The Subway

I'm still playing catch up. During all of the house hunting insanity we had a chance to join some folks hiking The Subway in Zion. We had amazing weather and a great time. Because you have to swim through pools that never warm up, wet (or dry) suits are necessary and M and I ended up being the only two with dry suits. Unfortunately I haven't received copies of the photos taken of us prior to putting on the protective cover-alls but I will try my best to find them. We only needed red pyramid hats to be in a Devo video. They were truly crimes against fashion and just good taste in general.

The only real excitement (in a bad way) was when one person slipped and fell backwards several feet. It was not nice and I'm sure she had a more than impressive bruise the next day, but fortunately she wasn't seriously hurt. The rest of the day was just full of amazing scenery.

The hike in:



Our group before the truly macho took off and left the rest of us in the dust:



Here is our fearless leader, Kurt, hitting one of the last pools on the route:



Kurt's lovely wife, Janet prior to losing that very nice walking stick:



And finally the famous subway:



Along the way we regularly saw these cute little canyon tree frogs. I'm not sure if these white ones are the Hyla arenicolor species since we also saw brown ones (which H. arenicolor is supposed to be) but they appear to be close relatives given the many physical similarities. One even sat on my hand for a while. I suspect it was wondering why I hadn't eaten it yet as opposed to the Snow White moment most people imagine (yes there is a story here involving me, a hungry squirrel, some friends and my hip) but they really are pretty.



The hike through the "slot" canyon (it's a VERY wide slot for most of the hike) ends after a series of short falls:



At the very end, you get to climb back out of the canyon so that everyone who isn't in the best of shape comes out looking like they had their butts kicked in spite of the fact that it a very reasonable hike for most of the 9 miles.