steeling myself for the cold temperatures.

“Hey. You want to borrow my wetsuit top?” The brother extended the neoprene garment.

“Nah, I should be good,” I told him, thinking about all the pushups and profanity I would use to get warm on the  other side.

“Go ahead. Put in on. The wetsuit pants should be good enough for me.” I relented and put the top over. It was one of many shows of generosity that the brothers showed throughout the day, including sharing more food and inviting us to chill out at their hotel later on. By the time we finished the hike, one of the brothers was unsatisfied with the fit of his trail running shoes and told me I could have them. I took him up on the offer and they ended up being useful on several future hikes.

After I put the wetsuit on, I threw my rain jacket over it for an additional layer of warmth, took a breath and stepped in.

A knife of cold went up my leg as soon as it went through the water. I might as well have gone wading in a slushy. I kept moving forward: knee-deep, crotch-deep — yikes! At belly-depth, the water started getting shallower again

 I was good and cold when I reached the other side, watched as the brothers crossed, looking like Navy SEALs in the wetsuits and panama hats. We started moving again, warming our numbed legs with exercise. After a while, I felt the warmth come back and even started to appreciate the scenery of the canyon walls. Not long after, we came to a spot where a boulder all but a narrow passage in the canyon. Beyond that passage, there was our first rappel. It was only about 12 feet or so, but went past an overhang with a waterfall pounding next to us. We took our time going down the rope and landed in the water at the bottom. One of the brothers had forgotten his belay device and had to move down the rope barehanded.

Now I had a good chill going. It didn’t help that we might occasionally have to put a foot down into ankle-deep water to navigate the cobbles on the canyon bottom.

The big challenge was yet to come however. Suddenly the canyon narrowed abruptly between smooth stone walls, forming a narrow passage of deep water. Then the floor dropped away and there was a waterfall. There was no way around, no choice but to plunge on through. Fortunately there was an alcove with a ledge about halfway through the passage, a place to try and get warm before taking on the waterfall.

Another place to get cold
That first section was predictably hellish. The water got to chest deep and we thrashed our way through as quickly as possible. I clenched my jaw so hard that it ached. When we got to the alcove, Andrew and I tried to fight the cold with plyometric exercises. It helped some, but I was nowhere close to being warm.

Someone had laid a bolt for a rappel over the waterfall but we didn’t use it, opting jump down into the deep pool instead.

To do this, we would have to launch our packs over the edge first.

When my turn came, I was still shivering, dreading what would come next. I stepped up to the brink of the ledge and looked down into the wine-dark pool.

I chucked the pack, watched it float half-submerged away from the falls. I jumped after it. There was the feeling of being airborne, the plunge, the rush of water about my ears. Then it was stinging cold all over my body. I started swimming as soon as I popped to the surface, thrashing for the other bank. By the time that I had covered the 20-foot distance, I was dazed with cold, numb all over.

I saw Andrew run up to the other side of a river bank where a patch of sunlight shone down over the canyon walls. It looked like a good place to be, so I ran over there too. I stared up to the sun with eyes closed and extended my arms on either side so that I could receive the maximum solar output. No doubt, I looked like a supplicant in some ancient temple. It made sense to worship the sun. Right now, it was bringing me back to life.

The group of us took a long time here, replenishing ourselves with food and sunlight. A group of men and women came past us with go pro-helmets, talking in an Eastern European language. We would see them again not far down the canyon as we came to the final rappel.

No jumping this time. We had a good 20-foot rappel down another canyon wall into shallow water. We waited for the Europeans to descend their rope. Some of them had not done much of this before, and there was one young woman in the group who hesitated a long time before finally going over the edge.

“Ho! Ho! look at that!”

I looked. The two brothers were gathered at the edge pointing downward. Fortunately the woman on belay was too terrified at the descent to notice the brothers leering down her blouse.

At last, the Europeans moved on, and we were free to use the belay. I lowered myself to one shelf and then started kicking my way down the wall.

The final descent

Suddenly everything slipped. I felt a sting in my hand and jerked to a stop. I looked and realized that I was caught in the belay device. Either the rope slipped or I slipped up. Either was possible considering the rope may have been slick and because I’m still a novice at this stuff.

The pain hurt like hell, and I remembered a past climbing instructor telling everyone that once you make the mistake of letting your hand get too close to a belay device you are unlikely to repeat it.

