September 9-12, 2022
Pine Creek, Jolly, Keyhole, The Watchman, Das Boot and The Subway
Laura and I had a planned to meet some friends of ours to descend Imlay Canyon in Zion. However, the rain forecast was not good and this is a very dangerous canyon to be in for a long time. Plans change as they always do and we all agreed that Imlay was not the canyon for this weekend. We had already purchased plane tickets, camping reservations, and made arrangements for Hazel so we decided to go to Zion anyway and just see what we could do when we got there.
We arrived at Zion on Thursday night. Friday morning we ran Pine Creek. Despite having done it previously, it is an amazing canyon and relatively short. Perfect for our first day in Zion to get back into canyoning after spending most of the summer in the mountains. Everything went smoothly and we were able to hitchhike back up to our car in relatively short order.
The skies still looked clear with no clouds in sight, so we headed for Jolly Gulch. Despite being hot, we made quick work of the three mile hike to the drop in point. Jolley has a few fun rappels, but no real slot sections. We enjoyed the canyon and in no time, we were already back to our car. We looked at permits for the following day and it appeared we could snag the subway, so we drove down to the permit office to find out someone else had already taken them. Slightly disappointed, we settled for an evening run through Keyhole, a short but enjoyable canyon we have done several times previously. It was a
good day with three canyons and beautiful weather.
The next morning we woke up to decent looking skies but a bad rain forecast.
We canceled our canyon permit and instead chose to hike/climb the
watchman. We got some information from the ranger that was of low
quality. Since the watchman is visible from the ranger station, he pointed toward a distinct notch and indicated that was the route to
ascend. However, when we got to the notch, it was a dead-end. It would have been very difficult climbing with lots of exposure and we didn't have any gear or harnesses with us. We searched the internet for additional beta and determined that the correct notch was not visible from the park but rather was all the way around the mountain on the west end. We made a long traverse on rocky slopes and eventually found the correct route. After some enjoyable scrambling, we made it to the saddle
of the watchman and another unnamed point. Weather looked bad in the distance and
we figured we still had few hours to go. We turned back and went back to
the ranger station to try to get canyon permits for the next day. We talked to
the same ranger, Brian, and mentioned his poor route information
to him so he didn’t pass along the wrong information to others who may be more likely to get into trouble.
We hung out at the ranger desk for a while and asked lots of questions about various canyons and went back and forth
about which ones would be good for the following day. Of course we had asked again about the Subway, which
is very difficult to obtain permits for, but still no availability. Laura and I, after about 30
minutes of talking, eventually decided to book Echo canyon, one that
we had not previously been to. He booked what he thought was Echo but as Laura was reviewing and signing the permit, she noticed it was actually for the subway. What?! There was no availability. Questions back and forth and it was determined that someone must have just cancelled while we were standing there and he had booked it out of habit since that is the number one permit he issues. In any case, we scored it and quickly added on Das Boot. Brian is our new favorite Ranger despite the fact that we don’t trust anything he says. We were super lucky and excited to have permits for the subway as it was one of our very favorite canyons ever and we're looking forward to exploring Das boot this time as well.
The next morning Laura and I drove up Kolob Terrace Road and
made the hike across to Das boot. After entering the canyon, we noticed it was
sprinkling just a little bit. We were too far in to turnaround so we
just sent it as quickly as we could through Das boot. At the entrance to the subway, we waited a few minutes to make sure the weather was good enough to continue. The subway is wider and has lots of higher ground. The weather seemed to be clearing so we kept going down. We
greatly enjoyed the subway and were through in about an hour. The exit was longer than I remembered, or maybe it was just hotter this time, but we had a great day in the canyon none the less. That evening we
stayed in a hotel and the next morning we drove back to Las Vegas to
hang out with family.
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