Telephone Canyon

Another patrol day, another canyon. The difference being on this trip was that it got to be a new canyon for me. Actually it was a new canyon for everyone on this trip. Telephone Canyon burned last year in the fires, so Brad, Matt, and I were sent through to check conditions. The condition of the West Rim trail was hot. It is over a five mile hike and about 2500 ft of elevation gain to just get to the beginning of Telephone Canyon. It was past noon by the time that we got there. When we arrived, we got to see that the anchors were crappy. There was a charred stump with some webbing around it, but that thing looked like crap. Then there was another tree to the right with some webbing around it. We debated about another tree to the left, but since we were unsure of the fall line as it would lead us over the whole abyss, we decided against using it. It was quite a bit of time for a short rappel as this first one only had to be about twenty feet. So we did some different things by sending Matt down first backed up by belay on the stump. Then we set up a guided rappel for Brad and I. I was not impressed as I ended up cutting open my knee by being pulled into the rock. We made it to the second rappel which was something like 120ft. It was an awkward start and even went free for some time. We made it down and made sure to look around the corner. The rest of the canyon was spent just walking a few feet and finding the next anchor where we would drop down again. The canyon loses 900 ft. in under 1/4 of a mile. The anchors were in sort of good shape. We replaced a lot of webbing and used every single quick link we had with us. I had a great time in this canyon as it was still worth seeing. I couldn't believe how narrow it was in places and I am sure this would be the last place I would want to be in a flash flood. I enjoyed looking back up to where I just came from and wondering how I could have done that. Time flew in there as each rappel took some route description reading, some edge peering, and for the first person to look around the corner to see where the next anchor could be. But sooner or later we were at the last rappel. This one was interesting as there must have been a block of sandstone of some sort that was taken away by a flash flood as the anchor was fifteen feet above our head. Matt belayed Brad as Brad hung perilously over the edge to get another piece of webbing through the anchor. I tied up the webbing which extended the anchor to where we could work with it. After that, it ended up being the easiest rappel of the day. We popped out of the canyon after this, but still had a long walk down to the trailhead. The total time at work on this day was 13 hours which included packing up and cleaning the ropes. Still, that canyon took some time as it was not just one of those canyons that you toss your rope and go. There was far too much to analyze and make the right decisions. I had that rush that you get when you walk out alive after it is all done and another canyon completed in Zion.

Orderville x 2

Jacqueline's friend from back home in Michigan, Dan, came up to the park from Las Vegas where he was with some co-workers testing cars. He brought a few friends up to Zion to hike and enjoy the park. They wanted to hike the Narrows, so we did not disagree. It was enjoyable to spend the day on a relaxing hike through the water. We took our time and turned up Orderville when we got the chance. We went all the way to the waterfall, had lunch, and even ran into the Superintendent of the Park. It was a fun day and all the guys were happy with the hike. Jacqueline and I had a very fun time hanging out with these guys as they were in good spirits the whole day. When time came for me to work again, there was some suspicious groups going through Orderville, so I decided to take a trip through there. Seth and Tim came with me even though I believe it was both of their day's off. It was an uneventful day and we did not even run into our suspicious groups going through the canyon. Just a long hike with two short rappels. The two of them had a good time because this was their first trip through. There was quite a bit of water toward the end where we had to swim a few times, but other than that it was really just another fun hiking day that I got paid for.

Langston

Tim had the day off, but he still wanted to go do something fun. I had a trip that I wanted to do for a while to check on a few things up in Langston Canyon for work. So I got to take a work day and travel up a rarely visited canyon in Zion. The trip started early at the Hop Valley Trailhead. I actually had to do some work as there were some illegal campers about twenty minutes in. We dealt with that issue and continued our trip running into a few legal backpackers along the way. Hop Valley was looking good as the cows just returned a week earlier.

