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With a good nights sleep the explorers find themselves
trekking across a mesa in search of a short and relatively obscure
little slot dubbed No Kidding. Ram rarely carries a map or consults a guidebook and
doesn’t own a GPS. He navigates with his senses, perhaps using an
internal time-compensated sun compass like a monarch butterfly or by
sensing subtle shifts in the earths magnetic field like some birds are
thought to do. At any rate, he leads us right to the canyon. |
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| By way of background, this canyon had
been descended a few weeks earlier by a solo canyoneer. The canyon
proved to be a challenging little bugger, featuring keeper potholes,
mud and little in the way of anchors. The solo canyoneer successfully
made it through, but was forced to leave several pieces of equipment
behind to do so. The purpose of the trip was to check out the canyon
and retrieve the gear. |
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The upper canyon features a short, shallow slot, made
pink by the morning light. |
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| Here’s the first rappel. The anchor
was a sling threaded around a rock formation at the top. Pretty solid. |
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This is rappel #2. We replaced the original anchor with
a football sized rock that we wedged in a constriction at the top of
the drop. We had to ferry the rock down from above. Carrying a 30 lb
load in your hands while climbing through twisty narrows is no small
feat. Though it took over an hour to construct, everyone was pretty
happy with the anchor when we were done. Unfortunately, since the rock
is located right in the water course, it stands a good chance of being
swept away by the next sizable rainstorm. |
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The original anchor may be seen
here (click the ‘Back’ button to return to this page). This one is
bit above my risk tolerance (notice the rotation that has occurred
... ~shudder~), but the proof is in the pudding, and this one held for the
solo canyoneer. |
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The next rap was about 200’ long, broken into 3 stages
with a keeper pot hole at the 1’st stage. We used a human anchor for
all but the last 2 people (two, because of the assistance required to
get past the pothole). The original anchor (a small arch or flake) was
used by those going last. |
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And here’s the exit. A short rap from a rock horn and
we’re home free. The gear was retrieved and the trip declared a
success. Nothing left to do but complete the big climb between the
canyon exit and the car. |
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Instead of returning to camp with the group, Ram and I
took a little detour and sprinted through a canyon called Leprechaun.
If this were a race, then I came in second. |
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