Quandary Canyon, Direct: October 27 and 28, 2001 - Part III

I can't say we were entirely committed to removing all the bolts. The real concern was with the first one (that might suck people in) and the third one, which was quite loose. Therefore we descended to each drop and removed those two, and left two. The form of the rock is not particularly amenable to finding natural anchors (or, sans excuses, it was too much work to construct them from the scanty resources available). I must say, the canyon was much more complex, beautiful and fun than I had remembered.

We found the canyon quite dry. Easier or harder? difficult to say. Given our good selection of tools and Scott's and Steve's good climbing skills, we enjoyed the modest challenge presented.

 

We left this bolt in, and set up a guided rappel so only Scott had to deal with the keeper pothole inbetween.

The big keeper pothole was dry. After downclimbing into it, Steve tried a pack toss a few times to surmount the 10' high lip. He could get the pack onto the lip, but not over the other side. "Why don't I just climb it?" OK, with a running start, Steve sends the dreaded "Big Keeper Dyno - V2" first try. This pic is an example of why you don't give Steve the camera.

And we left this one, the last one, even with 3 slings on it.

And here's the rap off that last bolt. A short rap and we are out of the intense, middle pothole part of the canyon.

Here's one way to circumvent the last rappel bolt, clean. A. Sequence half the team down (shown as yellow rope). (Sequencing is where a person rappels off of one or more people braced in the canyon. Sequencing assumes that the anchor people can brace themselves advantageously to resist the force of the first etc. people rappelling. It is called "Sequencing" because the sequence that you send people down makes a big difference. In some circumstance, the last person is left to downclimb or jump). B. First half of team takes the rope and climbs around to a point above the folks still in the canyon. C. Second half of team is sequenced down off the people above (shown as blue rope).

One final, odd bolt allows rapping this slab, rather than a little circuitous 4th class downclimb. Hmmm, bolt proliferation... hmmmm. Probably should have yanked this one.