(All photos this Latest Rave: Roylnn Serati.)

A Night to Remember, Part I

It got narrow; really, really narrow.

I peered into the gloom and did not like what I saw, but my poor, tired brain had no idea what to make of it.

Ram asked – "How's it look?"

"Not good." I replied, "Let me go look a little closer."

I stepped high off the boulder into a kneebar, and frogged up 10 feet to where the canyon was 24 inches wide. I wormed my way forward to take a look at the next obstacle. The narrows themselves were bad enough – the canyon extended upward 80 or 100 feet, widening slightly, but with no obvious ledges or shelves to make for easier chimneying. The parallel walls meant that at any level, traversing would be tenuous and strenuous. I traversed to the edge of the first silo and looked down.

Interrupting the terrible parallelness of the slot, silos were the real problem. They are a pothole extended upward, a circular widening of the canyon. How wide? This first one was maybe 4 feet wide – narrow enough to bridge over – but dropped about 20 feet below me. There are two ways to deal with Silos – Plan A is to carefully stem over them, Plan B is to climb down into them, then UP the other side, if possible.

Looking into the silo was giving me vertigo. The upcanyon side of the slot overhung the silo, so I was looking straight down 20 feet to the rounded bottom, and I felt it was trying to suck me in. I hastily retreated. I considered climbing up another 10 feet and bridging across the silo, but my worn-out back muscles and the fall I had taken 20 minutes earlier in a previous silo, miraculously unscathed, had me spooked. I chimneyed and slid back to the entrance to the slot.

Ram looked at me expectantly. "And?"

"It's really narrow, and there's silos. I could probably get over the first one, but it just gets worse downcanyon."

He looked concerned, as in more concerned than he already was, what with Doug's sprained ankle, fifteen minutes of daylight left in an unknown canyon, and everyone cold and fatigued.

"Go take a look." I said.

They did. Ram, Roylnn and Doug placed their packs on the rock and climbed into the slot, climbing higher than I had. Roy and Doug, our best climbers, crossed the first silo and started to press onward. Doug went high, really high, and stretched across the second silo. Roy balked.

"This is NOT safe." She said.

Doug looked ahead. "The next one's worse". They came back.

We climbed back to a little wide spot in the canyon, about 30 feet upcanyon, and dropped our packs.

"Well, what are our options?" Ram tossed out.

We all looked at each other, fatigue dominating our faces. Usually such a request would generate animated discussion; now we were too tired to say anything. No option looked good.

"Maybe we can climb out here," I suggested, eyeing a slabby corner that looked just possible. "Give me a boost."

A knee and shoulder were offered to surmount the first five feet, to where some holds were available. A lower-angle section offered five feet of easy climbing, then it steepened up. I went up one move, then back down. Too steep for me! I worked my way back down, then slid to the ground. Roy gave it a try, getting quite a bit higher. Then Doug went up, and went way scary high, about 30 feet up, to the base of the "headwall", where it was obviously impossible.

Well, that wasn't going to work, maybe we should try the slot again? We ditched the packs, taking the rope and a few slings, and tried again, getting to about the same place. Not good. We returned to the opening. I climbed up the slab, and started trying to chip a hold out with my pocket knife, which was impressively ineffective. Doug and Roy headed back upcanyon with the rope, hoping to push past the "Tom-Fall" silo, but soon came back. It was getting dark, and a light rain had begun to fall.

---

I'd like to say the day had started out cheery and bright, but really, all the signs of an epic were there. This was our first day of a weeklong Glen Canyon boat trip, and we were anxious to get something in, rather than just set up camp, in this case only a half-hour from the marina. Our buddy with the boat was an hour late, as usual, and the weather was gray and threatening. Ram had a fork he wanted to check out – didn't look like much on the map - and the bottom, where the side canyon joins the main canyon, was visited on a previous trip and pretty cool. Might be good, likely to be mellow. A good one to go take a look at…

Hank had gotten only three hours sleep, so he stayed at camp and settled in. Phillip came along in the boat but, since it was raining lightly as we picked a place for the boat to land, was not psyched to join us and begged off. We hopped off the boat where the slickrock allowed access to the headland above and started hiking. A stiff wind and modest drizzle motivated us to hike fast. After an hour, the drizzle stopped and we arrived at the top of canyon. What a nice and modest canyon it was, up top, forming a big, shallow basin in the Navajo Sandstone. We dropped into the canyon and started down the slickrock, glad to be out in the wilds again, after a long winter in the city.

Ram leading the way, well above Lake Powell

Entering the maw of the canyon

Looking down into a narrow part of the upper canyon.

Tom assisting Ram down a short climb, upper canyon.

The canyon took its time getting going, and we walked around several short narrows sections, rather than change into our wetsuits and get wet. An hour of hiking, and the narrows started looking good. We found a place in the sun, had a little lunch, changed into our wetsuits, and drybagged the clothing we were wearing. Let The Fun Begin!

