Spry Canyon epic

My friend John and I decided on a whim last Friday afternoon to go canyoneering at Zion National Park. I needed a good distraction from life, and John didn't have any weekend plans, so we decided to just go. John went up to Salt Lake to get some of his gear, I packed up my stuff in Provo, and a few hours later we were on our way. We loaded up into John's Peace Wagon and rolled out.

The tale of our epic adventure follows. If you have a short attention span, you can just look at the pictures. If you keep reading, though, you'll be rewarded with breathtaking beauty and daring rescues.

The Peace Wagon peaces out

Vintage Peace Wagon: John and me, and the Peace Wagon in March 2007 after our Provo Peak climb

We had to stop in Spanish Fork to pick up a bit more gear, and then we were off to Zion. As we were leaving Spanish Fork, John pointed out a funny noise that the Peace Wagon made when you turned the wheels really sharply and asked if I knew what it was. I thought it might be the CV joint, but he said he thought it was the transmission.

About an hour later, we were merrily rolling down I-15, talking about life, when the Peace Wagon lurched and made a clunking sound. John turned to me and said, "It's not supposed to do that, is it?" I didn't really need to respond, though, because it made another clunking sound, and then continued to make lots of bad noises. We passed a "Fillmore, 1 mile" sign right then, and we hoped that we'd be able to make it at least to the exit. The car was still going, but the sounds were getting worse.

We did make it to the exit, and we needed to quickly figure out where to go. I suggested that we turn right, since it was downhill and closer, so right we went. As we went that way, though, we realized that there wasn't much there, and that left was probably the better choice. After all, there were two gas stations to the left, and only one to the right. :) Unfortunately, the Peace Wagon was starting to give up the ghost, and it was having a hard time making it up the overpass. I got out and started pushing while John rocked it from drive to neutral. A nice guy in a truck behind us jumped out and helped push for a minute.

After a nice little workout (for me, although John offered to push) we made it to a parking spot at the Maverick gas station. It was clear that the sound John had asked me about in Spanish Fork was indeed the transmission. The Peace Wagon was in critical condition, and wouldn't be taking us to southern Utah.


Plan B(enj)

After a moment of silence for the trusty (up 'til then, anyway), somewhat dusty vehicle that had taken so many people on so many adventures, John started making calls and talking to people at the gas station to figure out what to do about the car. Meanwhile, I started making calls to figure out how to avoid canceling our Zion trip. I really wanted to get out of Provo and have a bit of time away from the stresses of life, so I was determined to not let a little thing like a destroyed transmission ruin our trip.

I called a lot of people. It turns out that 9:30 p.m. on the day after Thanksgiving on 5 minutes' notice isn't the ideal time for people to come to Zion. My brother could come pick us up, but he couldn't go to the park. Several other friends were still out of town for Thanksgiving. One friend could come, but didn't want to drive alone out to Fillmore. As I was running out of people to call, I decided to call my friend Benj.

Benj and I met each other this summer in California, and he lives in Salt Lake these days. We've tried to plan some hiking trips together this fall, but our schedules haven't lined up yet. I didn't call him right at first because he lives in Salt Lake, which is an extra hour or so away, and we were already short on time. With all of the Provo options exhausted, though, I decided to call him as a last resort.

Benj answered the phone. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi Benj; it's Bruce. This is probably a pretty long shot, but I was wondering if you wanted to go to Zion National Park."

"When?"

"Um... in about five minutes."

I explained the situation in a little more detail, and he told me to talk him into it. I must have said something right, because he said he was just crazy enough to come. It was his only open weekend for quite a while, and he had been thinking not too long before about what he was going to do with his free time. We could provide an answer to that question. :) It also turned out that he was in Orem for a family get-together, so he was an hour closer than I expected.

When I got off the phone, I called my brother and had him pack up some gear for Benj (thanks Dave!). John and I relaxed for a while at the Maverick and waited for our ride to show up.

