Not Mind Bender & Alcatraz

[shaggy125]

Went down to the Roost with MtnBiker (Ian), his wife (Tammy), one of his buddies from Aspen (Shannon), and HikeToKolob (Jason). We had a really great time. Water was low, nothing much above the knees and all the webbing seemed pretty fresh. The rock jammed in a crack and deadman at the end of NMB looked in good shape to us. I tugged on the rock in the crack and decided I trusted it enough to not dig up the deadman. Video, trip report, and I would guess many photos from the other guys to come. This trip was very well documented :five:

Eric.

[hike2kolob]

We had a blast! Eric is a great guide. Here are some photos as a preview.

Ian (MtnBiker) rapping the last big drop in Not Mindbender.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/hike2kolob/IMG_0330.jpg

Me (hike2kolob) dropping into Alcatraz off of MtnBiker's Xterra.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/hike2kolob/IMG_0381.jpg

Eric (Shaggy) and Shannon atop the first big Alcatraz downclimb.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/hike2kolob/IMG_0396.jpg

Eric (Shaggy) rapping in Not Mindbender.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/hike2kolob/IMG_0307.jpg

Tammy dropping from the last drop in Not Mindbender (very blurry...camera troubles).

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/hike2kolob/IMG_0314.jpg

[accadacca]

Sweet! :popcorn:

[marc olivares]

great photos guys...

hey Ian, you got my dad all geeked up about doing a canyon again. :2thumbs: thanks!

looks like we're going down around the 5th...lol

[stefan]

sweet shots :2thumbs:

the blurrrr adds to the effect.

looking forward to the vid. :popcorn:

[nat]

Eric (Shaggy) rapping in Not Mindbender.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g94/hike2kolob/IMG_0307.jpg

Great photos! I am a bit confused by this picture of Eric rapping though. It must be the second to last rap (can't think of where else it would be). But it looks like the picture was taken from well off of the ground? I don't remember a place to climb up high below the rap. Was the photogropher hanging off of a rope?

[hike2kolob]

Great photos! I am a bit confused by this picture of Eric rapping though. It must be the second to last rap (can't think of where else it would be). But it looks like the picture was taken from well off of the ground? I don't remember a place to climb up high below the rap. Was the photogropher hanging off of a rope?

Yes, this is the second to last rap. The watercourse pours into a pool, then takes an abrupt left turn rising out of the pool. The are also ledges on each side of the watercourse, so the combination of being to the left down the watercourse, on the ledge, with the zoom lens may make it look further up than it was. No rope photography... but that is an idea.

[Mtnbiker]

Wow, what an awesome experience for our first technical slots! NMB was definitely fun with the great exit rap, but Alcatraz was my favorite. Not only did it start off with a bang but it stayed tight and skinny the ENTIRE slot. I was very impressed. It gets dark in the middle and you feel like you're in the middle of the earth. way cool.

Thanks a lot to Eric for showing us around and J for the navigation skills. We had a blast!

Well, here are a few of mine in no particular order.

(Oh yeah Marc, I did talk to your dad yesterday and sounded very excited!)

[rockgremlin]

That sillohuette pic is awesome!! Hang that one on the wall! :2thumbs:

[Mtnbiker]

Here are a few more from Not Mindbender. This was also a very fun canyon. :rockon: Just don't follow Eric on the exit :lol8:

[hike2kolob]

Nice shots Mtnbiker. Those are very sharp! Thanks again, you guys were a blast.

Jason

[Mtnbiker]

Yeah man, great times!

I took 180 shots and about 20 were completely blurry! it's hard to hold the camera still in the canyon when the flash goes off. Maybe I'll just focus on sillohuette shots in "no-flash" mode! haha... :mrgreen:

We'll definitely have to do it again soon :thumb:

[Iceaxe]

Nice pics :2thumbs:

[shaggy125]

Sweet pics dudes. The videos are now ready for your viewing pleasure. I highly suggest you click on the link to download the high quality version and watch them full screen rather than watching in the window on my blog. I also put a link to download the Google Video Player in case you don't have it already. If you guys don't mind I'll add some of your photos below the videos when I get time. I will also write up a TR with a full explanation of Ian's comment to not follow me on the exit. I got us to the rim... just not over that fifty foot gap between us and the car :ne_nau: Here are the links:

Not Mind Bender:
http://utoutdoors.blogspot.com/2006/04/not-mindbender.html

Alcatraz:
http://utoutdoors.blogspot.com/2006/04/alcatraz.html

[nat]

[quote="shaggy125"]Sweet pics dudes. The videos are now ready for your viewing pleasure. I highly suggest you click on the link to download the high quality version and watch them full screen rather than watching in the window on my blog. I also put a link to download the Google Video Player in case you don't have it already. If you guys don't mind I'll add some of your photos below the videos when I get time. I will also write up a TR with a full explanation of Ian's comment to not follow me on the exit. I got us to the rim... just not over that fifty foot gap between us and the car :ne_nau: Here are the links:

Not Mind Bender:
http://utoutdoors.blogspot.com/2006/04/not-mindbender.html

Wow, high stemming in Not Mindbender! Looks almost like King Mesa :rockon:

Great videos! :2thumbs:

[shaggy125]

Wow, high stemming in Not Mindbender! Looks almost like King Mesa :rockon:

Great videos! :2thumbs:

Funny where newbies will follow you, sometimes they follow like blind sheep :haha: I stemmed and everyone thought it looked cool so they followed. I decided to try an alternate route out and everyone except Jason (who intelligently followed his GPS coordinates) followed without any questions even after I told them we might not make it out that way, which we didn't :doh: . It was some fun route finding up steep slickrock, it just sucked having to lose all the elevation we gained and then gain it all over again. Here's a picture of us coming down, I made it all the way to the very top only to be shot down by that cliff on the other side :frustrated: .

Eric.

[accadacca]

Are those MTB helmets? :lol8: J/K

What ever works ehh....

[bruce from bryce]

Great TR and photos all. Super video. :hail2thechief:

[marc olivares]

once again Eric, nice video!

your not mindbender intro is hilarious, reminds me of the cheesie video editing stuff i did in a video class i took at the U.
music to video timing....good stuff
:2thumbs:

[Mtnbiker]

haha, yeah for some reason we were on this 80's monster ballad kick while hiking the canyon. That video turned out awesome though. H2K kept resurrecting songs I hadn't heard in a long time :haha:

and yeah we were wearing bike helmets. What a couple of noobs :roflol:

oh well, they worked! Mine had kind of a wide profile though and twice I got wedged in the canyon by my helmet and had to unstrap to get out :eek2:

climbing helmets will probably be in the works when the budget allows.

I was teasing Eric about the exit because although I didn't think his was the BEST way, I thought, well maybe it's better that we stick together. So we did. Oh well, so we climbed another couple hundred vertical, no biggy :lol8:

[shaggy125]

I had to write up something for backcounty.com's blog so I wrote something about our Alcatraz trip. It's kind of lame. Nothing too exciting happened on our trip so I focused more on the history of the canyon then our experience. If anyone is interested they can read it here:

http://backcountryblog.blogspot.com/

I also added some photos to my blog:

http://utoutdoors.blogspot.com/2006/04/alcatraz.html

Eric.