The next day, we explore the North Fork of No Man's Canyon. Quite nice, better than expected.

The day after what to do...

(Pictures by Tom Jones, story by Steve Ram).

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We were coming off our wonderful day in No Mans system. We were going to do something in Sam's Mesa. We were going to do something in the south fork of No Man's. Or main fork Twin Corral. Wanted to get around to these, but we had family and friends and these days are long. Nice? Probably. Great? Nah. What to do?

We thought to rally to some old standbys. Alcatraz...or Larry....or Not Mindbender. But this person had done this one and that fella that one and she had done that one. How to get everyone into something new? It turns out that only Doc Rosen had done Not Mindbender (Tom and I don't count).. So I ask Tom..."Any potential explorations on your docket nearby?" He answers..."Well there is Almost Mindbender." I reply "Almost Mindbender, almost Mindbender, lets do Almost Mindbender. Where is Almost Mindbender?" He pull a map and points. "Oh, that little thing? Well if it isn't much, we can try and hike up Not Mindbender and join our family and friends." And so it is decided. The group splits in two and Doc, Aaron, Jason, Big Ryan, Tom and I are off on exploration.

Car shuttles are done and we start into and across Mindbender canyon. We hike the Carmel isthmus between Mind and Not Mind and out on Not Mindbenders south side, we head over to its western most fork. Yes, that little thing. I thrive on the navigation and we are there, but it disappoints. We can see down shallow wash for half the forks length. Open, easy country. As short as the fork is, it needed to slot up, right away, up high to deliver enough goods. Or so we thought. We wrestled with it. Do we lose the altitude to look at that little thing or do we head back, while there was still time and rally elsewhere.

Aaron down the first rappel, first time.

Well, we are here and we must know its secrets, this almost a canyon named Almost Mindbender. To the slot up spot we go. Everyone grabs a different angle to view it. Aaron at the drop..."A rap into a wet pothole." When Aaron says its a rap, its a rap. A ledge narrows on the rim right and Tom edges out. I am across the way and say "Turn the corner and it will work." From his perspective....errrr, not so sure, but around the corner it does go. Now we are everywhere. Lower rim, ledges here and there and views into the main Not Mindbender. Boy it looks good down there. But the main canyon we see below is only a 10 minute walk to the final rap. Not much of a day, we think. We discuss heading back up the hill and over into Mindbender proper. Only Tom has been. I suggest that they rap into the canyon and take a look, as long as we are here. Then come back up. We can always move fast later in the day to make back the time spent now. Notice, I suggest THEY rap in and more important jug out. I have jugged more this winter than any time previously. And to show for it I have no visable improvement in that skill. The perpetual beginner on this front.

Big Ryan and I lounge and listen and I stroll the rim and steal peeks as our hero's proceed down canyon. I hear excitement below. It is good and it is challenging. I here Doc say "I don't think I can get back up this." No one comments and they go forward, the pull of the place leading them. After a bit, Tom calls from the depths "Any anchors down canyon to send a rope down for a jug out mid canyon?" I sprint off to investigate. Umm, this should work. Will take some preparation, but.... I call down "Yes, buddy, we can do ya!" He says go set her up.

Big Ryan floating down a downclimb.

I sprint and rouse a near naked sunning Ryan and say "Work to be done." We break down the anchor, gather the gear and head to a large boulder on a good fall line. We place Ryan behind it and he is the anchor. Now I must move over 50 rocks big and small, from the fall line, so our friends below will avoid incoming missiles let loose by their jugging. I finish and toss the rope. Down 30 feet below them the rope goes. I hear a collective moan. Sorry boys, a fall line is a fall line and they must go to the rope. Aaron is up and out. Tom follows. When we meet up top, he has that look in his eye. "Ram, its really good!" I ask "Ya wanna go all the way then?" He nods with enthusiasm. It is decided. We present options to Doc and Jason, in the bowels of the canyon. They decide to stay where they are and the 4 of us up top, scramble to the canyon head, rerig the anchor and down the rope 30 feet we do go. Ryan helps to keep the rest of us only knee deep in the drink, in that first pothole.

