Mystery Solved

Having canyoneered with Brian for a while now, I was ready to go out with someone else as he was gone for the weekend. Vid and Julia had a trip going through Mystery Canyon and I asked if I could tag along. I am sure that Vid was not too excited about it since Julia was a brand new ranger and he and I had never been on a trip together. I was starting to get very confident, though, and was excited to try a new canyon. We got going late. We were supposed to start at eight, but the rangers had some paperwork to get done. We finally got going and it was a hot hike up to Observation Point. We were slowed down more by running into a family with a dog, which made the rangers have to do some rangering. To make matters worse, Julia was a rather slow hiker. When we finally got to the drop in point of the canyon, it was already pushing noon. The route in was very steep and broken up. It was slick in places, especially if we wanted to go faster. We were not going to because Julia was going slow and said she could not go any faster. By the time we got to the first rappel, which was a rather large one, it was already late in the day, around 2pm. Julia brought her gun and a sleeping bag, but neglected to bring an ATC. Vid gave her his and he spent the rest of the day rappelling on a brake rack. We pushed our way through with multiple rappels in a row. The order was me first, than Julia, with Vid last. This way Vid could always double check what was going on and I could give a bottom belay. The canyon was beautiful. The slotty sections were really neat and it was so lush. Vid and I started humming the Indiana Jones theme because of all the swinging off of ropes. We got to the slide which was super cool. Right in the middle of this big narrow canyon, there was a huge rockslide that dammed up the dry bed and we had to climb over it. After that, there were only a few more rappels. One of these was a really big one where we had to clip into a rope and traverse across a scary ledge. I still got to go first on this one and it was nerve racking to go off of a ledge without seeing the bottom. The rappel was easy once I got started and halfway down I landed on a big rock. From there, I kept going into a short pool where I got to be freezing cold and belay everyone else. Only thing left to do now was the rappel into the Narrows. I heard that you usually get a crowd of onlookers, but since it was now 7pm, that was not going to happen. We were cold and it was approaching dark. This rappel was monumental for me though, because 6 years earlier when Brian, Jessie, and I had hiked up the Narrows after our Keyhole trip, we saw some canyoneers coming out of Mystery. I remember looking up at them and saying no way would I ever do that. Now here I was being the first one down. I went through a waterfall and balanced myself against the slippery wall. Eventually I was standing in the rushing run-off that was the late spring Virgin River. I gave a bottom belay for Julia and then got to watch Vid come down. We popped out late that night and I was incredibly excited to spend the evening at Watchman 36 with my new girlfriend Jacqueline.

Fat Man's Misery

Brian Hays and I were off to our first slot canyon adventure in Zion National Park. We were going to descend Fat Man's Misery starting from Checkerboard Mesa. There is a canyon that goes right between Checkerboard and Crazy Quilt, so that was the route we would take. We got a good start around eight in the morning. I was a little tired from being up a little late. A girl I was very interested in, Jacqueline Winter, let me come over after she was done with her evening program and hang out. I just sat on her couch talking to her for over an hour. Brian and I had to debate my possibilities of dating her. A good sign was that when I was going over to her house, her ex-boyfriend was leaving because I was coming over. We had great conversation and I looked forward to seeing her again at the Cinco de Mayo party tonight. Enough of that, though as we were hacking our way through brush and up a narrow slot in the walls of Zion. Eventually it deposited us on the east side of the park. We followed the cairns until we got to a place that looked like we moved east from there. We knew that Misery Canyon was the fourth drainage over, so once we made it over to the fourth drainage we started to descend. The canyon immediately started to get narrow, but was not technical. We wanted to make sure to get through narrow sections as quickly as possible because the weather looked unstable. It was cloudy and in the mid sixties. There was no water in this first section of the canyon and no rappels either. I was nervous about the rappelling, but supposedly this canyon did not have very long rappels. After the canyon opened up for a while, we finally got to some rappels. One was off a tree that may have been unneccessary. We were excited to start rappelling though, so we did it anyway. It was so easy. The next one was off a log jam into the canyon. This one was a little more awkward, but we made it okay. After this, the canyon got super narrow and wet. We did a few more rappels, but the hard part was the swimming. We neglected to bring wetsuits because of all the hiking. This was a good idea until we were shivering looking at a downclimb into a bluish pool that looked very cold. When Brian stepped his feet in, though, he was shocked to find out the water was warm. That was when the smell of sulfur hit our noses and we realized we had hit a warm spring. This warm spring lead us to the exit of Misery Canyon. Technically it was not too difficult and the narrows were not too long, but it was still worth the trip. The exit of Misery was fantastic, though, because it dropped us into the Barracks. It looked so much like the Narrows, it was hard to believe. Parunaweap Canyon offered an amazing experience without one soul to share it with. Brian and I waded down canyon until we came to a waterfall. We assumed this must be Labyrinth Falls and the end of our trip. We ate our lunch there and then began the long hike out. Before we left the canyon, we looked hard for the John Wesley Powell plaque, but never found it. On this day, the hike out was not even that bad. I heard horror stories about it, but in sixty degree temperatures, it is just perfect. We were back to our car by 4:30pm with plenty of the night still left to enjoy. The Cinco de Mayo party turned out to be really fun with pinatas and even a beautiful lady to walk home. Jacqueline and I ended up hanging out pretty late, thus ruining Brian and my plans for a Spry Canyon trip the next day. But it was a start of what I hoped to be an incredible relationship.