Pine Creek

Brian was eager to do more canyons and our buddy Austin was up, so we figured that Pine Creek may be a good option since we all had to work. I was working at the tunnel and finishing work there, so it worked out perfectly to just do Pine Creek. Brian, Austin, and Amelia showed up a little after five and we got ourselves going by 5:30. The canyon was rather direct. No screwing around here. We were dropping in and heading through rappel after rappel almost immediately. The water was rather low, but there was still enough water at the Cathedral to swim just a bit. We did the canyon quickly, because we had to and we were able to. We still had to be cautious as many of the rappels were sandy from lack of measurable precipation in the last couple of days. The last rappel was the sweetest. It is a 100 foot mostly free rappel. I struggled with it because we were using Brian's sixty meter dynamic rope. It went incredibly slowly. There was a huge urge to take my right hand off the rope because it went so slow, but thankfully I did not. We finished with an hour hike out and made it before dark. Very nice to enjoy one of the longest days of the year getting paid in doing a canyon. I just had to figure out a way to do both of those at the same time.

Echo

It was a beautiful summer afternoon. Brian and I had been breaking off a canyon every weekend. This one should be no different. We got our gear together and headed on up the Observation Point trail. We were off to do Echo Canyon and we were without wetsuits. Some would call us crazy, but others would say go for it. And we did! We headed up that trail with a fixed purpose in mind. We found where we had to drop in to the canyon and in no time we were down. It seemed like a breeze and we were veterans by this time of the rap and swim joyful experience. The raps were all so small and easily managed. There were some awkward starts, but we figured them out quickly. We had one long swim around a corner from the drop-in point. Then after that there was the keeper. The only slight problem with the keeper is by that point I was freezing. Brian jumped into the hole without even a thought to his core temperature. Then he expected me to jump in along with him and just get him out. I was standing in the only sunny spot in the whole deep, dark beautiful canyon. He managed to do something amazing which I could not believe, even knowing Brian's ability. He was able to literally thread the needle by stemming the hole and hooking the rope through the rap ring. From there, it was easy enough to pull himself out of the hole. I was able to do the whole thing rather easily, especially after Brian already figured out the hardest problem for us. After that, it was just one rappel and smooth sailing. I could not believe the beauty of this true slot canyon. The most beautiful part is not the technical part, but instead the non-technical part. The cliffs were narrow, yet so dark. We sped through this part to and then popped out near the Observation Point trail. We did one extra section right under the trail, which was a mistake considering all the trash that was in there. We came out on the trail and headed down almost immediately. From shuttle bus to shuttle bus, it was a mere 3 hours. We felt like we were in top form, ready to tackle something big every weekend.