Things I do at work

 It was a beautiful March day and I had the opportunity to be out in the field. So I decided to go up to Hidden Canyon and get rid of the graffiti that was out at a point that we use as a short haul site during SARs. There was a lot of graffiti, some of which that I have gotten rid of in the past. I spent quite a bit of time getting rid of what I could with a hammer and brush as this was the graffiti that was carved in. After a while, I realized that this stuff was of such a nature that it was not in a sensitive site that people were going to care about. So, I decided to turn upside down many of the rocks that were carved in.

 I did that with the ones that I could but the one big one took quite a bit of time. After about an hour of hammering on it, my hand was pretty sore. I was using a different technique with a hard rock that I had found in Clear Creek. This obviously left my hand feeling old manish and sore. But I got the job done and went down the trail to the junction and up to where the Observation Point trail met Echo Canyon. I climbed down into Echo Canyon only to see a family (Dad and three younger kids) trudging through the freezing cold water. The dad looked miserable as he carried his kids above the water. They were practicing some rappelling with some questionable knots. I sat down and had some lunch as they tried to go further up the canyon. They were turned back by the water rather quickly.

I came armed with a 7 mm wetsuit and that was definitely needed because around the first corner was a freezing cold pool of water. I scrambled up some obstacles including the log jam that eventually will make things challenging in that section of Echo. My purpose for this was to check on snow conditions to see if the canyon was supposed to be closed. I felt slightly uncomfortable being in there by myself because if anything happened to the snow bridges I was walking upon, it could be dangerous.

I found snow nearly immediately but then it cleared out again.
It took to where the canyon really narrowed down to where the snow got close to being impassible. Still I was able to walk up on top of it. This made me nervous and I did not even make it to the point that I knew was the pinch point where the snow piles up in 20-30 foot walls before I decided it might be a wise decision to turn around before I found myself on a snow bridge that would collapse.
 I talked to the family as I went out and they were surprised to hear about all the snow up there. It is hard for people to understand the different climates inside of a slot canyon when the temperatures outside reach 80 degrees. It looked like Echo would need to stay closed for at least another month.