We headed out to Zion for a short weekend of escaping the heat in the southwest desert summer to find some cooler temperatures and a bit of canyoneering in Zion National Park.

I have been eyeing Das Boot canyon for years now and its finally come time to tackle this little gem just above the subway route.

The night before we stayed up at the Kolob Reservoir where temperatures got down into the 50s at night!

The following morning we headed back down to wildcat TH and started our hike down into Das Boot.

You must obtain a permit at the zion visitor center to enter Das Boot and you must have a separate permit if you want to continue down the subway or you have to hike back out from Russel gulch.

We set out early with clear skies and stashed a few extra liters of water along the way to Das Boot.  It was going to get rather hot outside so extra water is a must. 

The trail to Das boot broke off and we walked over a few extra spurs to get into the right canyon for Das Boot. We put on our wetsuits and immediately found ourselves swimming through canyon juice and debris from recent floods.

The water was a bit cold but manageable and welcomed in this kind of heat.   I wore a farmer john 3mm and heather wore a full 5mm and we found that this was ideal for our thresholds.

We continued on into the canyon and the narrow corridors gave way to some mossy like coloring and greenish blue grey hued color on the canyon walls. 

Some sections had a subterranean like feel with a open ceiling of soft light casting into the fluted passage which gave this canyon some nice sparkle.  

The narrow sections would end and open up to brief polished stone walkways but would enter back into long cool swimming drain ages.

The canyons continued to deliver some great scenery with a few climbs around log jams and floating logs.

We came across two raps in the canyon with were no longer than 20 ft.  I would consider them around 10ft and more like nuicense drops but i can see how new debris and water levels could flux the length, still I feel that these drop are no longer then 20ft.

After about an hour the canyon opened up a bit with a few final swims and our last rap off of a pine tree was about 30ft in length.  It looks a bit less but to be conservative, I give it about 30ft.

There is another option to rap off a keyed boulder but we chose to go for the rap off the pine tree. We worked our way over to Russell gulch which is where our exit was located and started to head up and out of the canyon.

The hike took a bit longer than we expected due to the heat and the excessive amounts of wet gear that we brought ( and did not need) weighed down our speed.

We finished the canyon in around 8 hours time.  I recommend wetsuits and recommend going out the subway, I do not think that the just doing das boot is worth the effort but if you must get das boot done, take some people that have not been through the subway and do both.