The Peace Wagon's disobedience had slowed us down, but hadn't stopped us. We were still going to Zion. We made it to our camp site around 2 a.m., threw our sleeping bags out, and went right to sleep.

On the (wrong?) trail


After a nice 5-hour nap, we awoke to some crisp desert air. It had gotten a lot colder, and I think we all woke up before the alarm went off at 7:20. We quickly packed up, and we were at the visitor center by 7:50 to pick up our permit. After a bit o' paperwork, we were off to the trailhead.

We got there around 9 a.m. and started heading up what turned out to be the wrong drainage. After realizing our mistake, we backtracked to the car and headed out the right way. Our little detour cost us half an hour.

The approach to the canyon took us up the Pine Creek drainage, up a gully, over a saddle, and then down into the canyon. There was some nice slickrock hiking along the way.

John nearing the saddle at the top of the Spry Canyon drainage

View from the saddle. East Temple on the left, Twin Brothers on the right, West Temple mesa off in the distance. Spry Canyon is right in the middle.

Into the canyon

Benj at the top of the first rappel

A bit less than an hour and a half from the trailhead, we dropped into the canyon. We reached the first rappel, which is the longest, but also one of the most tame. It's a pretty low-angle slickrock slab that you just kind of walk down. Too steep to downclimb, but not steep enough to really make you feel like you're getting your money's worth out of the rappel.


We continued down the canyon, interleaving rappels with walks through quicksand in the bottom of the watercourse. There had been some rain a week or so before, and a lot of the sand was really saturated with water. It looked solid, but as soon as you stepped on it, it would turned to mush and suck you in. Kept us on our toes. There were a few places in narrower slots where stepping on the quicksand would actually cause it to start flowing down the slot.

Benj at the top of a rappel

Benj skillfully evading the water

John is more hydrophilic than Benj

Down, down, down

There are about ten rappels in Spry Canyon, so we stayed busy with the ropes. Despite the recent rain, we managed to avoid getting soaked for most of the canyon. There were a few places where we had to wade up to our calves, and one thigh-deep wade, but our tops stayed dry for most of the canyon.

Benj on a fun free rappel under a little waterfall

Some of the rappels were especially cool. One was into a deep, dark, narrow slot, and we couldn't see the bottom. We tossed some rocks from the top to see if there was water below (there was). We also timed the fall to measure how far down it was (2.5 seconds; to find the distance, just use Newton's old 1/2at², for a distance of about 30 meters). Since I was leading the group, I went first on all of the rappels, which sometimes meant I didn't know if I was rappelling into a pool or not. Makes life a little more exciting, you know? It turns out that I was able to swing over and land on dry ground on the deep, dark rappel.

Unfortunately, when things start getting exciting (and wet), the cameras stay inside the drybag, so I don't have a lot of good pictures from the coolest rappels.

John rappelling off a big tree that he built a nice anchor on

This sliver of light was the only sun that we touched all day. We saw the sun a lot, sometimes just ten feet away on the other side of the canyon, but this was the only time we reached it.

John belaying Benj. It turns out that you could swing over to a little sand island and then walk through pretty shallow water to avoid the pothole.

Narrow escape

The last little bit of the canyon becomes a little more intense. The slot turns to the south and narrows up. The narrow slot is really pretty, but it also makes it harder to avoid the water, since there's often no way to go around it. (As the canyon became more intense, I was focused on things other than taking pictures, so there are only words from here on out.)

As we entered this section, we heard another group behind us. We remarked to each other that it was nice to know that someone else was back there, so that if one of our ropes got stuck or one of us got hurt, they would be able to help us out. That little bit of conversation turned out to be kind of ironic later.

The last section of the slot is the narrowest, and it was filled with water that looked pretty deep. Before we entered that section, we decided that we would hurry through as quickly as possible so that we could get back out into the sun and warm up.

I went first. There was a short slickrock slide, followed by a narrow pool that was 10 or 15 feet long. I eased into the pool, hoping that my feet would hit the bottom and I wouldn't really have to get wet, but it wasn't to be. The chilly water sucked all the air out of my lungs, and soon I was swimming as quick as I could to the other side of the pool. I emerged to stand on some quicksand, shivering.

