The Icebowl

It had been a perilous spring and summer in Echo Canyon. I was lucky enough to go on a rescue there in the spring when we pulled someone out with walls of ice and snow twenty-five feet high. We had another rescue there a couple weeks later. Brad and Tim made the journey up Echo Canyon only a week ago and they said the snow was still too high. I could not believe that in the blazing 100 degree plus summer of Zion that it would still be impossible to do the trip through Echo Canyon. Just to be safe, though, I brought an extra rope and rigged a line where the first rescue that I was on took place. I figured that if someone could make it there in May, that we would be able to make it to that point by June. So we rigged that up and then went canyoneering. This was the first time that I actually entered Echo Canyon from the correct route. It was so much easier to walk into the lower portion of the canyon, then to rappel in from some random spot. The pools up top were in normal condition. We had one swim that was not too cold and a couple of wades after the short rappels. It did not take us too long as Tim and Matt were with me and both of them had experience enough to rig each rappel and go down. Tim even negotiated the “pothole” without difficulty on his own. We were done with the rappelling and now I wanted to see what this snow was all about. We came to where our rope was and unfortunately I misjudged the distance and it was hanging about eight feet off the deck. We could have rigged something up and got to it if necessary, but I was hoping that we would not have to. We got to where the snow was and as we figured there was not too much left. The rest of the canyon below us was so incredibly sweet. There was pristine pools of icy, clear water to wade through. It was non-technical, but very fun. With all the water through the obstacles of the lower section, this actually turned out to be one of my favorite days canyoneering so far. It only took us a couple of hours and we were out. We had to run up the hill and retrieve our rope, but it turned out to be a great day canyoneering.