The grimmest of the grim. Brandon and Dave are out in front, aiders set from a logjam above. Chris is out of the water, Penny negotiates the aiders, and Doug, Eric, and Dan are still in the water.

Shortly after my chock stone moment the canyon opened up for a while to more beautiful open sections that were magical. Then it narrowed again to some of the trademark super tight slots with the belled out under sections. We came to a severely log jammed section with lots of floating debris and tree wedged sections.

At that point the group ground to a halt and I could see Brandon and Dave not being able to swim under or able to climb over a log jam ... Finally Brandon was able to climb out of the water and chimney up (Brandon, in my best Cameron from Ferris Bueller voice – "Brandon - you are my hero") …but Dave was struggling to do the same - I could see that he was very frustrated... and I am pretty sure we were both thinking the exact same thing - "if I am having this much trouble - there is no way Ryan is going to be able to do this"

At that point I was yelling up to him to see if he wanted the aiders we had brought along – to which he said yes - thankfully... Brandon then set the aiders up and we all quickly climbed up and over the jam... I was left thinking that there is no way I would do this canyon without having at least one monkey in the group, aiders and a talon or two... at this point it is the darkest and coldest section and I have still yet to get cold – my heart rate has come down a ton but I am still whipped and my suit is too damn heavy and warm...

Brandon negotiates another significant logjam near the end of the canyon.

After this obstacle the canyon stays tight/narrow but does open up in comparison to the skinny sections - lots of down climbing using what I call the shoulder/thigh slide technique. For me, these areas would be VERY difficult to climb back up once going down and for me maybe even impossible - but in almost all cases the correct choice was to go down... The final rap (90 ft.) finally came and it was a very nice end to a long and very exerting canyon. That said, I never had that feeling like it was never ending as I expected…

Maybe the feelings of amazement and wonderment squashed those feelings, because that canyon was truly magical and mysterious. Once I got the wetsuit off at the exit of the canyon I felt like a new man, I felt normal again and could keep pace with the group with no problem. On the hike back I stopped to check out some sort of cowboy camp that turned out to be a waste of time and also stopped briefly to check out some pictographs left by Indians, cowboys and hikers... This put me at the back again with Eric who was taking pictures, but we rolled into camp maybe 5-10 minutes behind the rest of the group and it was about 6:15 or 6:30. That put us back in about 10.5 hours - a full 30 minutes before Tom's low end estimate of 11 hours.

As a side bar - this is the first time in ANY canyon where I have not come in at the top end of one of Tom's estimates and to me it is insane that I came in under his low end estimate. For Chop he says 11-14 hours. I attribute this personal land/sea/air record to two things - the first is that the water level was medium (easier) and second, because I was drafting off the rest of the group which mentally pulled me along, rather than hiking at my normal pace... which for Chop was a really good thing.

Penny rappelling the final obstacle of South Fork Choprock.

Doug, the last one down. What a beautiful ending to a classic canyon.

We camped that night and hiked out early the next morning - I think we hiked out in about 2 hours 15 minutes - again I am terrible with time while on these trips... but the weather could not have been nicer. Well that is it in a nutshell - a serious and amazing canyon to end an amazing trip with really great and amazing people. Choprock is my new favorite canyon. I could not be more thankful to Dave and Penny for taking me to such great places. On a side note, they each offered to teach me the secret handshake if I carried their pack out from Fence Canyon, but at my age, I would not have survived to use it...

Choprock 1 - Choprock 2 - Choprock 3 - Choprock 4

Egypt II - Neon - Choprock

Latest Rave Home