"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." -Donald Rumsfield
Every year I venture to the sculpted sandstone canyons of southern Utah to wander for a week with ropes and boots and sometimes drysuits, in search of the silence that only mile upon mile of solid rock can exude. My experience as a rigger, trad climber, kayaker, and surfer all coalesce into a skill set that allows me to penetrate safely into a grade of the canyoneering sport that would normally require much more than a week a year to gain proficiency. Although I'll push things a bit harder when I'm alone, with a competant but inexperienced partner I usually call things at 3bIII (some technical climbing, long ice cold swims, all day long). Having chased me on all sorts of precarious adventures for a while now, Leann definately qualifies for this category.
Beginning our trip in Zion National Park with an unsettled weather pattern, I trained Leann in Keyhole Slot, rating 3bII. Keyhole is a narrow corridor that is more swimming than walking between walls that often require a quick turn sideways to pass through. We spent a record 3 hours in the slot working on rappelling skills (which I do with any new partner, whether they have done it before or not), covering:
single and double strand raps
setting a backup, prussik and autobloc (you need both to know both)
reascending a rope
dealing with random problems
avoiding random problems
....as well as basic chimneying and downclimbing. My attitude with this stuff is "go slowly, go smartly" because the best way to stay out of trouble is not to get into it in the first place. Keyhole was very cool and even with the canyon tip top full of ice water, we never got too cold in our drysuits and multilayered fleece. We did however feel a bit like human gumbys, all those layers combined with the caving overalls we rented were pretty restrictive. You get used to it. The next day the weather cleared and we struck out for Spry Canyon, a super cool crack that dumps right into the middle of the park. The approach to Spry is not hard per se, but it's steep and will get your heart rate up. We saw bighorn sheep on the approach which was pretty neat. While not as narrow or hard as I was hungry for, I like the classic rap-to-rap-to-rap character of Spry and it was a good fit for both of us. As usual Leann styled the canyon and the only near-injury of the day was my fault. At the very very end of Spry there is a fifteen foot slimy ledge that dumps into Pine Creek. I was traversing this carefully but confidently when I suddenly buttered over the edge. Like running a hard drop in a kayak where you'd intended to portage but blew the eddy, the only choice now was to commit to it. I summoned my inner ninja and spun mid-fall, landing in a hard (somewhat painful) crouch in the mud below. Shucks!
Gear-splosion! back at the truck we strip off the 30lbs of wet gear, sorting everything out for our next mission. Neither of us really felt like spending the week in drysuits, so we turned our hopes toward the dry-ish slots of Escalante, 2 1/2 hours to the northeast. The weather forecast was still not looking real great, but we tried to stay upbeat and savor the sunshine while it lasted.
8mm all-polyester canyoneering ropes from imlay gear. A new 85 footer in the foreground and my workhorse 120' in the background. As a shameless gear slut I love these ropes, but then again, I love all my ropes and have a bit of an, um, rope addiction. I often carry a 6.5 mm all-spectra 70m rope for emergencies, ah, now that is a sexy rope.....
Anyhow, we drove out of Zion and made the journey to Escalante by 9pm, just barely catching a killer pizza and some important beta at Escalante outfitters (thanks for the hand drawn map!!) I also checked the weather forecast which had previously said clearing on wed, and now said clearing on thursday, darn.
That night wind and light snow rocked the truck as we slept fitfully out on Hole-in-the-rock road. Come morning, the weather looked pretty sketch, so we headed back into town only to see a sudden break in the clouds and the forecast. Soooooo.... we blazed back down hole in the rock road and jumped onto the trail for a quick hike down to zebra and tunnel slot.
I've been a hiker, climber, hunter, boater most of my life, and I'd like to think I can read a friggin map, but slickrock country always messes me up until I get used to it. I hiked us right past slots and sheepishly we had to backtrack. I loved this cairn. Leann is always goofing around!
Whether it's mud or tiny flowers or pine needles or rocks, I'm always fascinated with the textures of the places I visit.
We finally got to tunnel and zebra, and our drysuits were nice (but hardly neccesary) in both places. These are easy slots, short, non-technical, and unless you are me, pretty easy to find. We got out just before sunset.
