I Might Break a Nail

I saw this little bowl across from Keyhole Canyon, so I actually convinced my fiancé to come with me on a little hike. We only had a short time as usual, since this wedding was taking much of our backcountry time to instead travel down to St. George and browse for such important items as candy jars. I got her away from the wedding for a few minutes with the excuse that she could work on her tan on the east side. The bowl ended up being not too difficult to navigate and we got ourselves back to a nice large wide open area. We found some nice slickrock to scramble up, but when it got really steep Jacqueline backed out because, “she might break a nail.” I made sure to give her lots of grief about that one, but to her defense she never acts like that and the only reason that she said that is because we only had two weeks until the wedding and according to her she never has nice nails. I am so glad that we as guys do not have to worry about such stuff. We debated whether to continue after the big beautiful sandstone scramble, but decided to come back on another day as Jacqueline had twenty other different activities she had to engage in before our big week came.

East Side Arch

Right near the tunnel is an arch, but I did not know that. I just saw this slickrock section to the right of Upper Pine Creek and I thought that it might be fun to explore. I was shocked to find that a few minutes into my hike that there was an arch just up the slickrock slope. I naturally had to go check it out. It was not too huge in terms of arches, but it was still pretty neat. There was a little slot right behind it which I made sure to check out. I continued up the hill past the arch. There was a canyon that I thought might be interesting. It was really flat and open for quite some time. Then it started to narrow up and get steep. I explored up the canyon until I felt that the canyon was getting too treacherous. I looked around and there were places to both the right and to the left that one may be able to use to access the East Rim if you just went that way instead of trying to stay in the canyon bottom. I went back down and went all the way down the canyon to where it poured off into Pine Creek. This was the spot that back in February, Jacqueline and I got to see those incredible waterfalls. There was still a bit of water left in a big stinky pothole, but other than that, this canyon was bare dry. I climbed back up and over the semi-steep slickrock section, went past the arch, and back to my truck. I would definitely go back to this place again as there is so much to explore that I just did not even get to.

Another Long Day in Behunin

When I saw Behunin on the schedule, I cringed after the long expedition we had there last time. When I checked the permit list in the morning, I realized that my fears were going to be realized. We had a full canyon on our hands and the group we were going with was none too small. Five people for us was going to be a large contingent of park people to descend. We had both Petes, myself and Sawtell. We had Ray, the boss, and Cheryl from resources. Also with us was Rob who is the new librarian in Springdale. This group was a fun group to go canyoneering with and we seemed to make good time trudging up the steep West Rim trail to access Behunin Canyon. Our hope was that we may beat all the rest of the groups to the first rappel. That did not happen and in fact, they had too many group members. Later the other Pete dealt with that. We ate our lunch before starting the series of rappels to gain the canyon floor as we knew it was going to be a slow process. We rapped and waited. Rapped and waited the rest of the way down. We were lucky enough to get in the canyon when we did as there were a couple of groups behind us. One group became impatient with all the waiting taking place and decided to go ahead and bypass the rappel and try to downclimb a steep section. While it looked do-able from above, about halfway through they got into trouble. They tried tossing their packs to make it easier. One stopped, the other didn’t and it went rumbling, tumbling down before it went into free fall for 300 feet. The folks below us let out a loud cry of anger as that was dangerous for them. Ray shouted to our group of geniuses, “What’s your plan?” They were going to have to go with the group behind them because one of their ropes and harnesses was in that backpack. It is a shock that a larger number of people are not hurt or killed with all the unsafe behavior we see take place in slot canyons. Especially as this sport becomes more popular and people with less and less experience are leading trips. On this day, Ray was the most experienced, but he sat back and let Pete and I do all the work. It was nice because we were both experienced enough to do a fine job of it. We lumbered along through the canyon doing rappel after rappel, never having to even get our feet wet. When we got to the 2nd to last rappel we did some more waiting until finally we got to wait on the last rappel. We were lucky enough to get down before it got dark, but the three groups behind us were still rappelling when we were at the shuttle stop at the lodge. I enjoyed the last rappel because our ropes were so stiff that it went very slow. I have felt near out of control on long free hanging rappels, so this was good. I enjoyed the canyon, even though it was a long day, and it just further cemented in my mind that I have gotten pretty good at this stuff.

Icebox

Wow, a brand new canyon on the schedule to descend. Brad and I were scheduled to do Icebox. It was quite amazing as usually we tend to go down some of the more used canyons. I would say max about a dozen parties a year go through Icebox. Rich, who works at Kolob was supposed to go with us, but he ended up having to work the desk. Brad and I instead went on the trip alone. We both read up on the route descriptions so we knew we were supposed to start on the La Verkin Creek trail. We hit the drainage and started to go up. We stuck to the drainage for about as long as we could and honestly, just that hike would have been worth it. We saw a skunk scampering through the bushes and were sure to steer clear of that guy. When we got to a big pour-off we went up and around to the right until we found a way to get onto the slope that lead to the drop into Icebox. I was a bit ahead of Brad when I came through the bushes to find another skunk. It was a steep, brushy area but this skunk started charging after me. There was nothing that could ruin a day of backcountry more than being sprayed by a skunk, so I went with a swift jog to get away from that thing. It led us to a more treacherous area to ascend, but eventually we gained the ridge again which we followed up in the hot sun. We were up high at the start of the canyon by 11am, which was looking good for our long day. Now we had our semi big wall descent to go through. Some of the bolts were seriously old school in this canyon with homemade hangers. That was what the first one looked like. We were going to use it until I went down a little ways and found the next one in an easy to get to place. That began our descent of rappelling very slowly because the wall was just steep enough to need a rope, but not steep enough to allow our ropes to fall smoothly down. It was okay to go slow because throughout the descent we had to look all around us for bolts and anchors. We took turns going down. Rich warned us that the last rappel was a big free hanging deal. It turned out to be just an easy walk down the wall. It took a little over two hours from the time we started to the time we hit canyon bottom on the series of rappels. It was neat for me because I had to clip in my daisy to be able to work on the wall before I took the rope from my ATC. The canyon was beautiful and it did not seem to have much ice in it at all. In fact, it did not have much water either. There was a slow stream of water percolating through the canyon bottom, but nothing too difficult and it did not even require a wetsuit. There were only three rappels once we were in the canyon and the only thing that was difficult about them was actually getting to them as they were poised out on some steep benches. We had to do just a small bit of swimming on the second rappel, but we stayed dry for much of the day. Right after the third and last rap in the canyon bottom, we were able to check out a huge pool that to me could even pass for a lake. It would be fun to wander up the canyon to swim there during the summer. After the technical section there was still some steep down climbing around the huge waterfalls. The waterfalls were mostly dry, but it might be rather neat to see them in the spring when this canyon is shedding its winter snow. We were back to the La Verkin Creek trail by 5pm and made it to the car a little after 7pm. We were happy to get out before dark even though it was a twelve hour day. I am not sure that it can be done too much more efficiently for a first trip through. We really had no hang-ups, at most we wasted about fifteen minutes trying to avoid a pool after the technical section. I had a great time and I only wished that Zion had more excellent canyons such as Icebox to descend.