Seth and I have done Mystery Canyon at least a couple of times, so typically I would not blog about it because I have been there often enough. But this trip was a little different. The point of the trip was to do some monitoring on the slope into Mystery. After we got the measuring done, it was time to go through the canyon. We did the first few series of rappels without any issues moving through rappel after rappel in the narrowest of sections. Then we got to a rappel that was usually a short drop, but strange enough it had completely washed out. Now the anchor was well above our heads, but the rappel was not a rather simple down climb. We got to the nice open dry lake bed, well usually dry lake bed only to find this dry lake bed filled with murky water.
There had been quite a bit of precipitation lately and I guess those afternoon thunderstorms had flooded Mystery Canyon nice and full of rainwater. Now this usually dry sandy spot was now a large lake. We started out just wading and then realized that even that was not going to work. It became deeper and deeper until we were finally swimming. Not expecting that much water, I was dumb enough to leave my dry bag unsealed, so everything in my pack got soaked. Smooth move Drake.
After the lake, we climbed up the slightly less steep hill and then back down into the canyon. We saw a black widow and a lizard with a bug in it's mouth after that to mix things up a little bit. Just a few rappels later we were exiting into the Narrows. We were very happy to have something new on a canyon that we had done many times before.
Seth and I have done Mystery Canyon at least a couple of times, so typically I would not blog about it because I have been there often enough. But this trip was a little different. The point of the trip was to do some monitoring on the slope into Mystery. After we got the measuring done, it was time to go through the canyon. We did the first few series of rappels without any issues moving through rappel after rappel in the narrowest of sections. Then we got to a rappel that was usually a short drop, but strange enough it had completely washed out. Now the anchor was well above our heads, but the rappel was not a rather simple down climb. We got to the nice open dry lake bed, well usually dry lake bed only to find this dry lake bed filled with murky water.
After the lake, we climbed up the slightly less steep hill and then back down into the canyon. We saw a black widow and a lizard with a bug in it's mouth after that to mix things up a little bit. Just a few rappels later we were exiting into the Narrows. We were very happy to have something new on a canyon that we had done many times before. 
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