Canyoneering: Bailey Canyon
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 12:43 pm
My son and I descended Bailey Canyon yesterday, a nice temperate day. The canyon was dry except for a couple of smelly pools and two drops where wet slippery moss covered the waterfall.
We did 11 rappels. All are bolted. Many of the bolts are positioned such that you have to stand on sloping rock to rig so safety tether is a must. The longest drop was about 95 feet. My 60 meter rope barely made it on that one. We did all rappels on one strand with a releasable figure 8 block. On the 95' foot drop, I brought the bag down and that second strand barely reached the bottom (I had with me a second 30mx8mm rope in the event I would have needed it). There were also a couple of 60 foot raps, a 50 footer and the rest 25-30 feet.
A final point that may be of interest. I usually do not use a back-up (some call it a "third hand") when canyoneering and definitely not if I expect to drop into water. Just for the heck of it, I used an autoblock (used a short sling to wrap around the rope) on a few of the raps. On one, the autoblock stuck and would not budge. After a few minutes of just hanging, I finally managed to loosen it enough so it would start sliding again. This experience just reminded me of why you would not want to use a backup (either autoblock below or prussik above your rap device) when rapping in a waterfall).
Anyway, Bailey Canyon was a great outing. No still pics; all I took was video.
We did 11 rappels. All are bolted. Many of the bolts are positioned such that you have to stand on sloping rock to rig so safety tether is a must. The longest drop was about 95 feet. My 60 meter rope barely made it on that one. We did all rappels on one strand with a releasable figure 8 block. On the 95' foot drop, I brought the bag down and that second strand barely reached the bottom (I had with me a second 30mx8mm rope in the event I would have needed it). There were also a couple of 60 foot raps, a 50 footer and the rest 25-30 feet.
A final point that may be of interest. I usually do not use a back-up (some call it a "third hand") when canyoneering and definitely not if I expect to drop into water. Just for the heck of it, I used an autoblock (used a short sling to wrap around the rope) on a few of the raps. On one, the autoblock stuck and would not budge. After a few minutes of just hanging, I finally managed to loosen it enough so it would start sliding again. This experience just reminded me of why you would not want to use a backup (either autoblock below or prussik above your rap device) when rapping in a waterfall).
Anyway, Bailey Canyon was a great outing. No still pics; all I took was video.
