The Subway Permit

About this permit

The Subway is a famous slot canyon in the Kolob Terrace section of Zion National Park, named for its tubular shape where the walls curve inward at both floor and ceiling. There are two ways to experience it: a technical top-down canyoneering route (9.5 miles) requiring rappelling skills, or a non-technical bottom-up hike (8 miles round-trip) that visits the formation without requiring technical skills.

Both routes require a Wilderness Permit. The quarterly lottery hands out the first round, and unclaimed and canceled reservations go back on the Recreation.gov calendar, which is what a cancellation alert checks. Commercial guiding is prohibited: all groups must be self-reliant.

The route

From Wildcat Canyon Trailhead, the top-down route descends Russell Gulch through slickrock terrain before dropping into the Left Fork of North Creek. The first rappels are short (30 feet at most) but commit you to the canyon.

The route follows the narrowing drainage, wading through pools that grow progressively deeper. Keyhole Falls requires either a rappel or a jump into deep water. Then the canyon walls begin to curve overhead, and you enter the Subway proper, the famous tubular section where the rock forms an almost complete tunnel.

The emerald pools here are jaw-dropping, and the North Pole, a massive log wedged vertically in the slot, marks the heart of the formation. Below, the Cascades offer one last obstacle before the canyon opens and you hike out to the Left Fork Trailhead.

Why it matters

The Subway is one of Zion's most iconic features, a tubular slot canyon where the walls curve inward at both the floor and ceiling, creating a tunnel-like space. It has appeared in countless photographs and represents the pinnacle of sandstone erosion art. The top-down route is considered one of the finest introductory canyoneering routes in the Southwest.