John started down the rappel after me, and right before he was about to drop into the water, we heard the group behind us yell to us. It was really echoy in the canyon, and they were a little way back, so it was hard to hear. After a minute, though, we figured out that they were saying that their rope was stuck, and they wanted us to wait for them. If they had been 10 minutes later, we would have pulled our rope already, it would have been too late.

To set up a rappel, you normally loop your rope through a rappel ring that's anchored at the top to bolts drilled into the rock, or a sling wrapped around a tree. You rappel down both sides of the rope, and then pull on one side to retrieve your rope at the bottom. However, sometimes the rope can get stuck (in a crack, for example) when you try to pull it down. Having the last rappeller make sure that the rope is positioned just right and free from twists and tangles helps out a lot, but sometimes the rope gets stuck anyway.

Getting a rope stuck in a canyon can be really bad if you're not prepared with an extra. Without a rope, you have no way to rappel out of the canyon, and you could be trapped.

The group behind us was in a pretty tight situation. They decided to cut the ends off their ropes, and they used those to get down to us. However, their cut ropes weren't long enough to make it all the way out of the canyon, so they would have been stuck our help.

While we were waiting for the other group, I started to get pretty cold. I was in a shady slot, and I had just swum though a pool of cold water. I experienced the early stages of hypothermia the very first time I went canyoneering, and I could see that I could easily become hypothermic in my current situation. I was shivering quite a bit, and I was having a hard time warming up since there wasn't room for me to move around.

We decided that our group needed to get out of the slot into the open area below where we could warm up. Thankfully, our rope was long enough that we could make it down the next rappel without pulling it from the anchors way back above the previous rappel. That way, we could escape and still leave the rope for the group behind us to use.

About 45 minutes after I swam the pool, I, John, and Benj rappelled out of the slot into an open area below. We yelled to the other group that they could come down, and arranged for them to leave our rope at the ranger station. We wanted to get out before it got dark, since we still had a long hike down a boulder field without a trail. We still had a hike out, but it was a relief to know that we were out of the slot, and the danger of hypothermia had passed.

Unfortunately, we discovered that there was one more rappel, so we were stuck until they were done with our rope up above—or so we thought. We spent the time putting on warm, dry clothes and getting a bit to eat. The sun was setting, and we were getting worried about finding the route down. John remembered that we had a really long section of webbing, so we pulled it out to see if it would be long enough to reach the bottom of the last rappel. It was just a little too short, but we strung some slings together to make it a little longer, and it just reached the bottom. I was the only one who had rappelled down webbing before, so I went first to demonstrate that it worked just fine. John and Benj followed right after.

Out of the canyon, but not out of the woods

By the time we were to the bottom, it was pretty dark, and the other group was just about out of the slot above us. We decided at that point that it would be better to wait for them and stick together. The deciding factor was that they had a car, and could give us a ride back to our car, which we had left at the top of the slot. (We were originally planning to hitchhike.)

The other group retrieved our webbing, rigged our rope and rappelled down the last drop. As they came down, we finally got to see the faces that went with the voices we had been talking to. When they were all down, they pulled the rope, but it got stuck. Shoot! We tugged and yanked and repositioned and flicked, but nothing seemed to work. Both ends of the rope were still on the ground, so I decided to climb back up the rope using ascenders, free it up from whatever it was caught on, rappel back down, and hope that we could pull it after that. While I was setting up my ascenders, John kept bouncing and pulling on the rope. When I was just about ready to climb the rope, it came free. Yes!

Down the dark mountain

After eating a little food (one of the other group shared some delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies—yum!), we packed up our gear and headed down the boulder field. There are actually two routes down: one directly down the boulder field that follows the water course, and one down a more bare, sandy slope. The Park Service has closed off the trail down the slope due to erosion problems, and instead asks people to go down the watercourse, which requires navigating around boulders and rappelling down a cliff.

