Made a run through Das Boot / Subway last saturday with my wife, sister and two brothers-in-law.
Pictures Here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117385276182551489996/SubwayDasBootJune182011?authkey=Gv1sRgCNXUl_y36-K3Kw&feat=directlink
For you hecklers out there. Yes, we jumped a few pools in the Subway, though it is generally ill-advised. Some of them were deep enough if you were careful. Do as I say, not as I do…
Both canyons were in terrific shape. Clean, cold water in Das Boot with enough flow to make it fun. We were able to break a couple gravel and debris dams to increase that quite a bit for a good part of the canyon (a trick I learned from Ram A few of the rappel anchors in Das Boot were a little worse for wear. A couple of our group got a little chilled in there, so we tried to keep moving. I didn’t mess with most of the anchors because of this, but I did replace and fix some funky rigging on the last drop. I always love it when people feel the need to leave 3 rapides, a carabiner and a couple rap rings at every drop. Keep it coming. This way I don’t have to buy rapides
We also ran into a pretty good number of dead critters in Das Boot. Remnants of the elk from last year scattered throughout, a frog on a wall mid stride and completely covered in white mold?, a big eared kangaroo rat in the bottom of a pool, a hawk, and an emperor moth to name a few.
The bugs never really bothered us until we hit the trailhead at the end of the day and were immediately attacked by hoardes of gnats!
I thought I’d note, two rangers pulled up right as we were leaving the parking lot. Though I have had several unpleasant run-ins with rangers in the past, they were very cordial and let us on our way quickly.
Also, talking to rangers ahead of time, there was some concern of a difficult new obstacle somewhere in the Subway. They said it made the swimming more difficult and colder/longer? It turned out there’s just a big log jammed up against the Bowling ball (big basalt chock stone in the Bowling Alley). It extends down below the water, but leaves enough room to swim by to the right without ducking your head under the water. Not really a challenge unless the water were to go higher somehow. Otherwise everything seemed normal except for a few pools being scoured out exceptionally deep.