And what a marvelous sunset it was. Beer (ok fine, beer-s) in hand with dinner on the stove, I could hardly complain. That night we drove back to town and got a room because the weather forecast promised it would storm this time for real, and we planned to spend the day relaxing and taking hot showers. After crawling out of bed at 11am, we peered through the curtains to find, dammit, things were looking pretty good. A quick check revealed that the forecast had pushed the bad weather forward a day! We still didn't dare tackle a long slot but once again we blazed out hole in the rock road and down to Coyote Gulch to check out Peekaboo and Spooky slots.
Leann beelines down a wash toward the mouth of Spooky
I chased Leann first through Peek-a-boo and then up Spooky which had a few squeezes and we got to do a bit of partner climbing, but hardly anything you might call technical and despite the tremedous beauty, I was getting a bit frustrated at not being able to sink my chops into something harder.
Looking back down into Spooky I spotted this man making his way.
A squall hit us on our way back up the wash making for a brief dinner of blowing sand and a few raindrops, but when it cleared we were treated to amazing portrait light! On the way up the trail we conferred and decided to head for Egypt Bench, with hopes that we might do Egypt 3 in the morning. Frustrated with the ever changing forecast we thought we'd just get up early and feel it out.
After a bumpy ride out the wonderfully rutted road to Egypt, I stepped out of the car and for the first time since we arrived in Utah, I inhaled pure solitude. Quiet, empty, as though my conciousness could fan out to the horizons. I yearn for this feeling and it draws me deeper into the desert every year. Experienced canyoneers would hardly call Egypt remote, but for me, it's enough. On the road you drive right past the yawning chasm that begins Egypt 2 and are instantly struck with a feeling of immensity that just isn't quite the same as canyons I'd done before, most of which drop from the desert right into the canyon, or in the case of Zion, from tall cliffs. In egypt, vast swaths of sandstone slowly turn downward, ever steeper, funneling into the crack slots at the bottom of each canyon. From a single vantage you see and feel the scale of each canyon. It feels big.
That night I tried to form a strategy that would get us down Egypt 3 smartly, starting with an ultra-minimal light-and-fast mindset and then adding to it. Light is critical in Egypt 3, or more to the point THIN. Egypt is an order of magnitude skinnier and longer than anything I'd done, its' miles of sideways shuffling dwarfing the tight section of the Squeeze Fork of Blue John, my only previous really tight slot. In one place the whole thing narrows to 8 inches wide and if you don't fit, you go back. Or so I was told. Luckily we're small people. You can move much faster without any sort of pack, but by the end of the evening both Leann and I had small packs. Mine carried a collapsed tent pole, 80 feet of rope, a steel aid-climbing hook, and a few prussik cords. This was a waste of time, but I needed the emotional support of at least some sort of gear. The idea being that if the worst happened and we were caught in rising water I might chimney up or hook a feature to get us out of harms way. I've done weird stuff like this before, but there is a danger in applying similar strategies to non-analagous situations. I set the alarm for first light and went to bed hoping for a decent morning sky and a chance to do something "good" before we had to head home.
I was pretty upset when we woke at 8am and the alarm hadn't gone off. The sky was grey, but still and not terribly ominious. I wished I had the hour I'd lost. Cold is good, it holds back the precipitation. We'd seen weird skies all week that hadn't delivered a drop of water, and it looked like it might be breaking up into a few blue patches, so we grabbed our spanky-new knee and elbow pads and headed down to the canyon.
Egypt 3 opens just as dramatically as Egypt 2, with a massive drop. It wasn't the "hard" canyon that I was thirsty for but it more than made up for that in sheer amazingness. People don't usually go down this way but I'm tempted to come back and fix ropes and do the canyon from the head sometime. Speaking of coming back, this would be my third attempt on egypt and I was salivating for the slot (that didn't quite come out right, but you get the idea). I REALLY wanted this canyon and was perfectly aware that I needed to watch my judgement.
We hiked down the normal route across wide rolling hills of solid sandstone before dropping in. Soon we were gleefully solving small problems with laid out stemming and partner assists. Above: Leanne executes her first laid out stem with poise and strength. Downclimbing? no problem.