 It looked like what I hoped it would look like someday if we ever could get the cows out of there. We got a bit confused about which drainage was ours because we figured that it would be obvious. It wasn't so we went all the way up to the campsites and back. We were confused because we did not think it was going to be such a steep climb. It was, but we handled it rather easily. Just a lot of boulder hopping and a few steep slopes to climb up. It stayed rather narrow for some time. We finally hit a point where it seemed to be the point to pop on out. So that is what we did and found so much of a different world.
It was reminiscent of the east side with slick rock and manzanita everywhere. We tried to fight the thick vegetation for some time, but finally we gave in and went into the drainage. It was much easier. Our goal was to reach the summit of Langston Mountain.
 It looked like quite a task as two different drainages lead to the top. We took the one most north and turned out to be a right choice. We had to negotiate obstacles up the whole thing, but it was not exactly life risking kind of scrambling. Soon we were popping up on the saddle to the summit. From here we saw an awesome view of the Kolob Arch. It really helps you to appreciate just how massive that arch is. We did the push up to the summit and topped out at 1:00 pm. It was nice to get a summit as peaks in Zion are tough to come by usually. We did a bit of work up on top and were dropping down by 2:30pm.
We stayed in the drainage as much as possible on the way down to keep away from the brush. This worked out for almost the whole way. We were able to negotiate all the downclimbs for the most part and it shot us out at the more open flat section. We continued to follow the drainage even though this was not the way that we came. Soon the canyon became more and more narrow. I made sure to tell Tim not to do anything that we could not get back up. Luckily, nothing appeared, but we ended up running into the beginning of a very narrow section of the canyon. Tim and I looked at each other and thought what if? It looked like about a ninety foot drop to start out and then a bunch of question marks. A first descent is still out there in Zion for someone as there were no old anchors anywhere to be found. On this day, though, we turned around and went back to where we knew we could get back down. It went much faster this time around and we shot out in Hop Valley. From there it was a slow climb back up to where the car was parked. Tim is a crazy man when it comes to hiking, so he was wearing me out. Actually, the 100 degree sun was doing the best time of that as each of us drank a gallon and a half of water on this day. Finally we made the climb and were back at the vehicle at 6:45pm. Long day, but we covered a lot of ground. I was excited to see that part of the backcountry in Zion.

No Signal

Well I tried once again to climb Signal Peak and once again I was left empty. This time, at least, I was able to find the trail. I went with Eric and he had been up to the pass before, so it was much easier to route find. The trail was actuallly in much better shape than most trails in the Pine Valley Mountains usually are. For those of you who don't know, Signal Peak is the highest mountain in Pine Valley which I can see from our house in Toquerville. The trip was difficult, I will not lie. In only a couple of miles, we gained 3700 feet in elevation. It was interesting as we got a late start around 11am and it was so dang hot down low. I was wanting a shorter day, but this hike was rather committing. We plugged along and it got cooler with each couple thousand feet. After what seemed like a long time, we made it to the pass. We were not too shocked, but still a little amazed, by the amount of snow that we were going to encounter up there. It had been a wet year, but still it was 100 plus down below and now we were going to be postholing for the next few hours. We tried to pick out the trail and did a surprisingly successful job of it even with all the snow. We hit the junction that would take us to the summit trail and turned onto that. We got sick of trying to follow the trail and instead just went for the bare ground that we could find. As we went up the hill, we came upon a meadow which I believe was named Further Water. From there we saw a peak that we thought was Signal Peak. So we trudged our way up through the snow. When we got to the top, we realized that instead, it was another minor peak. Taking a look at our watches and checking our moods we decided to not put the effort in to go to the top. We left it for another day and headed back. On the way back, I tried a different route to miss the snow and got myself turned all around. Luckily, Eric had his wits about him and directed us back to the trail. We felt the day go from spring to mid-summer as we dropped into the desert and back out of the mountains. My only wish would be that they would spend more time on these Pine Valley trails as we still had to fight brush in places. It could be a nice mountain retreat if there were more places to access it. Still a good hike for "short day".

No Mystery Here

I was scheduled for one of Zion's most popular canyons, strangely called Mystery Canyon. I got to go through it with Craig and Kaitlyn. We were lucky enough to get a ride up to the East Mesa Trailhead. I was very happy to not have to do the brutal hike from Weeping Rock. We got to the drop-in point and started the slide on down. Mystery has a very eroded slope. Craig and I were moving, but Kaitlyn was not a big fan. It is a big pain in the butt, so I didn't blame her. Finally we got down to where we started rappelling and it was just one after another for quite some time until we made it around the corner. This is where Mystery turns from an North-South canyon to an East-West Canyon. There were a lot more rappels than I remember. Excellent narrows, but totally dry. We arrived quickly to the big drop. Craig went first and I was happy to let him put on the prusik. I took all the glory shots from the top and went last. This one felt shorter than the first time that I did it. I also felt much more comfortable on the top walking around. We did one more rappel after that which was awkward and I banged my knee on the rock as both Craig and I went nearly upside down. Kaitlyn did an excellent job with it though and I want to believe it is because of my excellent tutelage the day before in Keyhole. (Yeah, right) Then we got to do the last one into the Narrows through the waterfall. Craig got all the cheers as he went first. I got all the blausee people who were like, seen that before by the time I got down there. We finished it off with a hike on the Riverside Walk where there just happened to be a rattlesnake with a whole crowd of naive tourists around it. I told them it could jump the length of its body, so they better back away. Honestly, sometimes, I think people believe the Riverside Walk is a petting zoo, the aggressive squirrels being an example of that. All in all, a good day in a highly used canyon in Zion. We were done when we needed to be and off work at the right time, which is rare some days.

