Two Subways and a Pine Creek

I hadn’t been in the Subway at all this year, which was shocking to Annette. So I ended up doing it twice within the span of a week. I went once with Seth and the next time with Matt. Seth and I set off the Personal Locator Beacon for a test, while Matt and I were just in there for the work of it. Seth and I had a smooth trip running into some people at first who were jumping the first rappel. When we told them that it was on their permit that they could not do that, they showed their attitudes by saying, well we’ll believe you because you have the badge. We had enough of them, so we flew past them. Matt and I had an even more exciting run in when we found a group of seventeen at the trailhead. Luckily, Pete Sawtell was giving us a ride, so he got to do all the rangering. Still, we were there for a whole hour arguing and one of the people called me an idiot. I am sorry, but if there is one rule I like especially well is our group size limits. If I am going into the backcountry, last thing I want to see is fifteen people tromping on the resource ahead of me. Matt and I did the trip quickly as some of that group was rather hostile. Just as a note, we were able to do the horrible hill climb out in under ten minutes, so anyone worrying about really should just suck it up for those ten to fifteen minutes of work. Within a couple days later, Seth, Tim and I went through Pine Creek. It was a really fun trip as these guys had enough experience to basically lead me through Pine Creek. It was very smelly, but still an enjoyable trip. After the last big free hanging rappel, I said to Seth, “it would just be crazy to see someone take that fall. I can’t even imagine it.” Unfortunately the next day, I did have to imagine it as that was the day that Kaitlyn took the fall. I am still amazed that she did not die or become paralyzed. Either way, it sent us into shock at work for a few weeks.

A Little Jaunt

We only had a short period of time with which we could hike, so we headed just up the road to the Pine Valley Mountains, accessing them from the town of New Harmony. We were the only car at the trailhead when we parked and with a small bit of difficulty, found the trail. It took us next to a fence at first, but soon we were in the lush green setting of the Pine Valley Mountains. The trail was good and not overgrown as you come to expect when entering that wilderness area. We were on the trail for a good bit of time before we finally lost it for the first time. When we backtracked we found where it was, but our day was short. The wedding planning and our upcoming move had us busy, not getting enough time in the outdoors. We turned around at the point where the trail seemed to switchback up into the mountains. It is always hard to turn around, but we were intending to have a short hike, so this is what we came for. On the way down, we found a local clearing out the trail so that he could bring his horse up the trail later. I was glad that someone was doing it because the Pine Valley Mountains have so many miles of trail that are just overgrown.

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.

The Fourth in the Narrows

I got to spend the fourth of July in the Narrows. I was not incredibly excited about it because I knew that there would be a lot of rangering to do since it was a holiday weekend. I got to spend the trip with Matt, which was good as it would not have been fun to spend the fourth of July alone. We ran into a rattler again on the walk out from Chamberlain’s Ranch. We were probably only about half an hour in when we stumbled upon it. Surprisingly, I actually spotted this one as it slithered right in front of us on the road. He seemed to not be too worried about us, so we continued on our way. I was right, there was a lot of rangering to do as there was a guy who left his group to hike out, not good. Then there was a big group of twenty somethings and someone was smoking. When we are under fire restrictions, that was no good. We found them at the waterfall, which I almost convinced Matt that we were going to have to rappel. This trip would be fun because we were going to stay the night in Deep Creek since we were doing Emergency Beacon Locator testing. Well, it just so happened that I screwed up the test because when I thought that the beacon was on, it was off. I figured it out when I tried to turn it off and I turned it on. So what ended up happening was I set the beacon off at a time when I was not supposed to. We were all stoked to explore Deep Creek in our free time, but since I screwed up the beacon testing I was in a pretty bad mood. I got burned out on it after about half an hour and Matt and I made it back to our campsite to spend the evening. I made fun of him for his MRE while I enjoyed my Deluxe Mac & Cheese. I was nice and shared a bit with him. I got to sleep that blissful backcountry sleep after I took a nice refreshing dip in Deep Creek to clean the day’s grime off. The Narrows is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, it is just hard when you have to pump yourself up when you wake up in the morning to deal with all the chaos that can go on. We ran into a group with an inner tube (bad). We had a group that had 10 people in one site (bad). And then we had a group of people who stayed in a site that was closed instead of their own site (bad). I just wish people could follow the rules to help keep our Park pristine and beautiful. The worst of the whole day was when we came to Campsite 12 and someone was kind enough to defecate in their boots and leave them in the campsite. I deferred to Matt and let him carry the stinky surprise out. We debated for a bit about continuing because it actually began to rain. It did not seem particularly strong though so we continued on down. We ran into a group of ladies a ways down who were staying in site 6 the night before. They were very nice and probably one of our only positive contacts we had in the backcountry section. Well, after that we were down to where more and more people were appearing. By the time we got down to below Orderville it was like a giant line. We did some graffiti removal, but Matt was hankering to get rid of those boots so we picked our way through rush hour traffic and made it to the Riverside Walk. It is hard to believe the amount of people on that trail, but most city sidewalks are not as busy as that trail is, especially on the fourth of July weekend. The last ranger business of the day was to escort a 12 year old boy back to the bus stop who decided that his dog should go on the trip with him in his backpack. Not happening, so I got to do the dirty work of saying no way. Well, back to the shuttles and Matt got to dispose of his boots. This was definitely one of those trips where you debate whether you enjoy mixing business with pleasure.