Kolob Creek

All these years at Zion and I had never been through Kolob Creek. Well, that was going to change. Derrick and I were scheduled to go through it and sure enough when the time came, we had favorable weather and a low discharge from the reservoir. I was excited. There is something about Kolob Creek that makes you a bit nervous because of the notorious accident that happened there years ago, but conditions were nowhere near that now. Derrick and I were going to do it as an overnight rather than hike out the MIA route. It sounded more fun to me that way. We got a good start in the morning with a drop off at Lava Point.
From there we had to bushwhack our way through the woods until we were able to track down the first rappel. It was from a tree and the canyon really looked beautiful below with kind of a green garden like setting with a low flow of water. It was a moderately long first rappel and then we pulled our rope and had completed Kolob Creek. Now the only job left was to do the rest of the canyon. It went pretty quickly. There were a series of shorter than longer raps through pools of water that needed quite a few floating disconnects.
Then we climb out and do it again. This canyon is magical. It quickly became one of my favorite canyoneering canyons in Zion. There were waterfalls, swimming, rappelling, and stunning beauty. We finished it up with a really long last rappel. This was all just so incredible and I think even Derrick who hated water was enjoying it. Once we had done the last rappel, the journey still continued. I was a little frustrated because my camera LCD screen was no longer working but I was still able to take some pictures.
 There were waterfalls coming in from the side and even though it was no longer technical, there were still beautiful narrows all the way through the canyon. Derrick and I followed this thing downstream with just the longest stretch of narrow canyon that I have seen.
There were a few more water features with short drops that we had to navigate. We were a little too lazy to put our wetsuits fully back on, so we toughed it out as we climbed down these shorter drops and swam through the pools.
Two really interesting things that happened. First, we were following along the water when all of a sudden, gone. The water literally went straight into the ground. Seriously, around one corner we were over waist deep in the water. The next corner it went subterranean and the rest of the way through the canyon was dry. The other really odd thing was there was an incredibly fine dust coating the canyon for about a mile.
This dust must have come from a truly massive rock fall but the source of it was unknown. It was awesome to see two things in nature that I had never seen before. Derrick and I found a good spot to throw down a sleeping pad for the night and had a decent meal and a good rest. In the morning, we followed the canyon out until we reached the Narrows.
 I was incredibly impressed by just how long this canyon ended up being with so much Narrows. I immediately wanted to go back to spend more time in there. True wilderness and just stunning beauty in a way that you can not take a picture of to capture. We hiked out the Narrows with the throngs of other humans but we really enjoyed that two day trip.