Golden sunlight poured down on the streets of downtown Sedona. The sun was dropping rapidly as it tends to do in early February, and Elizabeth and I were still just a little bit drunk. I hope that when I look back on this blog 40 years from now, I can still remember the bliss of wandering among the tourists through Sedona’s wide sidewalks, frequent roundabouts, and the close-packed shops and restaurants.
On February 3, Elizabeth and I had had a “wine tour” lunch, which while tasty wasn’t the most filling. Both of us could use a little more sustenance. Fortunately, an acquaintance of mine at WFO Flagstaff had given a few food recommendations in the Sedona area, including a fast-casual food-hall style eatery named Canyon Breeze. We wandered up to it and ordered our dinners, then moved to the back to sit outside.
I’ve eaten dinner in some really cool places, but this view might have taken the cake.
Fantastic.
Next to that, who would even remember what their food was like? That’s probably for the best, as it was a rather uninspired, overpriced piece of American fare. But it filled our stomachs. Between this view, the immense amount of wine I’d consumed, and the North Carolina/Duke game on the TV, I was feeling mighty content.
Elizabeth and I stayed put through most of the sunset, which threw a spectacular golden light all over the red rocks and the snowy peaks above them.
And just when we were getting ready to leave…
A real “oopsie” moment to not have my camera for this one.
We spent a little bit of time gift shopping until the sky rapidly darkened all the way to night. There were plenty of little gift stores in Sedona that offered everything from Navajo blankets to every kind of jerky you could imagine. But most importantly, it wasn’t too hard for me to find a Sedona pin.
After an hour or so, it was pitch-black outside and beginning to cool off quickly. We ordered an Uber to take us from downtown back to west Sedona to get to our hotel, and managed to survive the experience. Both of us were dead tired and quickly fell asleep in our hotel room. For a “signature day” of the trip, February 3 had lived up to the hype.
The last morning of this mini-vacation had already arrived on February 4. Long weekends taken without any annual leave usage always go fast, and this one was certainly no exception. Elizabeth and I woke up much earlier than I’d normally dare to awaken her on vacation, because the tourist season in Sedona was just starting to warm up and we wanted to get to our hiking trail of choice before the little piggies filled the lot. After hurriedly packing up our hotel room and bringing our bags out to the rental car, Elizabeth and I quickly ducked into the Aden’s breakfast area to grab some food to go. Granola bars, a bagel, and plenty of water – there were worse ways you could stock up. We didn’t even delay to eat at the hotel, instead bringing the food in the car with us.
Our target this morning was the Boynton Canyon Trailhead, a lot that held maybe 20 or 30 parking spots. I would imagine back in 2014 that would be enough for all hikers on a morning in early February before the Spring Break rush gets too wild, but nowadays the rush is intense. The reason: from the Boynton Canyon Trail, there is a cave that is relatively easily accessible. You can climb up into this cave and look back out with the visual effect of emerging from a rail tunnel. It’s aptly named the Subway Cave. And let me tell you, the Subway Cave is all over Instagram and Tik Tok. Not to stereotype, but the crowds in Sedona are probably a bit more prone to being influenced than the average tourist. There’s a reason the smoothie place was ridiculously priced.
Elizabeth stressed and fretted for the whole drive up to Boynton Canyon – a beautiful drive, by the way – up until we got to the trailhead and discovered that while it was busy, there were still parking spots. It was around 7:30 am, for whatever that’s worth. Not terrible in the ever-more-difficult “beating the piggies” game. We ate our breakfasts in the front seat of the rental car while I screenshotted directions to hike off-trail to the Subway Cave so that we could use them with no service (we never ran out of service, or even came close).
It was a chilly morning, but not out-and-out cold. I opted for sweatpants and a sweatshirt, but quickly tied the sweatshirt around my waist with the exertion of hiking to warm me up. The sky was mostly cloudy, but the clouds were thin enough to let a little bit of daylight through. All in all, it was ideal weather for both photography and hiking.
In spite of the fancy Forest Service signage that I posted above, this trail really is not into the wilderness at all. In fact, the first mile of the trail skirts to the edge of the canyon so as to stay off of the property of the Enchantment Resort, a sprawling collection of villas and timeshares.
