20140602 Cactus Slot

[Taco]

This is the skinny slot canyon you see when you first leave Azusa and head up R39. It's left of the first bridge into the mountains. I've thought of descending it for a while now, but the good part looked too short to bother with when I was looking at doing more committing things. I've been sick lately and have just started to get better, so it would be a good way for me to see how I was feeling.

I hiked up the road next to Water Canyon, the same one Mr. McPherson did on his hike up to Silver Mountain a little while ago. I took a left when I shoulda tookded a right, and ended up going up a steep loose trail. This was challenging for me at my current level of fitness. Scared a rattlesnake or two on the hike up and reached the ridge south of Silver Mountain.


Water was running down the trail on the way up, leaking from a hole in the middle of the trail.


Looking south into another canyon.


Lots of fresh foxtails or whatever stuck in me shoes!


Hiking down the ridge to the drop in.

Instead of doing the entire canyon as it starts from the top, I descended the ridge on the north edge of the canyon so I could skip the terrible nontechnical upper 3/4 or so of the canyon, just exploring the part that 'doesn't suck', whatever that means. Point is it took me 25min to go from the high point down into the canyon just a little bit above the highest telephone pole. Probably would've taken 2hrs or more if I did the entire canyon. I don't need more bushwhacking in my life, baby.


So many stickers. Also the second trip out for the huge Yamaneko Knives 'Anti-Tank' knife, which is a large knife/small machete.

The first rappel came up in a short distance of dead plant bushwhacking. All the anchors were 'technical', for lack of a better term. That is to say you must weight them carefully and in the correct direction, and rappel smoothly, or they might fail. Then again, none failed despite bounce testing and the usual heart-in-throat feelings, so I guess they were all bomber.

The last anchor was off a Castor Bean plant, probably 6" around and not terribly solid. Castor Beans are rather juicy and flexible, so determining if it was solid was a bit off.


Anchor for rapp 1, a dead bush that was pretty stout and didn't move much under weight.


Short first rappel


Looking down the canyon, with El Encanto beyond.


A 5.8ish downclimb canyon right on this part, about 20ft. Neat limestone-y features or whatever on the right gave excellent holds.


Anchor for rappel #2, some cord and a bigass link traded from another popular canyon and replaced with a better one. I leave the bigass weirdo links behind in canyons I figure nobody else will care about.



The rappel, about 50ft or so.


It's always a trip to finish a climb or canyon near a road.


Next rappel. I took the right side, and did it more as a belayed downclimb than a rappel.


Looking down the cactus slot itself. Didn't actually come close to any cacti.




Final rappel, a 100ft 3 stage rappel with a Castor Bean plant as the anchor, visible in first photo. First stage is 10ft or so, then 50 or so, then 25 maybe? I don't remember numbers too well. The 200ft rope was set at the middle marker and rapped double strand, with both ends just being long enough for this rappel. The anchor didn't fail, but if this canon gets done again, I'd probably make a deadman to avoid hurting the bush because I'm such a swell character (and I don't want to die here, not yet).


Here be the canyon from the bottom!


Here's my kit for the day. I brought about 100ft of webbing, used maybe 30ft and however many links. Got a Totem as my belay device, which is rather long and thus easy to pull on to relieve tension and work in awkward spots amongst other things engineers and better canyoneers can tell you about. Got that on a locker, got a spare locker or two, some spare wiregates for gloves and stuff, a large straight-spine locker for use as a biner block on single strand rappels (did all double strand today), a BD Alpine Bod harness (carrying it more than you're hanging, comfort is not important), 200ft durable static line, 2qt water (shoulda brought 3), snacks, helmet, BUG NET (VERY IMPORTANT!), machete (also very important), pants (yeah, those too), boots (you see where I'm going), etc etc. Keep it simple, light, and basic, and you'll have more fun and less BS to think about.

It was neat. Go check it out if you want the Azusa front-range experience of kinda sketchy anchors, mild approaches, lotta dirt and pointy spiky poisonous things, etc.

I had fun. I felt slow and out-of-shape. I'm trying to bitch less and go back to being adventure-y, so this was a good step.

Anywho, cheers folks.

Rest o' pics: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tacodelri ... 991800995/

[davantalus]

Good stuff! I've always wondered about that one. Tickled by sharp-eyed motorist catching you on rappel.

[Taco]

That would be rad, yes indeed.

[Augie]

Solo first descent. Very cool. Real anchor building.