I realized that I would need to yank my skin out from the belay device if I was going to reach the bottom. I gritted my teeth and jerked my hand. It broke free and I escaped with skin attached. I made it the rest of the way down to the pool unscathed. There was an ugly welt on my hand as an accusation of carelessness. The pain was one thing, but the possibility that I made such an amateur mistake rankled \ worse.

Everyone went over what might have gone wrong when we reached the bottom. There were no more technical challenges ahead of us, but there was plenty of hiking to do. I was eager to keep moving.

Walking down the river

In the miles ahead we took our time to enjoy the scenery of the canyon. The water got warmer too and we even ended up taking a dip voluntarily. The trail through the canyon was as beautiful as it was isolated and it was hard not to get taken up with the majesty of the high canyon walls, especially as the sun got lower in the sky.

I could see the brothers were enjoying it especially. Somehow, amidst all the Manhattan parties that they went to, living as big spenders, I got the sense that sharing these trips as brothers was more important to them than any of it. It was an escape from city pressures, their stressful jobs in radiology where they saw patients get bad news every day.

When they finished the canyon, the two of them would have another day to check out nearby Bryce Canyon and then they would have to drive back to Vegas, fly back to New York and where their jobs were waiting for them. Andrew and I would also drive toward Vegas, but we would keep going west, stop at the Red Rocks Canyon Nation Conservation Area to climb around and then proceed toward Death Valley and Mount Whitney.

For sure, Andrew and I came with a different style than the brothers, but I was glad that we ran into them. One way or another, I hope that we can all continue to have our adventures, along the paths we choose.

In the Master’s Chambers

 Somewhere above our heads, an unseen sun beat down over a moonscape of broken stone, its bare-rock hills and the few scrub plants tough enough to survive the central Utah heat.

The walls of Chambers Canyon filtered out both heat and light. I was wedged deep inside its recesses, feeling the cool, smooth of the stone pressed on my hands and squeezed against my back. My legs strained to maintain steady pressure on my climbing shoes. Right then, those points of contact were the most important things in my life. If I let go, I would drop into the darkness.

A wanderer on the surface above might never suspect this great crack in the earth, not until he stumbled right up to (or into) it. Andrew and I, we sought it out. 

Now, I craned my head to the right where I could still see the light from the north end of the crevice that we had walked into. Still not too late to turn back?

Eventually, we would cross the point where it would be impossible or damn near it for us to turn around. At that point, our fates would be wedded to whatever challenges the canyon had in store for us.

To my left, Andrew scouted for the best route.

“It’s getting wider here, I don’t think we can keep going this way.”

“Well, where well the hell do we go then?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

If there was a way, it was beneath our shoes, in the place we couldn’t see, down there.

In a minute, Andrew was already working his way down into the crevice and was swallowed up inside the dark. I heard the friction of the canyon walls against his clothes, the occasional grunt as he worked against gravity to descend safely. How far until the bottom?

It would be possible in theory for him to climb back up the way he came, though much harder. The choices we made in the canyon wouldn’t be reversed easily. Maybe we couldn't reverse them at all. It was different from most hikes that I’ve taken where I’ve been comfortable with the idea that it wouldn’t be too hard to turn around.

Canyoneering seemed to cut a little closer to the real truth about the way of the world: that we are always crossing thresholds. Every decision has permanent consequences, some more than others. Once we cross those thresholds, the only thing we can do is accept the new reality, try to adapt and keep moving forward.

Claustrophobia anybody? This was one of the wider places in the canyon.

I stayed squeezed between the walls for a small lifetime, finally heard Andrew’s voice from below: he had made the canyon floor. Now it was my turn.

I started scuffling downward, working to maintain steady pressure as I felt my way along the knobs and indentations on the surfaces. In one instance, my legs would be fully extended and I kept my arms behind me. In another place, I held myself up with my knees. The friction of the sandstone ground and bit at me, on my hands, through my pants and jacket. Finally, Andrew came into view, and then I was able to put my feet down on the sandy floor. It was the first time I’d had my feet on anything like solid ground since we had started on the canyon about 20 minutes earlier.

Going down 

We began our descent about a mile from where we had parked the car. The journey began innocuously enough, a sandy path between chest-high walls of stone. The walls themselves formed a curious ripple pattern that I can only liken to carton drawings of ocean waves, only laid out horizontally. The stone moved in smooth arcs and then abruptly turned into a new direction. There were about 18 inches between the walls at the beginning, forcing us to move awkwardly between the curves. Gradually, the space between the walls began to tighten and the floor began to drop out from us.

We put our feet up on the walls and continued forward, getting higher and higher above the crevice, until eventually we both needed to climb down.

