EISPIRATEN

Did another 3 days of canyoneering last weekend.

Rose Valley Falls
Suicide Canyon
Stone +1 Canyon
Cloudburst Canyon
Supercloud Canyon
Josephine Creek

On Fri I did Rose Valley Falls (solo). This one was awesome. Though dry and not too pretty it was rather exciting given the extreme height of the rap (250 feet) and gusty winds. I had to wait for an hour for the wind to die down enough to safely complete the rappel. In addition to the wind there were a number of factors that made things a bit "interesting". Given the height this was a single strand rappel on a 300 ft rope with a biner block and 200 ft pull cord (centered at 260 ft on the rope). This cut things a bit close on rope length. Unavoidable small loose rocks at the top of the rappel would occaisionally rain down on me from above and toward the lower part of the rappel they picked up quite a bit of speed. There were also some rocky protrusions that caught the tossed rope and I had to free it in 3 different places on the way down. It was an exhilerating descent and I can only imagine how much more exciting it must be when water is flowing. I was cold enough and shivering as it was. Pulling the rope down was some work and here too things could go wrong. About 8 feet below the anchor is a small bush. As I feared when I went to pull the rope the biner block was stopped by the stem of the bush. Pulling the rope back the other direction and then back down cleared the obstruction. The upper falls were then followed by a 100 ft rap down the lower falls which I completed just as it got dark.

On Sat I joined up with Mike Schasch for Suicide Canyon and Stone +1 Canyon. Suicide canyon (via the Maxon route) was quite nice, mostly brush free, and definitely worth the 3 star rating. Stone +1 had some nice rappels and a few beautiful sections of canyon filled with ferns but loses a star due to extended bushwhacking through thorny vines. If I counted correctly I think I ended up doing 15 rappels on this one which was 4 more than the description mentioned. At least 4 anchors in a row were "compromised" where someone had cut partway thru the webbing. We had seen this in CCC canyon as well and at first thought some rodent had chewed on the webbing but with 4 in a row this seemed unlikely and at least one had a rather clean cut. Not really sure what to make of this.

On Sun I was solo again and spent much of the morning trying to decide what to do. I wanted to do Supercloud but then saw that it required a car shuttle. Since Cloudburst Canyon (a 2A canyon) is right next to Supercloud I decided to get two canyons in one trip by ascending Cloudburst and then descending Supercloud which would eliminate the car shuttle. In Cloudburst canyon I made the mistake of thinking I could follow the canyon all the way up to the end and climb out. The upper end of the canyon is extremely steep (class 4 or more?) and consists of extremely unstable loose rock. I ascended as high as I reasonably could but was unable to find a safe way up. Thus, I descended a few hundred feet and then located the drop-in route that Brennen describes which is more on the side of the canyon. Though steep this was earthy and relatively safe. After reaching the road I then hiked over and dropped into Supercloud Canyon. Supercloud is a nice clean canyon (no brush whatsoever) and is also deserving of it's 3 star rating. The rappels were easy and I quickly caught up with a group of canyoneers I had met earlier in the day. This group of 4 (Steve, Mike, Ulene, Kevin?) appeared to be seasoned canyoneers armed with an array of belay devices, tiblocs, etc.

After Cloudburst and Supercloud I still had some time so I decided to hit Josephine Creek. This one Mike and I kept putting off but had I known how good it was I would not have passed it up. This one had 3 rappels the last one being a 180 ft rap down a beautiful vertical waterfall. Unlike Rose Valley Falls this one had some running water which kept everything nice and green (and slippery) and sprayed down on me on the rappel. It was sweet and the perfect ending to a great weekend.

Photos are here:

Rose Valley Falls 10/5/07
Suicide Canyon 10/6/07
Stone +1 Canyon 10/6/07
Cloudburst & Supercloud 10/7/07
Josephine Creek 10/7/07

-Rick

Very cool! SOme beautiful stuff right there!

Might want to give this one a shot. I think it can be reached to rapp off from the Heaton Flats trail to Iron.

