Ticaboo Canyoneering - South Fork Ticaboo Mesa May 2 2020
Home confinement was driving me nuts. Doing a straightforward canyon with a small well-selected crew seemed like a reasonable and safe/conservative thing to do. No local contact required. Separate cooking and sleeping / social distancing. We chose a place to camp where we expected no one else to camp, even on a beautiful weekend as was finally coming up after a slow spring. In this case, we was Sara Morger, Melissa Webb and myself. Thanks for inviting me.
I had done the South Fork of Ticaboo Creek route several years ago with Ryan Cornia after a 10 hour drive from Mt Carmel on a HUUUGE thunderstorm day. Thus we got the canyon full of fresh water. We had a good day, but I was not particularly impressed by the canyon. Three hours of sleep the night before might have had something to do with that.
The weather was beautiful, we did the canyon, it was brilliant.
S Fork is an odd canyon. A couple big rappels, a chain of potholes, and arch or two. Not very Ticaboo-like, no skinny stuff
(click on the first photo to start the slideshow).
We fiddled all the anchors, though several were off webbing. And one sandtrap. Only Melissa brought a wetsuit, so she got to go first on most of the potholes. Even though it was hot out when in the sun, it would have been nice to have a wetsuit. Always helps to have one smart person in the group.
Most of the anchors, we replaced the webbing and re-rigged. Several were rigged somewhat oddly, worth replacing. And some were old and crunchy - mandatory replacement.
We rapped down a pothole or two, and came to a dry pothole where we could put in a SandTrap.
That completed the Pothole section. It sure seemed like after the swim, we went into the shade AND a 20 mph up-canyon wind took over… of course! We continued downcanyon.
The canyon opened up some, and then a rappel into a very dank and murky pool under an arch. The canyon opened out again. We scurried around a short messy drop and hiked for half an hour. another large drop appeared. We re-rigged it a little better, and rapped almost a full 200. Was that it?
This time, yes, that was it. We strolled downcanyon. It was hot. Took some sit-rests when shade was available. A full two hours, then a slow climb up the exit trail to cold beer and food. Nice. Nine hours at a casual pace.
The next day, Sara took us down to Lake Powell and showed us how to catch Sturgeon… but that’s another story.