Saturday, June 11, 2011

The Subway of Zion

I had been wanting to hike a trail called the Subway in Zion national park. The trail is known to be a demanding hike and you have to get a permit to hike this trail. I was contacted by a friend of mine, Sylvia Boyd. Sylvia said that they had gotten twelve pemits for them and some of their friends but one person was not going to be able tho make it. She asked if I would like to go the following morning and I said, yes, that would be great!
 They picked me up the following morning at 6 am. We got to the parking area for the Wildcat trail on the Kolob Platue. To get to the Subway you follow the Wildcat trail and the Subway tail splits from that trail and takes you down into the slot canyon called the Subway. The first part of the trail is not to bad but when you get to the edge of the canyon the trail drops off down a steep hillside. Within a short distance you drop down several hundred feet. The scenery is amazing and as you get into the botom of the canyon there are pools of water and I was surprised to see the huge boulders that you have to scale over to work your way down the canyon. We worked our way through some of the pools of water and across some of the boulders. We came up on the first large obstacle that was a huge boulder. From what I was told there had been several large trees that had been wedged into the rocks that would work like a ladder and gave them something to climb down to get over this rock. The heavy spring runoff had washed the trees away and so the only way down was to climb down the face of the rock or rapel down the side of the cliff wall around the rock. Some of the people in our group were trying to rig up a rope to climb down around the rock. As I was waiting a couple of the guys that were with us climbed down the face of the rock and were able to make it down within four or five feet and jumped down. I decided to climb down after them. I got down and jumped the last little bit and when I did I landed wrong on my right heel and I felt it give way when all my weight landed on it. I instantly fell into the water and before anyone saw that I had fallen I tried to hurry and jump up before anyone saw that I had fallen. When I tried to stand on my foot I knew I was in big trouble. I collapsed when I put my weight on my foot and I knew it was broken.

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