Considering our situation, however, we decided that following the closed trail would give us the best chances of making it down that night, and we really wanted to get down that night to avoid a search and rescue operation the next day. We were worried about getting cliffed out if we took the Park's preferred route. We didn't know exactly where the slope we wanted to follow was, and it was impossible to tell where we were in the dark, but we knew that it was generally to our right. One guy in the other group led out, and did a terrific job at routefinding. We had to crawl through boulders and brush (yucca and thorny bushes are not your friends in the dark!), but eventually we made it to the bare, open slope that we were looking for, although trying as much as possible to stick to durable surfaces. I found it amusing that the people in the other group were ecology students, and they were walking down the slope that had been closed to prevent erosion. They must have had quite the internal crises. I didn't feel very good about the situation, either, but considering the circumstances, I felt that it was a prudent choice.

Back to civilization

About 2 hours after the last rappel, we made it down to Pine Creek. It took us a minute to find the trail, but after that it was an easy walk on a well-used trail back to the car. We were all really glad to be back to civilization. We loaded up our gear into their car for them to give us a 3-mile ride back to our vehicle.

As we were pulling away, I noticed that their gas gauge was on empty, and I asked if the gauge was accurate. The girl driving didn't know, so she stopped to ask the others in her group. The consensus was that it really was empty, but that we could probably make it to our car and then they could make it out of the park to a gas station.

One of the other group had turned on her phone and checked her voicemail on the way down, and had discovered that one of their friend had alerted the Park Service that their group was missing. Had we not been there, there would have been a search and rescue operation on Sunday to find them. As it happened, a ranger drove by right as we reached the road, and so we stopped for a second to talk to him. He radioed in that the group had been found, and we asked him if he could give us a ride back to our car. He started to give us a lecture about how we should have thought about filling up our tank before, but one of the guys in the other group explained that that was their car, and that we had rescued them. The ranger agreed to give me a ride back to the car.

For the second time in two Zion trips, I was unexpectedly riding back up the mountain and through the tunnel to get the car we had left at the trailhead. Last time it was due to a key locked in a car; this time it was due to an unexpected rescue.

We drove to the visitor center, washed up a bit, and then began the long drive back home. We stopped in Cedar City for a much-needed dinner and some much-needed caffeine and then continued on our way. We stopped in Fillmore on the way back to clean out the Peace Wagon, and we decided to take a nap while we were there. Even with caffeine, it was pretty hard to stay awake after our short night's sleep the night before, followed by all of the day's events. I didn't make it back to Provo until about 3:30 a.m., and John and Benj still had drive to Salt Lake after that.

What started out on a whim as a quick, fun trip turned into quite the epic adventure. I'm glad that things turned out well. A lot of things fell into place so that we were in the right place at the right time to help rescue the group that was behind us. I'm glad that we were prepared and that we made good decisions in a stressful situation. It might sound like everything went really smoothly from my account, but there were a couple of hours where things were pretty stressful. The canyon acoustics made it hard to communicate, and there were a lot of unknowns. We had to balance our needs with our desires to help the other group. We didn't know what gear they had, or how much experience they had. There was also a lot of time pressure, since it was getting dark and cold as the situation progressed.

In the end, I think that things turned out well. Looking back, I don't see much that I would change if I could do it over again. Lending a hand cost us about three hours, but it was certainly worth it. They probably would have survived just fine without our help, but they would have had a pretty unpleasant freezing night and chilly morning alone in the canyon. It felt good to be able to help.

If you made it all the way down here and still want more, don't forget to look at the rest of the pictures.

Canyoneering in Baptist Draw (again)

This Thursday and Friday I went on a field trip with my canyoneering class. I took the same class last year, and this field trip was really similar to last year's field trip. We went to the San Rafael Swell in eastern Utah. We did Ding and Dang canyons on Thursday, which are easy, non-technical slots. Yesterday we did Baptist Draw and Upper Chute.