On top of that, in the first half mile or so, there’s an offshoot trail that brings you up to the Boynton Canyon Vortex. What is a vortex? According to VisitSedona.com:
Sedona vortexes (the proper grammatical form ‘vortices’ is rarely used) are thought to be swirling centers of energy that are conducive to healing, meditation and self-exploration. These are places where the earth seems especially alive with energy. Many people feel inspired, recharged or uplifted after visiting a vortex.
Elizabeth and I did not hike up to the vortex.
In spite of the mumbo-jumbo, and in spite of the disproportionately high number of grade-A Berkshire-pork-caliber little piggies that began the trail around us, Elizabeth and I were enjoying ourselves. It had been a bit of tumultuous vacation at times (we’ll never forget the drive into Holbrook) and I found myself cherishing the amicable nature of our hike. There wasn’t really a set pace we needed to go (outside of fast enough to get away from the group behind us so we’d be able to hear ourselves think), and the trail was wide and well-maintained, which let your eyes wander far more than normal.
Occasionally the trail dipped all the way to the canyon wall, where water was still seeping down from all of the rain on the day we arrived. For the most part, though, it was pretty straightforward down the center of the canyon. Elizabeth and I made good time past the Enchantment Resort.
After a while the scrub brush started to give way to more of a mixed-growth forest with little pinions and much bigger junipers. We were looking for the “Alligator Juniper Tree”, so-called because of the scaly appearance of the tree’s bark. Multiple influencer guides on Google told me that there was no way we’d miss it, but paranoia runs strong in the Meisters when they’re hiking. Far before we’d reached the mileage required for the turn off of the Boynton Canyon Trail, Elizabeth was investigating each individual juniper to make sure it wasn’t the juniper. For example, this tree had scaly bark, was it the tree?
Of course, the influencers neglected to mention that there would be an arrow drawn in the ground out of rocks. That would have taken a good chunk of stress out of a Sunday morning hike.
It was about a 15-minute hike from this point “off-trail”, although in reality the hordes of people flocking the Subway Cave these days have beaten an extremely well-maintained trail into the side canyon. It was a steeper (and, in wet spots, much slicker) hike than the flat trail up the canyon had been. As we approached, sounds of people began to float down from the canyon wall above us. Ironically, just as the noise started to crescendo, we came upon a sign asking for… respect for the sanctity of the spot.
Fully support the Forest Service in their mission there. But also… good luck, once the influencers have done their influencing.
The hullabaloo ahead began to crescendo just as the trail got a little bit more treacherous. Suddenly, we came around a bend and were staring at the canyon wall. This was it, the Subway Cave!
Funny enough, the Subway Cave doesn’t look like a whole lot from the bottom. In part this is because it’s not a true “cave” in the sense that the ceiling above you isn’t fully closed. Instead, the walls both curve upward like a subway tunnel, leaving an opening out the bottom that you walk up through and an opening at the top. It’s very impressive to view from the inside, but from this spot it sort of just looks like a shelf on a cliff.
That group that had been loudly following us from the start of the hike had actually passed us at some point (I resolutely tried not to think about what it meant that Elizabeth and I naturally hike slower than some 40-somethings wearing Nike running shoes that had never been worn before). They were trying to figure out the climb up the chute into the Subway Cave. Things are straightfoward enough in the picture above where the bottom two are climbing – just stay in the interior chute for long enough and you’ll get up to a level patch at the bottom of the cave. From there, there’s a ramp on the right side and another extremely narrow chute on the left; both are considerably more steep and thanks to the recent rain, considerably more slick.
While the group in front of us tried to puzzle through how to get up, I took stock of our surroundings. There was an alternate way into the cave that required much less technical skill – you simply scrambled up the cliff face over on the left of the above photo then worked your way around the corner on the shelf. But that sounded lame, and I was sure Elizabeth and I could figure it out. Only slightly daunted by the abject failure by the group ahead of us in scaling the cave, Elizabeth and I approached with the confidence of a pair of rock climbers. The group in front of us had tried the chute on the left, so Elizabeth decided she would slab climb the ramp on the right.
Shortly before I got this picture of Elizabeth stuck in the middle of slabbing, she dropped her phone and it bounced all the way past me. So that was sobering to watch. Elizabeth very carefully picked her way up the ramp (which, to be clear, had absolutely zero traction – this redrock sandstone is slick) over the course of several minutes. By then, I had fully lost my confidence.