Back at the bottom, the walls closed out the sky. It was dark, but still light enough that we wouldn’t need a headlamp to navigate. There was the sandy path again, a road through the dimness we could follow to the next challenge. Here and there, a space would open up. There would be a sunlit alcove or some other place where ages of water on rock had carved out natural splendor.

Water. Even here in this dusty canyon, that ambitious liquid had left traces of its presence. Every now and then, I would make out a branch or a knot of desiccated vegetation on one of the walls overhead, reminding me that floodwaters had climbed that high. It probably hadn’t been that long ago either. 

No one had forecast rain on the day that we were going down, but if they had, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how screwed we would be. The narrow slot we were walking down was essentially an enormous storm drain for the acres and acres of surrounding hills. Because most of those hills were mostly stone, they would sluice all that water to our location trapping us like rats.

The thought of getting in such a maelstrom kept me on edge.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of liquid trickling over sand.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Just taking a leak here,” Andrew said from around the corner.

The water has shaped some interesting passages in the rock

One thing I noticed going through the canyon was how little life there was. The environment consisted of bare rock and bone dry sand with an occasional glance into the cloudless sky. At least it was cool here in the shade and that was a mercy. Eventually, the canyon walls widened and a hot strip of midday sun cut down into the center of the canyon. Soon we had to climb up again to where the water had carved the stone into a convex hollow, with the widest portion at about 6 feet across, that tapered at the top and bottom. I felt as though I was navigating an enormous sewer drain.

There were plenty of other places where the water had worn out immense chambers that were probably the reason that the place has the name Chambers Canyon. Distant light from above created a soft illumination on the red rock. The stone was pleasing to the eye, lit up in warm color and defined by sensuous curves.

At the same time, everything in those chambers was utterly lifeless, like a tomb. The places reminded me of the elaborate ballrooms in “The Masque of The Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe. Those rooms, like the chambers that we walked through, were arranged so that no one walking down the main corridor would suspect that they existed until they came upon them. Similarly, the only way to see the rooms in the canyon is to enter, and the only way to enter is to clamber down through the walls.

Abstract art

 There were more narrow sections of the canyon up ahead. In order to go forward, I got familiar with using my butt as a means of transportation. I would keep steady pressure on my hands, back and climbing shoes and shift my butt by degrees in order to get a new hold on the walls. It was slow, but it was progress.

My jaw stayed clenched tight in these sections. A fall at that point wouldn’t have just meant injury, it also would have meant getting stuck deep, out of sight and miles from where anyone could hear screams for help.

A similar predicament had befallen a young adventurer by the name of Aron Ralston only 20 miles or so from this place. Most people are probably familiar with the story of how he got stuck in Blue John Canyon with a rock crushing his arm and only escaped because he cut off his trapped appendage with his pocketknife. I didn't have a pocketknife.

I was amused to read a National Geographic story later about some Aussie canyoneers who had taken to calling the dangerous rocks in canyons rall stones as a dark homage to the amputated outdoorsman.

There were a few rall stones in the canyon, including a few that fell into the canyon and got wedged between the walls. I tried not to put any weight on these, but sometimes it was hard to avoid.

I watched with some discomfort as the floor dropped further and further away, but the canyon walls were still too narrow for me to get there.

Beware the rall stone

The sight of a light in the canyon up ahead was just about the closest I’ve come to having a religious experience.

I scuttled eagerly toward the brightness like a green tendril seeking sun. I executed a couple of last tricky moves and then I was out.

Or was I?

Gradually, I became aware that I was still closed in by walls, that I had to scramble around a house-sized, boulder.

After that boulder, we found a 20-foot drop we had to go down by wedging our backs into the stone. When we got to the bottom, we found another narrow canyon section. I opted to wedge myself up higher where there was a wider passage. Andrew opted for the low road, which worked out for him until he got stuck and had to wrench himself out.

The narrow section moved on to another chamber and an up-climb.

We crawled out dazed, into the bright sun. We were still closed in by canyon walls, but now those walls were about 100-meters apart. The zone between was lush and green There were cottonwood trees with impossibly green leaves, cacti and sedges, all drawing water from the canyon drainage. The passage through the weird dark of the canyon made it all the more exhilarating to be in this place.

I thought back to all the tomblike stone behind me, beautiful but barren. And yet that crack through the desert was the reason for the life here. It was the Nile in the Sahara, enriching the plants and animals with water, filling the visitor with an appreciation for strange beauty. 

View from the last section of technical canyoneering