Bluejohn, April 14, 2002

Saturday, a trip through Lower Squeeze was delightful and uneventful. Sunday was a day for Bluejohn Canyon. Ram gave us the beta and we headed over, starting at an incredibly crapped out cowboy camp just off the Hans Flat road.

We followed GPS points onto a ridge, then across a grassy plain, and found the East Fork of Blue John, at this point a gentle V canyon in the Navajo sandstone. The first drop required moving a log into place for an anchor. Here Alicia helps Hank recover from dragging that tremendous log into place. A fifty foot rappel, easily avoided, but why?

 

We worked hard to avoid getting our feet wet, but eventually had to do some wading. The East Fork is delightful - many interesting narrows, one 30' rappel from a single old bolt, a few climbing problems, and quite a bit of sculptured sandstone walls. Neat! (Sorry, taking pictures through a ziploc to protect the camera did not work too well). It definitely does not need another bolt for an easy, downclimbable drop like Mr. Kelsey suggests.

The narrows gave way to a wide sandy wash in a nice walled canyon. After an hour of slogging, we came to the junction with the main fork, and turned left, upcanyon. After another hour of slogging, we started wondering if this was ever going to end when *BANG* we get to some really cool narrows. A veritable cathedral in the desert. Big soaring walls pinching above.

Hank Moon, man of the canyons.

The cathedral section was tremendous, and included some obstacles to climb up, including some interesting 5.8ish crack and chimney stuff, with very little exposure. It made a great way to complete the canyon loop.

More, more, more.

Click Here for a Bigger Version of this picture (400k) And eventually we climbed out of the cathedral and back into a shallow wash. A few dry falls added some spice, especially the one with the rattlesnake at the climb out!!!!