Gravel Canyon
- Utah (Part II of the
trip)
Canyoneering
April 30 through May 3, 2005 |
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| Driving west from the Colorado Front Range
in a snowstorm. |
On a "tie-down"
check, Saturday afternoon.
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Duties being taken care
of...
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Brad was holding down the fort in the back
of the 4Runner for us. |
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| Matt checking tie-down lines and what-not... |
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| Brad (left) and Matt (right) going down
the Interstate at 90 MPH and not paying attention. |
Matt in the snow just
before Glenwood Canyon.
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Tony trying to call Ben
from Rifle, Colorado.
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The sunset was cool west
of the first storm.
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| A 45-minute time exposure of Matt bunkered
in his bivvy Saturday night. See video: crash time |
Brad bunkered in his bivvy on Sunday morning
at the trailhead of White Canyon. |
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| Tony at sunrise over White Canyon, waiting
for Matt and Brad to roust awake. |
I headed up the canyon rim to look for
Anasazi ruins, and found some. |
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The weather was quite
a bit variable...
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Cactus plants on the
upper rim.
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| I found an Anasazi "fleshing"
scraper, a small gutting knife and an arrowhead. |
Jacob's Chair
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A photo of Brad still
bunkered down.
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The White Canyon, where we would end up
walking out at the end of our loop. |
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Looking down a rolling face into Cowboy
Canyon. |
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| This was our first glimpse of how deep
these canyons were. |
Brad can be seen way
off in the distance.
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Brad, on the route around
Cowboy Canyon.
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| Brad, lounging in the mid-section of Cowboy
Canyon while we waited for Matt to rejoin us. Matt drove
the truck down to the basin and hiked an extra 2 miles to
catch up. We seriously thanked him. |
On the right is the shelf of sandstone
where the Cowboy Canyon starts and dumps into the canyon
proper. |
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The upper slots of Cowboy
Canyon.
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Tony posing in front of the beginning of
Cowboy Canyon. |
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Jacob's Chair view near
our first campsite.
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Sunset on Sunday night.
We hiked 8 miles across two canyons and two mesas to get
here.
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Matt at sunset above our
drop-down area into the canyon.
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We ended up below the canyon
spot where we were supposed to rappel into it.
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Sunsets like this make
up for navigational errors.
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We downclimbed into this
bend of the canyon.
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We were still scouting
and double-checking our drop-down here.
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We rappelled down to the
first rim one-third of the way from the top, and then
downclimbed through the sandstone caves seen in the center.
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The start of the downclimb
in that rappel was one of the scariest things I had seen
in a long time. It turned out to be nothing at all.
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The first real slot canyon,
which we ended up camping above and thinking about for
a night.
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We camped just to the right
of this slot canyon, figuring out where to get down from
here.
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Our camping site on night
two.
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Matt under our camp site.
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Our camping site on night
two.
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Matt firing up morning
coffee on the stove.
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When we rappelled off of
this rim, below the first slot canyon, we were committing
ourselves to the canyon, since we could not reverse.
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It was an easy rappel,
but where we actually decided to rappel from was debated
all night.
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Brad on rappel.
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The slot canyon we rappelled
around but we made sure we walked back into it from below.
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Matt on the last rappel.
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Interesting problems,
all the way.
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Matt was our advisor on
the way down the canyon, and he set up the rappells, and
he told us the entire time to watch out for escape routes
if water came rushing down the canyon. Thank God, water
never came rushing down. At the first water route (I didn't
take photos because I was worried about myself and not
taking photos), we dropped into silt water the color of
concrete and was deeper than us. We pushed our packs in
front of us and they actually did float to a degree. It
was the next scariest thing I have ever done, to try to
swim through a 3-ft. slot with water deeper than me.
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