Wheeler Peak

We set out on an expedition to summit Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park. Usually, this peak has an easy trail, but it was early in the season, so more than likely, that trail would not be much. It was a short three hour drive to the visitor center where we talked to the interp ranger who warned us about the possibility of postholing on Wheeler Peak. Did not sound too dangerous, so we continued up to Wheeler Peak Campground. We found the campground mostly deserted. It was probably because all of the sites still had snow in them. We did not care considering that we would be sleeping in the back of the truck. I was feeling the altitude, so we decided to head back down the hill and hike the Osceola Ditch Trail. Jacqueline was a bit worried about her toes as they were still having issues from the Barracks trip. They seemed fine, though, and the hike was gone. I felt a little loopy the whole time as this trail was still at 8500 feet, though lower than where we were camping at 9600. The trail was an old ditch used for hydrolic mining. I like this former use a bit better. It was predominatly flat and we had ourselves a good stroll. It runs into the Strawberry Creek road, but we turned around within a half mile of the road as dinner was calling. We spent the evening chilling out, enjoying the cold weather before it disappeared. Unfortunately, we did not have the campground to ourselves by the end as a Cruise America pulled up right beside us. They were quiet, though, as they built a campfire and kept to themselves. We were in bed early, happy to get some rest. We awoke bright and early. I got Jacqueline out of bed and we were off in quicker time than normal. We were moving on the trail by 7:45am. We were making good progress until we hit the snow above Stella Lake. This was the most snowy part of the whole trip as the forested area helped keep a lot of the snow. We were in and out of snow all the way until we were above treeline on the ridge. We tried to find the trail when it was prudent, but most of the time we stuck to the rocks. Above treeline, we were able to make some good ground for quite some time. The ridge was not incredibly steep for some time and we seemed to be flying. I was excited about the time we were making. Then we hit the steeper part of the ridge and we started to slow down. Jacqueline had to throw on her snowshoes once for traction purposes, while I just used my new La Sportiva boots and my good friend Sharad, the ice axe. We continued on up and we were still making good time when we hit the section that I looked at from below and was afraid of. The trail traversed a steep, snowy area that crossed above a huge drop. I did not think much about it and just blazed on through. My voice of reason from behind stopped me saying that she did not want to go any further. I could see the wind shelters built on the summit and this could not happen. We could not get stopped so close to the top. I coaxed Jacqueline back to the ridge where her shaky legs could sit down and be secure. I contemplated our options and looked up the ridge to see a steep, but snow free ridge. I thought I could probably make it to the top. So I dropped the pack and scrambled on up. The going was a little difficult at first, then it got easier. Suddenly I popped out on the summit and had the whole world beneath me it seemed. I signed my name in the summit register and continued on down to where Jacqueline was chilling. When I got to her, she was set to go down. Luckily, I have been honest with her before about the difficulty of scrambling adventures. So when I told her it was easy, she believed me and suddenly swayed to go up. She made it no problem and while I told her to follow me and that there were cornices on top, I turned around to see Jacqueline taking one step into a cornice on the summit. I yelled at her just in the nick of time. She stopped and luckily did not finish that step. Jacqueline skis quite a bit, but I guess you only get experience with cornices when you go places others don't in the snow. We safely traversed over to the summit proper and enjoyed our victory. We continued on down and it took no time. In just over an hour, we were chilling at the lake. Stella Lake had the most amazing skipping rocks and I couldn't stop skipping rocks until I felt some sort of tingling sensation in my arm after the last throw. We found our way down to the campground where we spent the evening doing basically nothing. We hung out, played cards and looked forward to a brilliant night's sleep. It turned out to be hard for me to sleep as we got to witness the switch from winter to summer in the mountains. A warm wind came in, so strong that I worried about the safety of my vehicle around so many trees. Plus it was warm, a fifteen degree change from one night to the next. The wind was still roaring when we awoke in the morning. Good thing we did not plan to attempt the peak on this day as it probably would have been miserable. Good luck, good weather, and a couple in good shape helped us get a summit on another excellent Great Basin National Park trip.

