Birch Hollow

Brad invited me to do a canyon with him, so we chose Birch Hollow. Birch Hollow is outside the park and it drains into Orderville. I was excited because I had been through neither Orderville or Birch Hollow. This would make it a fun trip for me. I met Brad at the dorms and Sharon drove us up to the trailhead. The first bit was rather brushy and just a hike until we came to the first rappel. It was a free hanging rap of about sixty feet or so. I went down first on my brand new rope. It went fast. I could smell my hands and the rope burning as I went down. Brad used the technique of putting his pack in-between his legs. I never used that one before, but I heard that it is helpful. We continued down the canyon. There were ten rappels in total. We did them pretty quick and the last five were really sweet. They were fluted rappels, which I would not know what that meant without seeing them. Basically the sandstone is fluted making for some interesting aspects to negotiate. The longest was near one hundred feet, but it was so straight forward it was not much of a big deal. Soon Brad was finishing the last rappel, and we were out of the canyon.
The adventure was not over with that, though. As soon as we were done with Birch Hollow, we finished through Orderville. There were two rappels in Orderville and we did the first one rather quickly after popping out of Birch Hollow. Then it was a long, dry hike until we made it to the spring to fill up some water. We ate some lunch, but the weather was not looking good. Orderville had some sweet narrows, but I did not stop to get any pictures because it started raining on us as soon as we left from lunch. The weather made it scary considering the fact that we were in a slot canyon. It also made things slippery and awkward, especially since Orderville has a series of 10-12 foot downclimbs. We hustled our way out and soon enough we were in the Narrows. We finished the last 2.5 miles to the shuttle bus as quick as possible also as the rain continued to fall. All and all, the canyon trip was great and Brad and I completed it in only 6 hours. That was rather quick and I would definitely be happy to do another canyon with Brad.