Not Imlay: Downclimbing, Anchor Building, and Long Rappels! Zion National Park, UT
Back to Zion National Park's Not-Imlay Canyon. Rumor had it someone left a bunch of ropes hanging, so we organized a trip to go in and retrieve these things. The dangling rope was swung on by the numerous Narrows hikers... until it broke. Emergency over, but cleanup still required. (Turns out someone cleaned it up before we got in there). We for this trip included a motley crew of Springdalites, including Kim Molyneux, Claudia Morrison, Cassy Brown, James Yellowdart Marvin and me, Tom Jones. We got an early start and headed on in. We removed three anchors for Rap 1 and installed one in the best place. Very difficult to discern from the top. Helps to make the top webbing very long, so that the 300' rope gets all the way to the ground.
Claudia finishing Rap 1, rest of gang watching
Every trip needs to be a bit different. The difference here was that we downclimbed the entire middle section, replacing two rappels, at a surprisingly moderate level of difficulty.
Kim downclimbing
Not much story... we just descended the canyon. It all went smoothly. While we expected a lot of crap, the crap did not appear, and we departed with all the same stuff we brought in, plus some webbing that was a little beat up (that we replaced).
In the Narrows group shot
Hiked out.