The first section looked good as Ram and Roy slid into a thigh-deep pothole. Doug was next and slid in, then stumbled. "Ouch, that hurt! Watch that spot there – hidden rock".

I appreciated the warning, and slid in carefully, a few feet further down. We climbed our way through a short, easy narrows section, Doug being careful with his right leg. After ten minutes, it was clear that Doug had really hurt himself, not something you could just walk off. The cold water probably helped, and the climbing sections were not too bad, but on just regular walking, Doug could not put much weight on his right ankle, and moved slowly.

One thing I can say – Doug is no whiner. He comes from a caving background, and with hindsight, I can see how, if you hurt yourself in a cave, you gotta just cowboy up and get yourself out of there. So he did. Cowboy up, I mean. Climbing back out the way we had come in was an option, but it seemed like it would take six hours to go back up and over, and down the other side to sit on the shore, waiting for our boatman to figure out where we were, right at dusk. It seemed wiser to keep descending this friendly-looking canyon and make it out to where we were expected, even if after dark. We split up the heaviest things in Doug's pack, and continued onward.

The canyon alternated easy, slickrock hiking with short narrows sections that were fun, a little bit physical and a little bit wet. It felt so good to be getting out again, flexing winter-stiffened muscles. We worked our way slowly downcanyon, Doug making the best time he could. One nice looking narrows, we hiked around and dropped our packs, and came back to help Doug around the narrows, then played through it without the packs on.

Our noonish start was not a good thing, and our pace was slow. It was getting on late-thirty and we were hoping the canyon would end soon, when it started getting harder. This was a good sign – indicating that we should be near the end, where we expected maybe a 100-foot rappel into the main fork. In the canyon, it is so hard to tell, you just peer ahead – does the canyon end there? We struggled through a section of narrows and pools that required climbing over a bunch of too-narrow slots, then sliding down the other side. The packs seemed heavy, and were beating us up, though we didn't really have that much gear. And we knew it was getting late. The good news is that in the technical sections, Doug was moving as well as anyone, certainly better than me.

Looking back, there were plenty of warning signs that the canyon was stiffening up, but we were tired, thought we were near the end, and the canyon had been so friendly. Some more climbing narrows and waist-deep pools, and the canyon entered a tighter, taller narrows. I remember thinking 'Oh good, this must be the final section'. Famous last thoughts.

The canyon got narrow, and we chimneyed up high to get over. A silo interrupted the narrows, and Ram stretched over it. I was next and started across, but realized I was facing the wrong way to get back into the slot. I backed up a few feet, then my feet unexpectedly cut loose, and I was falling – it happened so fast! I landed on a flat spot, not even landing hard. Fifteen feet straight down to the only flat spot around, a bridge with two, twisty, ankle-snapping holes on either side. Whoa, lucky.

"You Okay?" Doug was right beside me when I fell.

"Yeah, didn't even hit hard. Be careful up there, face the other way."

Doug made it look easy, even though he's a few inches shorter than me. Roy was not too psyched to do the stretch across, instead downclimbing into the silo with me spotting.

The next section was really strenuous - short pools alternating with tight narrows. Ram and Doug ferried the packs forward, relieving us of the burden. One section was a narrow squeeze where I thought I would fit fairly easily, but I was wrong. I took off my helmet and handed it to Ram, then carefully figured out the only path I could push my body through this narrow slot, complicated by my feet being 12" off the ground. For a moment, I thought I was stuck, and was going to slip down where I would be stuck forever, but a little extra chest compression and I slid through. That was close! Ram could read the fear on my face, and tossed me my helmet. "Think I'll go high," he said. He did.

A couple moves later, we slid down into a chest-deep pool, turned sideways through some narrows, then climbed out on a sand slope to a little wide spot in the canyon. We were hoping to see a widening, maybe a drop. Instead, it got narrow; really, really narrow.

 

It was now full dark, and the rain had picked up. Looks like we were staying here, in this little wide spot. A sturdy bush dominated the high ground in the center, implying the canyon did not flood enough to wash away the bush. I thought some rocks further downstream would also be above any flow. The light rain was unsettling and cold, but we knew that the many potholes in the canyon would have to fill up before it would start to flow. This mild, female (as the Navajo call it) rain was unlikely to actually fill the canyon and start a flow. We pulled out our headlamps and inspected our small kingdom.

Not much to inspect, really. It was about 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, steep on one side, with a flake and a handcrack that in an earlier day and in real rock might have spurred my interest as a rock climber, but now only looked scary. On the other side was the slabby corner we had tried to climb out. An unpleasant wind was blowing down the canyon and we were weary, very weary. The normally cheery Ram looked at me with no cheer in his eyes.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"We're Fu**ed." I stated softly, eschewing the usual Utah euphemisms.

"Yeah," he said and turned away, looking for the best place to bed down.