Baptist Draw was a lot of fun. There are a lot of cool people in our class, and the canyon was in great condition. The weather was a little cool while waiting at the "big" (80-foot) rappel, but it was perfect for most of the time. There was just one puddle in Baptist Draw, but the hike became a mudfest once we got into Upper Chute. There was one wade up to my chest, and most of the rest were thigh-deep or less. The recent water didn't smell too bad, and it had mixed with the fine dirt to make creamy, smooth, chocolatey mud. It was a lot of fun!

Here are some pictures and a video. You can see more in the full gallery.

Mudstone formation near our campsite

Campsite near Goblin Valley

Playing Sardines in the dark at Goblin Valley

Hiking toward Teepee Rock to get to the canyon the next morning

Kyle hanging out above the first obstacle in Baptist Draw (a little pothole), waiting for the traffic jam to subside

Camille at the end of Baptist Draw, rappelling 80 feet down to the floor of Upper Chute Canyon

Tristan helping Janni get set up for the rappel

All suited up, ready to enter the mudfest

It was a really muddy mudfest. :)

Adam swimming through some pristine water

Video of us playing in the mud

Kenna drinking some chocolate milk

I love these narrows!

Straight, skinny slot right before our exit. (As a side note, this looks strangely like the rock equivalent of a snow formation that I saw while climbing Lone Peak last winter.)

Hiking back up to the canyon rim

Back in Provo, putting away our mountain of gear

Birch Hollow and Orderville Canyon

I went to Zion National Park this weekend with some friends to go canyoneering. We had a great time, but the trip was filled with unexpected adventure.

I drove down with Amy and Tyler on Friday. We missed the Zion exit (each of us thought that the other two were paying attention) and so we decided to take advantage of our time in St. George by stopping at Jack in the Box. I had misheard the backcountry office hours earlier that day, so by the time we got to the park, it was closed. We would have to wait until the next day to pick up our permit. We explored a possible new campsite, decided it was no good, and headed back to my usual Zion hangout: Mosquito Cove.

We waded around in the soft, fine mud of the Virgin River for a little while—until Tyler and I felt some mystery critters started nibbling on our toes, that is. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing, watching for shooting stars, and talking on the hood of Tyler's truck. (Note to self: bring camp chairs next time.) Although not action-packed, I really enjoyed the evening.

Cherise, Mike, and Channing showed up late in the evening, and we set up camp and tried to go to sleep. Another group not too far from us was up until about 1:30 talking around the campfire, and I couldn't fall asleep until they did.

We got up early on Saturday morning to pick up the permit. When we got to the backcountry office, the updated weather report predicted a 20% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. There had been nothing but dry, blue skies predicted all week, and now this? Since we were getting started on our already-tight schedule later than expected, and since the flash flood potential had risen, and since there are a couple of sections of Englestead that are pretty committing with respect to flooding, I reluctantly made an executive decision that we weren't going to do Englestead.

I told the backcountry office that our spot would be free, and then went to tell the rest of the group. They were all disappointed, as expected. Mike suggested that we could do Birch Hollow instead. It was shorter and less committing, and dumps into Orderville, which has more places to run in case of flooding. I decided that Birch would be safe enough to do, so after reviewing it in the guidebook, I walked back to the backcountry office and picked up a permit for Orderville. (Birch is outside the park, so no permit is required for it. If you exit up Orderville, you don't need a permit at all.)

We all piled into Tyler's truck and headed to the trailhead, which is about 45 minutes from the visitor center. We got our gear ready and headed down the drainage. After five or ten minutes of hiking, I came around a bend and Cherise and the others were stopped on the side of the trail. As I looked closer, I realized why: she had a bunch of plant splinters sticking out of her eyelid.

Some of the splinters were in pretty deep, but Amy stepped right up and started pulling them out. Cherise was a great sport about the situation, which may have been helped by the fact that there are apparently no nerve endings in her eyelids. After a while we managed to pull out most of the spliters, and Amy and I ran back up to the truck to grab some Neosporin (note to self: bring that next time, too). It looked like Cherise would be fine, and we were only delayed by about 45 minutes.

