Zion and All Its Wonder
Last November, we did a week long road trip from San Francisco to Zion and that is truly what started this whole adventure for us. We fell in love with its awe and beauty! The sheer size and grace of the sandstone canyons leave you with the feeling of amazement, wonder and adventure lust. Sometimes you wonder if you left a place thinking it was just a circumstance that made it so memorable but coming back did not disappoint us!
We kicked off our time here with a guided canyoneering hike. We do know how to rock climb and are willing to hike most places, so this seemed like the next step in hiking progression. Canyoneering allows you to reach places beyond your imagination. Once you drop into a canyon, you are stepping into a world of amazement. You are just a small, quiet portion of a huge world of beauty. For our guided trip, we went to Water Canyon with Zion Mountaineering School (we highly highly recommend them, https://guidesinzion.com/). This was to be an 8-9 hour day of hiking and repelling. It was AWESOME and we were hooked on Canyoneering!
After a small investment in ropes, safety lines, prusiks and a bit more, we were set for our own adventures (we do already own climbing harnesses, ATCs, carabiners, etc. from our climbing days). So our next canyon was to be The Subway! While it was recommended to us by our guide and the shop, I am still not sure if we were prepared for this adventure…
The Subway…
There are many sites to refer to for up-to-date info and more details on this Canyoneering hike, so I will just explain our experience. We did our research, loaded a GPS map with coordinates for important milestones, packed our gear and obtained our permit (which we had to go into the visitor center each day to try to get).
For a little background, Canyoneering hikes often involve back-country hiking (so forget about useful trails to follow). Once we left the trail about a mile in, we were on our own (with our GPS of course). We carefully navigated our way through the desert and down the canyon to get to our first repel. During this time, we stumbled upon three people that were a bit lost and un-prepared for this journey. As a group of five now, we worked our way through the canyon. This meant scrambling over rocks, climbing down a huge ravine, side-stepping our way down slick sand stone and swimming through a few water holes.
The Subway does not disappoint! It was incredibly beautiful and it took moments of silence to appreciate all that was around us. 10 hours, 14 miles and 32K steps later, we finished our hike! Totally worth it!!!!
This hike was so spectacular, we did it twice!
More Canyons to come…
