Subway, Part 2.

"Follow the prominent, unmaintained but well-cairned trail for 1 1/4 miles..."--From one of the many guides to the Subway.

The first part of the Subway hike is, admittedly, somewhat difficult. Not in the "oh-my-god we're going to die" sense, but in the sense that there isn't actually a trail to follow. In order to cross Russell Gulch and get into the Subway to begin with, one must cross over about a mile of slickrock--something that isn't conducive to trail making. This can be difficult if you don't have a map and aren't quite sure where you're going. Losing the trail can have some bad, if not fatal, consequences. In 2002, some hikers lost the trail. One fell off a 30 foot cliff (I can only assume that he thought that was the entrance to the canyon), and broke both legs as well as his back. Another pair ended up spending the night trapped on a cliff ledge.

To make matters worse, as will be discussed below, the entrance to the Subway is....not what you would expect. If you don't know exactly what you were looking for, you would never have thought that it was an entrance.

However, every guide I've ever seen (and I've seen several) has pointed out that the danger is in leaving the trail; the trail itself if full of hiker's cairns that one simply needs to follow to find the entrance. While it can be tricky if you don't know what you're looking for, if one simply follows the "well-cairned trail", things will be fine, or so I had been led to believe.

Well-cairned my ass.

When we arrived at the slickrock section, the first cairn was obvious. And then, the cairns simply disappeared. We later found out from other hikers who had obviously done this canyon before that somebody had come through and kicked over the cairns, removing the trail for those who would come after.

Given the dangers I've stated above, and given the dangers of leaving the trail, I can only say that whomever did that committed a dick move of the highest magnitude. Here's a hint kiddies--cairns have been placed for a reason. If you touch them, you could be placing people who are relying on those cairns into big trouble.

What a cairn allegedly looks like.

We had arrived at the slickrock section with a family of 5 from the area who were also on their first Subway hike. They seemed to have the same directions I did, and we took the opportunity to form a loose alliance--we all split up and spread out, making a shout if we found a cairn. Luckily, other landmarks had been mentioned in the guides, so we knew we were generally going the right way.

That said, I probably should have taken this as an omen of things to come.

Other bad omens? Remember those GPS coordinates I copied? Two sets, in case one was wrong? Yeah, they didn't work. Upon pulling out the GPS at an easy landmark, I compared the readings with the coordinates I had. They weren't even close. Well, they were kind of close, like to within a thousand feet close, but really, that doesn't help. Admittedly, it was an older model GPS unit, and this was the first time I had used a handheld unit like that, but the point was, GPS was now completely useless. And we hadn't even been hiking for an hour.

Still, we made our way across the slickrock, ever so slowly. Sometimes, we took more....scenic routes, through underbrush, such as it was, but every once in a while, somebody would stumble upon a cairn, and we would be reassured that we were going the right way.

Incidentally, with no foreshadowing whatsoever, we started on this hike at 8am, which would give us 12 hours to complete it before dark. Just in case, we had brought headlamps. Oh, and the time to complete the slickrock section is supposed to be about an hour. Our "Where's Waldo" approach to hiking took about 3 hours. Yes, it was now 11am and we hadn't even got into the Subway yet. Oh yes, things were going swell.

I hike across the slickrock.

What the trail looked like.

In retrospect, I'm glad we encountered that family. Without them, we would have arrived at the Subway entrance, assumed that we were at the wrong place, and then spent the next 6 hours wandering around the slickrock trying to find the actual entrance before just giving up and going home.

No, wait. In retrospect, encountering that family was one the worst things to ever happen to us.

See, after 3 hours of hiking, we finally found the entrance. It was marked by a cairn that vandals hadn't kicked over, which was good, I guess. Because had I not seen other people entering the Subway this way, I would have never have thought that this was the entrance.

Take a look at this photo--this shows us approaching the Subway entrance:

From Day 11 pointandshoot

Notice something? We're still 400 feet above the canyon. This photo is taken roughly 100 yards from the entrance.

Guides had told me that the last part of the trail was a "steep dirt and rock covered trail, use caution".

This, my friends, was the understatement of the century.

I consider the hike out of the Grand Canyon to be steep. I considered the hike up Mt. Washburn to be steep. When used with the word "trail", I assume that there will actually be a trail.

This was no trail. This was a 400 foot climb down. Oh, it wasn't 90 degrees. But it was probably 60 or 70 degrees. It wasn't so much a trail as a controlled fall, carefully sliding on dirt, lowering yourself by holding onto exposed roots and rocks, and being more akin to a "climb" than a "hike".

Nothing I had ever read mentioned this. Had I not seen the people before us descend it, I would never have thought that this was the trail. And yet, it was.

Towards the end, it shallowed up quite a bit--here's Becky standing at the bottom:

Notice the distinct lack of trail in the background. In order to get down the trail, much of the path must be spent, out of necessity, sliding down upon your ass.

Frankly, I didn't have too much trouble with this part. Yes, it was kinda scary at times, especially when I could only just barely reach the next foothold, but it was doable.

Becky, not so much.

At this point, I should bring up that Becky and I have an interesting pair of phobias. As you can no doubt guess given prior posts, I have a big problem with heights. Well, also bees, insects, driving over bridges, hippies, the Amish, the letter "theta", midgets, people with gargantuism, dark colors, art deco, the entire city of Las Vegas (and the surrounding suburbs), sentences ending with prepositions, repetitiveness, bees, and the truth. But mostly heights. In fact, mainly heights.

Becky, on the other hand, is scared of falling. While the two phobias do have overlaps, they are definitely not the same phobia. This became apparent as we attempted the descent.

Me? The trees and rocks and roots and little stones obscured the true height of what we were descending. I could slip slide to the next foot hold, no problem. Sure, I'm not sure if I could get back up it again, but going down was actually quite simple for me. Becky, not so much.

See, the entire thing was one long controlled fall. If you couldn't reach the next foothold, you just had to sit back, and fall to it. It was only a couple of feet. That couple of feet became a repeating nightmare for my wife.

It started with her trying to reach the first foothold, and coming up short by about 3 inches. She couldn't touch it, and thus would just have to let go to reach it. This is about when she began to panic. The gully was too narrow to pass, and too steep to brace upon, so I couldn't get ahead and help lower her down or catch her or something. There was literally nothing I could do to help. Thus, the panic began to set in. She finally managed to work her way down to it--of course, now there was only 398 feet to go, and the next footholds weren't any easier. Becky was in her own little version of hell. This would be like forcing me to walk a balance beam a thousand feet up--I understand her panic, but was powerless to help. I tried to give her a hand when I could, but there was little I could do. Going back wasn't really an option--even if we could find our way back through the slickrock, our car was parked at the bottom of the canyon, 8 miles away. She had to press onwards.

It was a long, tortuous descent. Every time we thought we'd neared the end, we'd clear a cliff face and see that we had far to go. Each foothold had to be taken very carefully--a loose rock, or a shifting pile of dirt could mean a twisted ankle and a difficult evac. We made it to the bottom without incident, thank god, but make no mistake--this was a very dangerous part of the hike. I had no idea it was coming up, and apparently, the word "steep" has some different connotations. This wasn't a hike. This was a downclimb. Take a look at that picture above once more--Becky does not look happy. There's a reason for that.

Eventually we made it down though; here's the picture we took at the bottom. You can see the trail behind us. Unfortunately, things only continued to get worse.

To be continued....