Video TR - "My Fault" "Your Fault"

[shaggy125]

Nat Smale, Ben, and I have been trying to get a trip planned to do some canyons for a while now, but for whatever reason things never work out... until this weekend. Ben wasn't able to make it but I snuck down with Nat and his friend Stefan for some canyons near Lake Powell. These are some canyons that Ram (and I'm sure others) has done a few times accessing from the lake. We didn't have a boat so getting to the canyons was a bit more work. With some long tricky road finding and 4-wheeling on what can barely be called roads, we were able to access them from land. Ram told me one was good and the other was really good. Tom said both of them were just okay. What was our consensus? They were both, in our opinion, very good. It was strange that they were right next to each other, yet they were both VERY different. One consisted of tight squeezes to downclimbs to stems to crawls out of small but deep potholes to rapping into tight deep dark narrows. It was a physically challenging slot that easily beat us up and took quite a bit longer than we expected considering its length. The second canyon was more open with some convoluted very nice narrows. It had lots of great downclimbing, more and bigger rappelling (although nothing over maybe 80 ft. or so), some seeps with green plants growing along the walls, a small amount of water (we were lucky, it could hold a lot more in wetter times I'm sure) and a few challenging potholes (one really nasty keeper). All in all it was a great trip, the canyons were quite a bit better than we expected, very, very nice! I just put together a 13 minute long video for you all to salivate over, but it might be a couple days before Google makes it available for you all to enjoy. The hi-res version from my new camcorder looks sooooo much better than the crappy stuff I've posted in the past, hopefully it looks decent after being compressed to Google Video Standards (that's where I am uploading it to). I'll let you know when it's up and I have an idea for writing up a video TR that I might try out once it's up too.

Eric.

[rockgremlin]

Can't wait to see it! :2thumbs:

[Iceaxe]

Hmmm.... sounds like HDH and GDJ.

[shaggy125]

Alright, I wrote up a video TR last night, but now you can actually watch the video while you read it. The video is live now and looks better than I expected. It's a little on the lengthy side, unless you're an outdoor freak who likes watching 13 minutes of canyoneering... ok you all will probably love it.

http://utoutdoors.blogspot.com/2006/01/my-fault-and-your-fault-video-tr.html

Eric.

P.S. if you want to watch the video and read along with the TR you will want to open a new browser window (Do something like click "File" then "New Window" in most browsers. Hold "Ctrl" and "N" in internet explorer) click on the video link, then resize both windows to be able to view both at the same time. Or if that sounds too complicated you can just watch the video and screw reading the TR.

[rock_ski_cowboy]

That crap is awesome! :popcorn: :five: Only wishing I was in it. Oh we're going to have some fun with that new camera of yours.

Ben

[lonepeakgeek]

Very nice video. It's the middle of January and my wife and I watched the video together and ached for the canyon country. Can you give the name or location of those canyons- we'd like to add them to our "to-do" list. Thanks.

[Iceaxe]

Nice video..... very well done. :popcorn:

[shaggy125]

Very nice video. It's the middle of January and my wife and I watched the video together and ached for the canyon country. Can you give the name or location of those canyons- we'd like to add them to our "to-do" list. Thanks.

Well... the navigation is tricky, and it's VERY easy, especially when doing it from roads rather than the lake, to drop into the wrong canyon. Miss the drainage by 100 or 200 yards and you could get yourself into a different slot that looks like it has a HUGE exit rappel, and probably no way out (unless you have a boat shuttle set up). Miss it by 100 or 200 yards in the other direction and you would hit another slot that I know nothing about. I would have to go back and take really good notes before I could write up a description that I would feel like wouldn't get you lost. That plus I promised a friend I wouldn't broadcast specific info about them on the Internet. Like Iceaxe's suggestion on the Moab slots, the best thing to do is find someone who has been there and have them show it to you, or just wait. Nat goes out with Mike Kelsey a few times a year and said he knows about these canyons and there is a very good chance they will be featured in his next Technical Canyon guide, due to come out Spring 2007. My guess is that you still have lots of good slots to keep you busy until then, I know I do.

Eric.

[shaggy125]

Earlier today I found a new feature on Google's video site, so I used it to update my TR's. All video's now play from my website rather than having to click on the link. This Google video thing really is cool, the file I uploaded was 250 MB and 5 days later they shrunk it to around 80 (much larger than I expected) and added it to their database. Then I can copy and paste the html code from their site to add it to my own web page. Very cool, you all don't have any excuses now, if you have outdoor footage upload it and share it with us :2thumbs:

Eric.

P.S. I tried copy and pasting the html code into one of my posts, but when I previewed it, it didn't recognize it and just posted the code instead of the video box. Oh well, it was worth a try.