At 9:30 we started down the canyon again, and soon came to the first rappel: a drop off a shelf of loose rock down into a big bowl. There was a group in front of us, so we waited for them to rappel down and pull their rope. It took a little while to send everyone down since it was the first rappel, but everyone did really well.

The rest of the canyon was filled with seven or eight rappels, all of them bolted, and many of them quite breathtaking (with beauty, not fear). The people ahead of us, a group doing an advanced canyoneering course, kindly let us pass, and we were making quick progress down the canyon since we had two ropes. On one of the last rappels, Channing got her long hair stuck in her ATC and had to chop off a big chunk. I was at the top, so I couldn't see what was going on. When I finally made it down, it looked like she had chopped off a small furry animal!

The rest of Birch was pretty uneventful, and we reached Orderville Canyon at about 12:30, so we had spent a little over three hours in the canyon. As we walked down Orderville, we passed the exit of Englestead and took a look up at where we might have been. I would have loved to do the entry rappel and seen the inside of Englestead, but I was pretty happy with Birch. It was a fun, beautiful canyon.

After a while we hit our first puddle in Orderville, and the water just kept getting deeper from there. There were a couple of swimmers and lots of beautiful slots. Tyler and Channing jumped down a small waterfall into one of the pools. We felt a couple of raindrops once, but there was no evidence of flooding at all.

As we neared the end of Orderville we were getting chilly (we didn't bring wetsuits), so we kept moving faster and faster. We stopped around 4:30 at the Orderville-Narrows confluence to talked to a couple of groups who had just come out of Imlay, but soon were on the move again to stay warm.

We reached the Temple of Sinawava around 5:30, and were back at the visitor center a little after 6:00. When we arrived, we discovered that our adventure would be extended a little longer, since the keys to the car we had left at the visitor center were locked in the car we had left at the trailhead. Ironically, I usually bring and extra key on trips like this, but I had forgotten this time—the only time so far that it would have come in handy.

Fortunately, I always bring my phone and wallet with me everywhere, so was able to call Zion Ponderosa (the ranch near the trailhead) and have them send a shuttle down to pick me up. $35 and a little over two hours later, I was back at the visitor center with Tyler's truck—and the keys to the other car.

We stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Springdale for some much-needed dinner and then headed back to Provo at around 10:30. I drove home, and I'm really glad that Tyler stayed up to talk to me—both because it helped keep me awake, and because we had a good conversation.

Despite a few (mis)adventures, I thought the trip went really well. I was really impressed with Cherise and Channing's cool in tough situations, and everyone else's calm reactions. No one got mad about the keys, and everything worked out just fine in the end. I couldn't have asked for better company, I got to know my friends better, and the unexpected events gave me some good stories to tell. Verdict: definitely worth it.


See also:

• Picture gallery
• Tyler's blog entry on the trip
  

Zion and Behunin Canyon

I went to Zion three weekends ago with a bunch of friends. Nic, who came along, wrote a blog entry on the trip.

San Rafael Swell and Buckley Mountain

I've had a couple recent outdoor adventures. I went camping with my family in the San Rafael Swell a couple of weeks ago and I had a blast. We hiked through some really cool canyons and had a fun time camping. If you're ever near Goblin Valley, definitely check out Crack Canyon. It's not as popular as Ding and Dang or Little Wildhorse, but the crack that it gets its name from is definitely worth hiking to. Crack Canyon can also be done in less time than the others I mentioned--a couple of hours should be enough. My sister's husband Evan wrote a blog post about our trip that goes into more detail.

Last Monday I made it to the top of Buckley Mountain with my friend John. We had both tried multiple times before to summit it without success, but we finally made it last week. The route we took was really cool: we went up Little Rock Canyon (near north Springville) and then followed a drainage up to the summits (Buckley has two). If you're ever looking for a great scenic hike to go on, think about Little Rock Canyon. It has huge towering cliffs, fun (but easy) rock scrambles, and a surprisingly decent trail for a canyon that supposedly doesn't have a trail. It's beautiful.