Behunin

Well, I finally got to do Behunin and I got paid for it also. Brad, Pete Sawtell, and I were scheduled for it. It was a long, brutal hike uphill to the canyon's beginning near the West Rim. It was already close to noon when we arrived and dropped in the canyon. The beginning was a bushwhack and some nifty slickrock action. When we arrived at the first rappel, we saw that there were two other groups in front of us. One of them was Seth and Vid's group. The other was a group with eight people. Being that Behunin was a canyon with a six person limit, we had some law enforcing to do. We got two people in the group to turn around and also issued a citation. Luckily, we had Pete Sawtell with us to do the actual law enforcement. After that was all said and done, we got to ride the coattails of that group all day long. It seemed like a long day of sitting and waiting. We would do a huge rappel, then sit around and wait for the group to move in front of us. Brad told me before the trip that I was the trip leader, but when it came down to it, he tried eight different techniques for eight different rappels. I am a simple minded guy when it comes to rappels myself, so honestly I just let him take the lead. They were rather smooth rappels with no starts that were too difficult. The canyon narrowed for a short bit and it reminded me of Hidden Canyon, its neighbor to the northwest. It slotted up, but it was boxy. We ran into the other group again as we negotiated around the big pothole. The only problem we had was when Sawtell went into the big pothole, but he got himself out easy. He was doing better than I could have done on my first canyon. Time for the last rappel came very slowly as we spent quite a bit of time waiting. We finally got to do the big one; a 160 foot mostly free hanging rappel into the Emerald Pools drainage area. I got the privilege of going last and let me tell you, that one made me nervous. I tend to not even worry about the ground when I don't have to, but it sure seemed a long ways away. About halfway down, I saw some poison ivy, which was not very good to see. Near the bottom, it became tougher to control my speed. I had a tough time staying upright with the weight of my pack and the speed of a free hanging rappel. In the end, I managed it and the three of us made it out at 8pm. It was a long day, but a good one. It felt good to finally have finished many of the moderate Zion canyons. I feel good about my knowledge of the park and really have already accomplished more than I thought I would when I set foot in this park 2.5 years ago.

The Barracks

The hike started out early. Jacqueline and I were up by six, met Eric by seven, and were on the trail by eight. The trail started on a road. We could have driven a bit on it to cut off some of the hike, but once we realized it, it would have created more of a hike. So we walked down a sandy, dirt road that made us cross the East Fork of the Virgin River, better known as Pahrunaweap. The hike was called the Barracks named after a ranch that we would be travelling through on the road. The scenery was nice, but nothing spectacular until we got further into the hike. First the road left, then the canyon walls narrowed. Soon we were either walking directly in the creek or bushwhacking next to it. There were plenty of side trips to check out, but since we were on a time crunch for this day, we left them for a different journey. And really for most of the day, nothing exciting happened. Eric, Jacqueline, and I walked down the river, took pictures, waded in, played in the water, and had a good time. Then something all of a sudden changed when Jacqueline got in some poison ivy. We got her out of it without any damage being done, but she was still worried about it. When Jacqueline gets worried, I worry about her and thus my head was not focused on the hike. Then she started to feel sick, the walls were very narrow, and then we ran directly into a logjam waterfall. Having visited the lower Barracks before through Fat Man's Misery, I assumed that this was the same logjam waterfall that I saw previously. It did not look familiar, but I figured landscapes could change with the years. We turned around because we saw an exit route not too far back. We figured this was our route out to Checkerboard Mesa. It was going to be our route, but it was not the correct route. I was carrying Jacqueline's pack up the steep hill because she was feeling sick. Thus with two packs instead of one, I was huffing and puffing up this hill. Eric was leading the way and picking the most natural route up the slick rock. We kept going and Jacqueline was the first one to get worried. She thought that we also should be worried because of the fact that there really should have been some sort of trail to follow, but truthfully we were setting out on our own. I gave Jacqueline back her pack and I started to take over this thing. I figured that the worst we could do was to get back late. Maybe we could find some other route to the road. There seemed to be a brutal route up some slickrock up and over a pass. We tried it and it failed. This got Eric a bit worked up and confirmed the fact that we had no idea where we were. That is a bit of an overexaggeration. The truth was that I knew where we were, but the rest of the party did not. I knew that we had to head west. The problem could be, cliff edges that kept us away from that. We had already crossed one series of canyons and now we were going to cross another. This one looked near impossible, but as we got closer, it got easier. Soon we were down in and with some sweet route finding we were back out. I was happy and I knew we could probably make it at this point. Jacqueline and Eric were still not convinced until we saw signs that other humans had been there. To make matters worse, Jacqueline's toes were getting very painful from her shoes shrinking in Pahrunaweap. Thus she was forced to walk in pain. We crossed canyon after canyon and climbed slickrock hill after slickrock hill until we made it to a pothole. We all filtered some water which quenched our strong thirst. We looked around the corner and there was a cairn. It lead us to the trail and by 9pm we were at the Checkerboard Mesa saddle. Jacqueline smashed her toes down the hill and we made it to the car by 9:30. After a long drive, we were home around eleven and bed was definitely the first option for Jacqueline and the second option after a shower for me. We had the opportunity on this day to become search and rescue victims. A combined sense of determination and backcountry experience helped us to overcome our erroneous decision. We were definitely beat after this trip, though, and it would take me a long time to get my strength back. It was definitely an adventure, which is something you can enjoy a lot more after it is over.