Getting my Jolleys

Anyone who has ever hiked the East Rim trail from the East Entrance has looked down on Jolley Gulch and thought, that is a long way down. (Here is a picture from January 2009)
 The truth is, they are right, but it doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be done. In fact, that was kind of the opinion about around Zion for years, that it just wasn't done. That is until late November of 2011 when we got a call for a SAR, then were called off of the SAR, then called back on due to a party that was going through Jolley Gulch from the Zion Ponderosa without a permit. When they were climbing out, one of the party slipped and bounced their way down the canyon. They were avoiding a rescue because they did not want to get cited for not having a permit and they were associated with a commercial business. But extremely bad injuries call for better decisions and we went out and pulled the woman out of the canyon. One hangup of the rescue was that nobody had ever been down the canyon before.
 We decided that this needed to be remedied. So Seth, Ian, and I decided on this fine May day, that Jolley Gulch was one more canyon that we needed to check off the list. The hike started from the East Entrance that was mostly nondescript except we did get to see a rattlesnake along the way. We got to the canyon and unfortunately there was a huge crowd waiting there having lunch. This seemed like the prime spot for lunch on this trail, so it was understandable. But they had to see us fumble around with our anchor placement decisions and then cheer us on as we began our descent.
 Ian went over first and the drop was about 180 feet, so it took some time. Seth and I followed and it was one of the neatest rappels in the park. Fluted sandstone with a nearly sheer vertical drop. It was slightly nerve racking doing a rappel I had not done before, but once I was over the lip, it was smooth sailing from there. I really enjoyed that rappel which brought us down to a slot canyon. There was an old tire in there, probably from the Zion Ponderosa. There was a bit of other trash to that we picked up. We had to slight mishaps as we had a tough pull with the rope, but finally were able to get it free with all three of us pulling on it. Also, I put my prussik down somewhere and then it took like 15 minutes to finally find it again.
 Then we did the next rappel and it got us to a little bit more slot canyon, then suddenly everything opened up and we were walking in what could be any canyon on the east side.
 It was a walkout from there, but still an enjoyable canyon. We even found a campfire, most likely from our group of hurt people in November. We dispersed it and made our way back to the East Rim trail. I was glad to cross Jolley Gulch off the list, though I am not sure if unless it was entirely necessary, I would go back.