• San Rafael Swell pictures:
• Crack Canyon
• Ding and Dang Canyons
• Goblin Valley
• Horseshoe Canyon
  
• Traveling and camping (the random pictures that didn't fit anywhere else)
  
• Buckley Mountain pictures
  

Outdoor goals for 2008

I posted a list of places I want to go hiking, climbing, mountaineering, and canyoneering this year on my SummitPost profile. If you want to join me on any of them, let me know.

Canyoneering in the San Rafael Swell

After a break last week for General Conference, I resumed my weekly adventures this week with a trip to the San Rafael Swell. I'm in a canyoneering class at BYU, and we had a field trip to south central Utah on Thursday and Friday to do a couple of canyons. We left Thursday morning, did Ding and Dang Canyons, visited Goblin Valley State Park, and camped in the desert that night. On Friday we woke up early and did Baptist Draw/Chute Canyon and then spent the rest of the afternoon driving back to Provo.

Southern Utah is a unique place: it's a dry, barren desert, but the scenery is incredible. The canyons that we went through are red rock sandstone that has been eroded over the centuries by occasional flash floods. The water carves out holes in the canyons that sometimes fill with water. If they're in a narrow section, there's often no way to get past them other than wading or swimming through them. The rest of the time in the canyon is spent hiking, climbing, or rappelling.

We left Provo around 9:30a.m. on Thursday and arrived at the trailhead (if you can call it that) to Ding and Dang Canyons a little after 1p.m. After eating lunch and getting our things together, we set off toward the canyon around 1:40. We spent about 25 minutes on a sunny, flat trail that follows some sandstone cliffs to the mouth of Ding Canyon. Ding Canyon is a beautiful, fairly easy hike. We passed one pool of water, but the canyon was almost completely dry. After about 40 minutes of hiking we reached the top of the canyon and hiked for 15 minutes over to the top of Dang Canyon to start back on our loop. The second canyon was a little more challenging, requiring bridging over a couple sections and a bit of pretty easy downclimbing. There were no rappels, and we stayed out of the water the whole time. We exited the canyon around 3:50 and completed our loop back to the van around 4:30.

We stopped by Goblin Valley State Park as we were leaving the canyons. The park is filled with hundreds of strangely-shaped eroded sandstone pillars. You can go hike down among them and even climb on them. The park was absolutely amazing. Our professor, Brian Hill, said that it's a great place to play hide and seek at night. It would almost be worth going back just for that. :)

On Thursday night we drove to where we would start our hike to Baptist Draw the next morning. We left the freeway and traveled down increasingly smaller and bumpier dirt roads until we reached a "cowboy camp" out in the middle of the desert. After cooking dinner (spaghetti and bread on a stick), we sat around the campfire and talked. We all went to bed around 9pm and got a good night's sleep.

Brian woke us up the next morning with a rousing rendition of the Cougar Fight Song, and we arose to an amazing flaming pink-and-blue sky. After a quick breakfast (breakfast burritos) and cleaning up camp, we headed off toward Baptist Draw. We left camp around 8:40 and hiked a little over two miles to our entrance point, entering the canyon around 9:30.

There were three easy rappels in the canyon (the longest about 80 feet) and several pools of muddy water that we had to wade through. The pools became progressively deeper as we went through the canyon. It almost would have been better if the deepest pool was first so that we could just get getting wet over with at the beginning and not have to worry about trying to stay dry. After we neared the end of a section of pools we thought that the canyon would be dry for the rest of the way. It was for a little while, but then we came to a filthy, smelly pool with wood and juniper berries floating in it that was worse than any that we had been through before.