Monster Waterfall


On my Cow Canyon Page: http://www.summitpost.org/canyon/341421 ... anyon.html

Rick,

Thanks for your report and the pics. I need to get out there soon!

Couple of questions. What's the size of your 300 foot rope? Do you use a back up (prussik or autoblock or similar) when you rap solo? I think it's really gutsy to canyoneer solo. No margin for error.

My 300 ft rope is a 9mm Imlay Canyon Gear rope. I generally don't use a back up since a prussic can often be more trouble than its worth. I usually use an ATC XP and switch it to high friction depending on the rope and the rappel. Canyoneering solo definitely requires attention to detail and so far I've only done it where the number of raps is limited and the difficulty isn't beyond my ability (Rose Valley was probably a bit aggressive). It's certainly better to be in a group.

Rick:

Travis tipped me off on your 17 peaks in 17 hours feat in the SG Wilderness yesterday. AMAZING. Congrats on a great hike.

Sad to see all the damaged registers on the big nine. I've been on all of those peaks within the last year, and none of the registers were damaged then. The ones that are damaged appear to have been so by human hands, possibly stealing the lids as mementos? Really cool to see that one book from Dragon's Head (Bighorn?) from the 70's. THANKS FOR ALL THE PHOTOS.

HJ

Hikin_Jim wrote:Rick:

Travis tipped me off on your 17 peaks in 17 hours feat in the SG Wilderness yesterday. AMAZING. Congrats on a great hike.

Sad to see all the damaged registers on the big nine. I've been on all of those peaks within the last year, and none of the registers were damaged then. The ones that are damaged appear to have been so by human hands, possibly stealing the lids as mementos? Really cool to see that one book from Dragon's Head (Bighorn?) from the 70's. THANKS FOR ALL THE PHOTOS.

HJ

It really pisses me off that someone is destroying these summit registers on purpose. A Boy Scout did a great job placing the ammo boxes, anchoring them, labeling them, etc. Then some idiot smashes them and removes the lid, making them useless and looking like trash.

For real. My imagination went to seeing them in the cross hairs of a high powered rifle as I caught them in the act ...

boy, you are just running them off your list? At least now we know who has a nice 300 9mm rope to borrow

canyoneering solo - another possibility instead of a high friction setting is to start off normal and have some way to add friction....lest anyone think Im a teacher(not!), but once I got the hang of some other options and some instruction, it made a big difference to me at least ...All depends on the weight of the person and style I suppose.

Interesting about that torn(or cut?) webbing...any pictures of it? Hard to believe someone would partially cut webbing for what reason? Harm someone? I have seen webbing replaced(such as your photo of my last rap in Supercloud highend webbing gone from last Jan) and if they cant untie the waterknot, then cut it..but then again, most of the raps in Stone+1 are optional(or retrievable)...hmm..strange stuff again in the SGs.

Anyways, thanks for the report!

I couldn't really make sense of why the webbing would be partially cut. I mean they didn't even take the rings/quicklinks. They didn't really try to conceal the cut so it seems unlikely they were trying to cause harm. Sometimes there would be a new piece of undamaged webbing with its own link. So maybe they were just trying to tell us this piece is new ... this other one isn't. But then why not just cut it out and take it. I don't get it. Just another reminder why you must always carefully inspect anchors and if in doubt back it up.

Oh, btw, though a very tame one, I did Left Fork Fusier Canyon this past Saturday. Only 2 raps but the lower canyon is pleasant. There's also the remains of another pot farm here. If you need any plastic tubing, potting soil, an old tent, a sleeping bag, propane tank, stove, etc. it's all there. Certainly a lot of work hauling all that stuff up there just to grow a few plants.

This was just a relaxing day before the big day I had on Sunday:

http://www.summitpost.org/trip-report/3 ... peaks.html

I too was very pissed about all the register boxes being damaged. I mean I can kindof accept one or two being messed with, but clearly some a**hole went from peak to peak (with an apparent agenda) methodically removing the lids, dispursing the contents, and then crushing the boxes. What kind of person does that? To know that someone went to such a great effort to cause destruction is disturbing. Very uncool.