After a short "bright-and-friendly" section we arrived at the "real stuff" where a downclimb leads to a series of short drops culminating in an unstemmable, water filled pothole. (sorry no photo) I whipped out my tentpole and probed the pothole which was slightly less than chest deep. Hardly a problem, what bothered me more was the view beyond: a huge sloping canyon that dropped smoothy into a deep dark slot. It was at this point that the reality of egypt 3 hit me. I could dispense with any notion of stemming up over a flood or hooking my way out. Sure I MIGHT be able to do those things, but do you really want to be in there at all if it looks like it could possibly rain? Looking up, the now sky didn't have those blue patches we'd seen earlier.
It was a painful moment. This was my third try on Egypt 3 and it was the closest I've come yet, and even under this darkening sky I could be pretty damn sure that we weren't going to get any sort of real flash flood precipitation in the next 3 hours or so. That aside, would Leanne have any fun down there with low grey skies overhead? Probably not. Also, it's just bad form dropping into a canyon under a dark sky.
I hated making the call, but I didn't hesitate to make it. We turned around and climbed back out, exiting the canyon at the first opportunity where I sulked for about 20 minutes while staring longingly down the canyon.
A few minutes later I saw another group of twenty-something dudes working down the canyon and I wandered over to the rim and offered:
"You're about to hit a chest deep pothole and after that it looks pretty committing. You do realize that if it rains you're gonna die down there? The weather will probably hold but go look at it and make your own choice". They thanked me and kept moving downcanyon, and I sat, and I sulked, and then about seven minutes later just a few little snowflakes drifted out of the sky. Barely two minutes later those boys came rocketing out of that slot as though their feet were on fire. They were all the way to the pothole when they felt the flakes, so I can only imagine they levitated that upclimb! I was surprised to see twenty-something dudes back away from anything, maybe they were closer to 30.
Climbing out of Egypt was a low moment. Even amidst such granduer I could not summon the zen to feel priviledged, though I knew I ought to. Leann was kind, but dissapointed as well, probably because she knew I'd be a bummer to hang out with for the rest of the day. We drove back to the head of Egypt 2, where I used the magnificent ledge to sort out my gear. We considered a quick dash down Egypt 2, but I hadn't taught Leanne how to pass a knot yet, and I didn't have a 300 foot rope (nor do I understand why anyone needs one, passing a knot is simple and quick and every climber or canyoneer should know how to do it). We thought about taking the afternoon to find a hidden scrap of sandstone to practice skills on, mostly of the drilling and hooking variety (well out of the way of where anyone would venture), but alas, the skies finally opened and snow began to blanket the landscape. We began the long drive home.
Could we have made Egypt 3 that day? Absolutely. The important thing to remember though, is every time you take a risk you stack chips onto a scale that holds your life in the balance. The statistics of risk are fascinating in a way, as risk accumulates, the actual danger increases in a non-intuitive way. Simply put, if you do lots of risky stuff often, the overall likelyhood of you winding up in a body bag is much higher than the "feeling of risk" in any single instance. I do practice risky sports (the most dangerous by far being driving a car) so to keep the risk in check I've got to back off whenever I can, it gives me more chips to spend when I do decide to "go for it". Almost worse than dying is getting really hurt. After pulling multiple pieces on an especially horrifying aid-climbing fall in my twenties, I couldn't walk right for six year and couldn't run again for twelve. I still have nightmares about being mercilessly recirculated without oxygen in, and then out of, my kayak, and after hitting that reef on my surfboard, well, that was the last time I ever moved my left arm without pain and stiffness. I seem to have a knack for surviving but the hurt adds up after a while.
I'm not trying to be preachy here, but it seems like all the articles I ever read are tales of success or of trajedy, rarely does one read about those who quietly back down. It seems so easy until you are faced with it, at the end of a vacation, after trying so hard, after trying for years in my case. Preparedness, skill, fitness, all of these are crucial aspects of any adventure sport, but it seems like the overwhelming majority of accidents can be traced back to the simple inability to not go in the first place. I'm still just sick about missing Egypt again this year, but it also gives an opportunity to make lemons into lemonade. Maybe someone will read this and someday they'll think twice before doing something stupid.
Don't get me wrong, go out and take those risks! but make sure that the risks you are taking are actually the risks you are signing up for, there's a difference. The way I see it, being alive at the end of the day is a tallest, sweetest, ice cold glass of lemondade ever.
-Brian Schulz
once-in-a-while canyoneer
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