It took two days for the storms to pass. By then, flash floods had scoured the canyons of Zion National Park clean once more. Only three weeks earlier, seven people had died canyoneering in the park when rising floodwaters caught them unawares, so I was under strict orders by my friends and family to take extra precautions during my last adventure of the summer. Only once the forecast predicted blue skies for several days did I venture down into the exquisitely-sculpted sandstone corridor known as The Subway.
Compared to the rest of Zion, not many parties explored this stretch of North Creek, for as soon as the canyon walls closed in and the first boulder obstacles were rappelled, there was no way to scramble back upstream again. It was a one-way journey, and the first portion bore many of the signs of a descent into hell. The trail through Russell Gulch drifted down a fiery landscape of two hundred million year-old petrified sand dunes, and the fierce red striations contrasted strongly with the peaceful white cliffs of Navajo Sandstone that ringed the basin, watching over like guardian angels. Obviously, I was not the first person to make that observation, as I later learned that the North and South Guardian Angels were, in fact, the official names for the prominent peaks overlooking the Subway.
Despite the intense sunlight, I wore my synthetic thermal layers on the trek through Russell Gulch, hoping the extra heat would sink deep into my bones and help me survive the shady slot canyon. In a few miles, the primitive trail plunged into a fissure in the earth carved by the Left Fork of North Creek, and I began to pass other canyon explorers, some of whom donned wetsuits in preparation for the frigid pools to come. The first rappel down a pile of obstructing boulders was easy, but once I pulled my rope, I knew there was no way to re-anchor it without a grappling hook. When you’re canyoneering, I guess you can’t be too afraid of commitment.
As the chasm grew narrower, avoiding pools of water became impossible. I thought the icy, ankle-deep passages were a bad enough shock to the system, but then the streambed dropped, and I was forced to swim. The temperature of the pool made me want to cry. A watertight compartment in my backpack provided buoyancy and helped me keep my head above the surface as I dog-paddled across to the sandy shore downstream. So cold. I emerged in my sodden polypropylene layers and kept moving. The countdown to hypothermia had begun.
Next came the Bowling Alley – a water-filled passage where a spherical boulder had fallen from the cliffs and dammed up the creek. A brother and sister stood balanced atop the chockstone, studying the five-foot drop into the adjoining pool. They looked well-equipped and competent, although slightly handicapped by their short stature. I shivered and waited for them to make their move. Suddenly, the woman slipped while descending the boulder and fell out of sight into the pool below. I was greatly relieved to hear that she was all right, but the brother seemed quite shaken, and he gratefully accepted my rope to aid his descent after I anchored it to a bolt in the wall.
I found it hard to remain functional after the last two swims, and my jaw ached from being unable to stop my teeth from chattering. When the siblings announced the presence of sunbeams ahead, I was overjoyed. The noontime sun poured through the sliver of sky and touched the floor of a long, north-south-aligned stretch of canyon. I stripped off my wet shirt and basked in the generous light. Once I could move my jaw normally again, I quipped, “There ought to be a body fat requirement for this hike!” The duo agreed.
At the edge of the shadows downstream lay Keyhole Falls, where North Creek plunged fifteen feet into another excruciatingly cold pool. I could see the brother and sister hesitate at the lip of the cascade because their arms were too short for them to safely lean out over the precipice and reach the anchor bolts, so I stepped over and threaded my rope through the anchor for them. It’s nice to feel tall sometimes.
I let them rappel ahead of me, then proceeded down the rope myself. Unfortunately, when I splashed down into the waist-deep pool at the base of the falls, I dislodged my steel water bottle from my backpack. It hit the water and, before I could grab it, disappeared into a pothole at the bottom of the pool. If only I had drunk some of the contents over the last four hours, the container might have floated. Fishing around blindly with my toes in the pothole revealed nothing, as the cavity was too deep. I couldn’t bear the thought of dunking my head underwater to try and search for the bottle. I think my heart might have stopped working. So I reluctantly left it behind. I vowed to pick up some trash on the way out as penance for littering. Hopefully once the rest of the floodwaters trickled out of the canyon, the pools would settle, and some future adventurer would see the bottle and claim it for his or her own.
Soon afterwards, North Creek coursed down a second waterfall and flowed into the Subway, a cave-like passage with curved walls and a crack in the ceiling that allowed diffused light to penetrate through to a string of green pools along the floor. The ancestral creek must have cut through the ceiling narrowly and then taken a millennia or two to pick away at the softer material below, enlarging the tunnel and rounding out the walls like a great burrowing worm might have done had such a creature chewed a path through the sandstone. The magical qualities of the cylindrical chamber were enhanced by the sunlight that bounced in from a source downstream, causing the rocks to glow in unusual shades of pink and magenta.
