The Subway in Zion National Park is an amazing rock formation. Although taking this subway requires a very demanding hike.
The Subway
It’s incredible what the power of water can do over a long period of time. As I mentioned in last weeks post about The Narrows, water carved out the Zion Canyon and created what we see today. It did the same for The Subway. Primarily the flash floods which rip through with amazing force and volume. Just imagine the entire tube like structure above filled with raging water racing around the twists and turns. These floods can cause some real damage further downstream but here in the canyons they carve out these wild formations.
The Subway is actually in another section of Zion National Park called the Kolob Canyon. The North Creek is the water source and the Subway is on the Left Fork of North Creek. It’s a beautiful canyon and much less crowded than Zion Canyon in the main part of Zion. It also requires a permit to make the hike. The National Park Service has an online system for obtaining these permits so that’s what we did. In the summer these permits are hard to obtain due to the demand. Since we were there in late Fall, they were pretty easy to get during the week. Weekends were still pretty busy. There are two routes to get to the Subway, top down and bottom up.
The Hike
The top down hike starts up stream of the Subway and rappels down into the canyon from the rim. It requires technical canyoneering skills. It also requires swimming in deep sections of the creek. Not really conducive to carrying camera equipment in. We did the bottom up hike which is the only real option for photographers. It’s bottom up in the sense that you hike up canyon following the creek the entire way. It’s probably the easier of the two but it’s still a tough hike. The hardest one we’ve done to date. We did 8.8 miles round trip but this trail is rough the entire way. The beginning of the trek is a benign half mile hike on a level, well worn path through some juniper trees. Then reality settles in.
The bottom up hike really also starts at the top of the canyon, it’s just down stream from the Subway. You still have to get from the rim of the canyon down to the creek bed and this involves a VERY steep and rocky hike down 400′ of elevation change. 400′ is the official number but I think it’s understated by a wide margin. For the total hike my GPS measured 2600′ of elevation change and the same going back up. That’s over the entire hike not just this initial section but I believe the majority of it is in this climb down into the canyon. It also measured a peak gradient of 24 percent. That’s pretty steep. I took some images of the hike down with my iPhone but they don’t do it justice. The image below is the canyon. You have to get from the rim to the bottom and then hike up stream.
Once down to the creek bed it’s crisscrossing the creek and boulder hopping for the next several miles. The elevation gain as you go up canyon is 600-1000′ but it’s over a longer distance so that’s not too much of an issue. The constant climbing up on boulders and then down again adds a lot of exertion to the hike especially with a heavy pack of camera gear, water and food. There are a number of sections where you have to wade in the creek much like you do with the Narrows hike so we had our waders on most of the way.
Most of the hike up to the Subway is pretty boring photographically so I kept my camera in the backpack. With a limited amount of daylight this time of year we just kept moving so we could get to the Subway early enough to spend enough time there before having to head back. After several hours of hiking we finally started seeing some small waterfalls. This was a good sign as the Subway was not far beyond those. One very photogenic feature in the waterfall section is a feature called the crack. Much of the water of the North Creek flows through a crack in the creek bed and when photographed with a long exposure makes for a compelling image. It’s shown below.
The Featured Image
Shortly after the crack, you reach the Subway itself. The creek bed is slickrock and when wet lives up to its name. It’s easy to take a fall here. The featured image at the top is actually from the back of the Subway looking downstream. The tube walls have subtle hues of reds and greens from the minerals in the rock and whatever is growing on the rock walls. It’s hard to see with the naked eye as it’s fairly dim light but with a long exposure the camera can pick it up pretty well. There are also several deep pools of water that take on interesting colors depending on the light.
Even though the light levels are low, I wanted an even slower shutter speed to get the silky smooth effect to the water in the lower left. I added a six stop neutral density filter to drag the shutter speed to ten seconds. I also added a polarizer to take some of the glare off the rocks and water. This long shutter speed created a swirl of the leaves that were in the foreground pool.
In post processing there was only a single image to contend with so no blending was required. I did need to do a fair amount of balancing between deep shadows and lighter areas of the image and I also pulled some of the red and green shades out of the rock walls.
Final Thoughts
The Subway is an incredible sight and the hike affords many photo opportunities, all at the end. It is a tough hike though and you need to be in pretty good shape to do it. If we do it again in the future we will pare down what we bring to lighten the load. Also, during the Fall the daylight hours are short and you have to budget your time so you can climb out of the canyon while you still have some light. As it was, we started in the dark and we got back to car when it was nearly dark. It was a long but rewarding day.
As always, you can see higher resolution images on our Facebook page. Please give us a like when you’re there.
Nikon D810 with Nikkor 16-35mm @28mm. f/11 at 10 seconds. ISO 31. Six Stop ND filter.
Comments are closed.