And it turned out I had lost it with good reason. Maybe it was the camera bag on my back, or maybe Elizabeth was just a better climber than me out in the real world. For whatever reason, I realized just a step or two up the slab ramp that I wasn’t going to make it. I awkwardly dismounted the ramp and got back on that level spot. Not getting into the Subway Cave would have sucked if it was both of us, but her being up there and me not getting in? That wasn’t going to be an option. Instead I’d try that chute that the group in front of me had gotten stuck on.
Should have done that to begin with! The chute was an easy shimmy. It narrowed out at one point and forced me to turn my hips, but otherwise it was an easy climb of no more than 5-10 seconds. Maybe Elizabeth had gotten up in a way that I couldn’t match, but what really mattered was that we were both inside the Subway Cave.
And it was sick.
This picture is a little too far forward to get the full “Subway” effect, but there was a lot of water dripping into the back of the cave and I was fully spooked from the slick climb up. So this was good enough.
Somehow we timed things up well enough to get the cave all to ourselves for several minutes – no small feat given the hordes of hikers that had already hit the trail on this day. Before too long, a family of three came up – the daughter and mother managed to climb the same chute I did, but the middle-aged father had to take the long detour. Even then, that worked nicely – someone to take a picture of Elizabeth and me.
And I could (very carefully) walk out toward the front of the cave from there and peer out into the canyon network below us.
Arizona was really pleasantly surprising me. It was nice to see that this whole area around Sedona wasn’t just orange-baked desert hellscapes.
People were entering the cave from around the corner on the right (including the dad who hadn’t fit up the chute with his family), so Elizabeth and I decided we’d exit the cave this way (sounds less scary than trying to climb back down the ramp we’d just come up when it was wet, right?). Well, kind of – you can see how sharply angled that first step is. Elizabeth was able to get over it without too much trouble, but once again I had to dismount (in a truly heart-stopping moment) because I couldn’t make the move. I won’t lie, the ego hit was immense. And it didn’t get any better – my Aunt Kelly had previously been to Sedona and she said that the Subway Cave was easy to get into and out of. My parents went a month or two later and also had no trouble with the cave system. Maybe I’m not as epic of a rock climber as I always insist to myself? Alright, that’s enough self-reflection for one blog post.
The good news: sliding down the ramp wasn’t that difficult at all, and I was able to crab-walk through it without losing a lens cap or dropping a phone. The better news: Elizabeth had gone around the corner of the cave and was waiting for me a little further away where the cliffside was less steeply-angled to the shelf. This gave me a chance to wander the rest of the shelf without missing out.
By this point, the stream of hikers getting into the Subway Cave area was more like a flood. There were hikers young and old, solo adventurers and big, loud groups. Someone even had a canine companion.
Right as Elizabeth and I were getting ready to leave, someone showed up and began playing the panpipes barefooted. I don’t know whether this guy was a member of a local Native American tribe or whether he was just a bit of a nut, but the music added a little zest to the story (if not my enjoyment of the spot).
We made relatively quick time back down to the main trail with only a slight panic when it turned out that we had somehow entered a side trail down the wash at the bottom of the canyon. Regardless, if both the creeks and the trails all work downhill, they’ll all meet up at some point. Plenty of little piggies were heading the other way as we began our walk back to the foot of Boynton Canyon. That didn’t mean that I couldn’t find some spots for photography along the way, including the “red rock with snow” shot I desperately wanted.
After passing by the Boynton Canyon vortex one more time without a backwards glance, we reached the car a little after 11:00 am. It had warmed up enough that I certainly wasn’t finding myself yearning for any coat, but it wasn’t quite warm enough to keep those muscles from going stiff. Our smuggled hotel breakfast from hours ago seemed far in the rear-view mirror. Lunch was sounding mighty fine.
The Subway Cave was our so-called signature hike of our February 2024 Arizona trip. I’m not sure I’d say that it lived up to the hype of the Instagram influencers (maybe because of the gloomy day, maybe because I found out I’m a bitch when rock climbing in nature), but it certainly was far from the worst way to spend a morning. It also wasn’t quite as time-consuming as we’d feared, which left a little bit of time for 1 or 2 more adventures before our Arizona trip came to an end.