We descended a hand line down one section and then stemmed across a pool. Brian slipped on a muddy spot of rock there and ended up falling into the water up to his neck. Later, when we came to the last big pool, he assumed that it would be a waist-deep wade like the others. As he waded further in, the water rose past his legs, past his waist, and up to his chest. It was too late to put on his wetsuit, so he just swam to the other end. He shivered for the next hour while the rest of us put on our wetsuits and swam across.

I had a great time on the field trip, and I'm sure I'll be back to do another canyon soon.

I took my GPS along on the trip and recorded our route. You can view our tracks through the canyons in Google Earth.

Pictures:

• Ding and Dang Canyons
• Goblin Valley State Park
• Baptist Draw and Chute Canyon
  

Canyoneering in Echo Canyon

[If you don't want to read my novel below, you can skip straight to the pictures.]

When I went hiking with John last week, he told me that one of his friends was going down to Zion National Park to go canyoneering this weekend and asked if I'd be interested in going. I told him I was, and so this weekend I went down to Zion with Art (John's friend) and Adam (a guy in Art's ward). Art has been to Zion tons of times, and was our guide. Adam has been down a couple of times. This was my first visit to Zion since a family vacation when I was about ten years old. I definitely got a bigger dose of adventure this time around.

We drove down to Zion on Friday night and arrived at a BLM campground a few miles outside of the park a little after midnight. We pulled up, threw our sleeping bags down on the sand, and went to sleep under the stars. The stars were pretty amazing out there. The sky was clear and dark, and I could see way more stars than I have for quite a while. The Milky Way was particularly impressive.

We woke up at 5:30 a.m. the next morning, quickly packed up, and hurried to the park to make it in before 6 a.m. since there's an entrance fee if you enter after then. We were the first people to the permit window, so we hung out until the rangers opened the window at 7 a.m. We wanted to go to Mystery Canyon, but all of the permits had already been issued the day before. We had a reservation for Echo Canyon, so we just picked up our permits, grabbed our gear, and hopped on the shuttle to the trailhead.

We left the trailhead around 8 a.m. The route began with a hike of a little over 1000 vertical feet up to the canyon entrance. We had great views of the sun rising and casting beautiful colors on the sandstone as we hiked. We entered the canyon not too long after 9 a.m.

Canyoneering is a technical descent through a canyon, and our first technical section came up pretty quickly when we rappelled down ten or fifteen feet off a dead tree. Some of our rappel anchors were definitely more sketchy than I would have rock climbed from, but since the rappels were pretty short, I didn't worry too much.

We alternated between hiking, downclimbing, wading, swimming, and rappelling as we made our way further down the canyon. There was no water flowing through the canyon, but we had to pass through several pools of stagnant water left over from the last They were really murky, with lots of debris floating in them. The smelly methane bubbles that floated to the surface when we moved through the water were a pretty good indication that things were decomposing down there. Most of the pools were shallow enough for us to wade through, but we had to swim ten feet or so through some of them. We just walked right into some of the pools, but others were at the bottom of a rappel.

After the first swim, I started getting pretty cold. Even though the weather forecast said it was supposed to be 92 degrees, we were deep in a canyon where the sun rarely shines, and it was pretty cold. My whole body was shivering, and I couldn't talk very well because my teeth were chattering, but I warmed up pretty quickly when we got back into the sun.

As we neared one place, Art noticed some bird droppings on the canyon floor and looked up to discover a pair of roosting owls perched on a tree above us. I snapped a picture of them.

The canyon became deeper and darker as we moved further into it. As we neared the end, we reached a the section that probably gave the canyon its name. There was an amazing echo, and we amused ourselves by yelling, singing, and making weird noises.

We exited the canyon and followed the same trail that we took up back down to the trailhead. We decided to go a little further into the park and hike a little way up the Narrows to Mystery Falls. We were hurrying so that we could get back to Provo in time for a ward activity that Art and Adam had, so we zoomed up the river, saw Mystery Falls, zoomed back down, and hopped on the shuttle.

It's been over a decade since I went to Zion, but my next trip won't be that far off. I'm taking a canyoneering class at BYU this semester, so I'm sure I'll be back down there soon.