The hesitation is gone. A stem up and an elevator down. Pothole lip to pothole lip. A fun dance. Then some steep downclimbs. Doc and Jason call from ahead. "Got rope?" No I say, big Ryan hauls the pig (220 ft). Great little moves. Steep steps. What fun. Then I am there. Mark on the rim, Jason below in the crack, with half the drop downclimbed, a bombay widening below him, giving him cause for pause. Finally the rope is on hand. The area is free of all anchor material....except that almost perfectly placed horn. Almost, but not. The horn pointed down. It didn't quite point in exacttly the right direction. When Tom, the proponent of the dubious anchor pauses, one has to wonder. Ah but other options are not easily at hand. The Doc likes the anchor. Well, he can go last then.

The rap is executed. A 60 footer down into a narrow corner. The test shaking of the rope had freed the sling and the rope. Should be a clean and easy retreival. Wrong! We discovered something new that can go wrong. When you flick a double rope up, over a minor lip, the rope can get twists above the lip that you can't see, making the pull....ahhh....challenging. We are hell bent on retreiving the sling. Clean is the canyon till here and we wish to keep it so. We do a test pull to make sure we can pull the rope. It works, then back to flicking the rope for the full retrieval. After awhile, we decide to leave the sling. It is not coming....but now there are so many twists above the little lip, the rope won't pull. We worked real hard to screw this one up. Got a little greedy. So you untwist once and test the pull...again and again. Finally Aaron is called back from down canyon and he climbs 25 of the 60 feet up and works the untwist from a better vantage point. Finally the rope pulls. A tad embarrassed, we head further down.

After some stemming, we arrive at the final drop. A 40 footer, with a narrow start, into an open and beautiful corridor. Soon our Not Mindbender friends peek in and see us and us them. They look great to us. We look great to them. Another beautiful Colorado Plateau Grand Finale rappel. Once down, I marvel at the final drop. Downclimbable? Perhaps at a high level. The spot is special. No wonder it was on Tom's tick list.

Last rappel in Almost. Almost downclimbable.

Rebuilt deadman anchor. Mark Rosen going over the edge.

Now in main Not Mindbender, we stop short of the final rap to allow our friends an experience unfettered by our opinions and presence. Once friends have cleared the rap area, Jason and I slide down the rope. Tom has decided to remove the rats nest of colorful webbing. It looks like a line of Buddhist prayer flags at this anchor. Tom lines up help and builds a deadman, all the while teaching my boy and others "the ropes." I grow cold and leave as I see Aaron farming 50 pound rocks from below, into a pack, for the haul up. Big Ryan is the man for the haul and the rocks fly up the drop pronto. I am not needed here and it is cool. I seek sun and a nap.

Another exit short of the Moki exit is examined and determined to be doable, but with consequences for any misstep. I take a rope on the Moki's, thank you very much and up the hill we go. Almost Mindbender was short, but boy was it good. 3A/B II-III 3 raps to 60 feet. Not quite an R, but others will sequence some of those downclimbs we did. Oh and you still have the 95 foot rap down Not Mindbender so it is really 4 raps to 95 feet. But you know how we are...the possibility of ascending Not Mindbender from the Almost Mindbender confluence was tossed about and considered for another day.

We Almost didn't go. We almost turned back when we saw it. We almost made the mistake of not finishing this fine canyon. Almost

Ram

Mark Rosen, the big Not Mindbender rap, off a couple stone tucked down in the sand.

The big rap in Not Mindbender was, once a gain, a mess when we got there. A mediocre chockstone 40 feet back from the edge had TWO, not one, but TWO runs of 1" tubular coming off it. The wedged in crack stone up and left had TWO pieces of 1" tubular, plus a fairly good knot chock. All in all, about 120 feet of webbing were used. We rebuilt the whole thing. First we excavated the pothole using a convenient digging stone, then hauled up rocks from below, tied off TWO of them and rebuilt the deadman. Such that it did not even budge when Ryan rappelled on it. Pseudo-equalized the two deadman stones, AND pseudo-equalized the knot-chock and the crack chock, then pseudo-equalized the two together, ending up with the rappel ring just over the edge. Sweet. We hauled out the extra 100 feet of 1" tubular.