Shenanigans Canyon, March 9, 2002

We decided to start the week with a canyon we had looked into recently, but had not explored the upper part. Unfortunately (maybe), jumping into canyons in this area can be dangerous, and we almost re-created our friends' experience in Sandthrax last fall. Thus the name Shenanigans.

Ahhhh, the beginning of another adventure. Traipsing across the desert looking for the drop in point.

 

A short rappel gets us into the drainage. This is really about as short as raps get, but still not really down climbable. John and Alicia watch as Mike does the awkward start.

Fifty feet downcanyon, and the fun begins. We rapped everyone down the drop here, then I traversed downcanyon to find a tree to rap off of. A nice canyon. Narrow but not too narrow. Fun, at least at the top.

The canyon goes deeper and the walls get bigger.

A little snow remained in a few spots. After lunch in a cozy, sunny alcove, the canyon got deeper and more adult.

John and Ram enjoying the narrows of the canyon.

And Finally, the last rappel. Yeah, down there somewhere, Dave is setting up the final rappel into a *nice* pool of icewater, then only a 3 mile walk out to the road. OK, the story is this. It gets narrow. Really narrow. My 5'11" 180lb semi-pudgy body barely squeezed through in a few spots. The delightfully tiny Ms. Scotter traipsed easily through the bottom of the canyon, and was able to assist Mr. Black in one particularly difficult spot - by acting as stilts. Steve Ram is a little bigger and he, John and Mike headed back upcanyon and found a side exit and escaped upward. Dave, Alicia and I rapped into the pool and dashed out the bottom of the canyon. And it totally thrashed our gear.