It had been on the list for a few years. Okay, TEN years. Expectations were low, but the approach was only an hour, the canyon itself was fairly short, it promised some long raps at the end, NO WATER, and the exit was short. In the quest to get out and do something, yeah, let’s do an exploration, and see what happens!

Tim Hoover recently located in Springdale was my partner for the day. We met at the Water Canyon (Hildale) trailhead and it was darn cold out… being, like, January and all. Got going at 9:24. Wonderful hike up to the top of water canyon. Lots of uphill. Nice to do it at a relaxed pace.

We wandered on over to the target ‘canyon’. The total drop of the canyon is 700 feet… the Google Earth shot shows that it does have some length to it… but it does not have a catchment basin, it does not drain an area much larger than my back yard. Standing at the top looking down, it does not look promising. The start is at least 200 feet of downclimbing, so we might as well at least get down there and see what happens.

Scurrying downwards was okay; then it got steeper. We were in evergreen shrubs that had sharp needles - Yew? - VERY annoying. Seemed like too steep and loose to continue, we figured out a tree to rap from and fiddled it up to head down. I went first and found myself rapping through a screen of rose bushes… YIKES!!! I got down to the bottom, but the brushiness made fiddling impossible, so Tim reworked the rigging, added a sling around the tree, and came on down. In the meantime I started setting up the next rap off a tree, that is, a tree guarded by rose branches. I ended up getting my knife out and doing a bit of pruning, so I could get close enough to the tree to put a sling around it.

With the second rap we got past the rose bushes and into something a lot more like a canyon. Praise the Lord! We tossed a sling around a boulder and rapped down into an amazing narrow slot, with vertical black walls.

Continuing on, there were a few downclimbs and a few rappels that we probably could have downclimbed. Anchors were easy to find: rocks, pinches, trees - they appeared when needed. Soon-ish we could see the End Was Near. A large, half-dead Box Elder tree required fullback-like pushing to get to the actual edge and… YUP! we were about 400 feet above the ground. While we had brought the bolt kit, I was happy to see a very solid gnarly little tree in an ideal position to rappel through the bushes and down.

The night before, I had scrounged around my huge pile of ropes to find a lightweight 300’ rope and was surprised not to find one. What? Turns out one rope I thought was a 300’ Atwood Grand was a 360’ or 400’ one for the direct exit from Heaps. Other ropes were either heavy or not 300’. I could have grabbed a fresh rope out of the warehouse, but that is a bad habit I have gotten into. I had a 220’ Canyon 8.0 which I took, a 175’ Atwood Grand and I also threw in a 200’ Amsteel 3mm pull cord. And the bolt kit.

It’s good to be lucky. We shuffled some gear around so I would have both the hammer AND the bolt kit, hooked up the 220’ rope, and I headed down. The line of rappel was good to start — I could lean to the side to avoid the first few bushes — and then over a large mostly dead bush and still down. The good news was “no roses”. I could see the rope going down, and I could see a big ledge down there, but I could not see the ropebag on the ledge, which I really wanted to see. This rap was just off vertical, so the feet were mostly touching the wall. Down I went. I could see below me some places in the crack I could probably get a stance to place a bolt, if the rope did not reach, but that would be unpleasant. 50 feet above the ledge, I could wiggle the rope and the ropebag would swing out into view, tantalizingly close to the ledge. Down I went. Finally, I could see the rope ended 5 feet of the deck, with some ledges to work to get off the rope and slide to the ground. AWESOME! 220 foot rope, 225 foot rappel.

We were not done yet. The rope pulled without much trouble. Bless! We set up another anchor using out last rapid link, tossed the 220 down. The rap went over a couple ledges then down to the base of the cliff - 180 feet. Tim came down, we bagged the ropes, then boulder hopped down the steep scree to the trail and back to the cars.

BETA

Five or six rappels, mostly short, using slings around natural features. Longest rap 225’.

Narrow enough to be shaded pretty much all the time. Very unlikely to be wet, but we did visit after an extended dry period.

We took 8 hours to do it.

Might be nice to bring some pruning shears to clean out some of the rose bush obstacles. Long pants and sleeves suggested for the roses in the upper canyon.

Name? Guess we should have a name for this. Rosy Cruxifixion was suggested, but the climb is so so good, it would be a shame to use that delightful name on this not-very-delightful canyon. TBA…

Great thanks to Tim for batting cleanup all day, and listening to my stories… Tim also supplied some of these pictures.