sarahlizzy
07-02-2009, 07:23 AM
A group of six of us did The Subway yesterday. Four had done it before, and 2 were new to canyoneering. We did the standard approach, and made fairly good time to the left fork, where we stopped for food. En-route we were overtaken by a larger group of mostly teens who seemed ill-equipped though, carrying no technical equipment at all that we could see; they just had camelbaks (more of them later).
Was pleased to put some of what I've been learning in practice into effect in a canyon, using a stone knot for the boulder rap to have one person clip on and get ready while the one in front did the rap. I also biner-blocked the two wet raps, setting the length so we could just rap off the end of the rope. Both of these worked really well.
On the last rap, one of our group wanted to go down from the wedged tree by the waterfall, so we rigged a sling anchor round the tree (which we removed afterwards), and she made it down that way, to congratulations from some of the bottom-up hikers watching from below (I think that gave her a bit of an ego-boost :naughty: ). The rest of us went down the usual way, from the bolt and chain anchors. Someone had left a piece of black, non-climbing spec webbing tied to them, made into a sling with a couple of EDKs, and I removed that.
The water level was pretty reasonable, with some stuff we'd had to swim last year being wadeable. The water also seemed quite warm.
On the hike out, one of our party was finding the boulder hopping tough going, and it took rather longer than we'd hoped, which caused us to run out of water by the time we reached the ascent (we'd had 4-5 litres each). That made the climb less than fun. One of the things that made my day though, as an amateur herpetologist, was seeing a couple of racer snakes up close (one on the approach and one in the boulder-hopping section).
As we were hiking out, we saw a search and rescue helicopter hovering some way down the left fork, and later heard that the ill-equipped group we'd seen before had missed the exit climb and tried to make their own way up the cliff, only to get stuck. I was disturbed by the number of people I saw down there with no proper equipment, and apparently no idea of where they were even going in some cases (and by the rather dubious webbing sling which I removed), and find myself surprised there aren't more accidents in there, given how popular it is.
Was pleased to put some of what I've been learning in practice into effect in a canyon, using a stone knot for the boulder rap to have one person clip on and get ready while the one in front did the rap. I also biner-blocked the two wet raps, setting the length so we could just rap off the end of the rope. Both of these worked really well.
On the last rap, one of our group wanted to go down from the wedged tree by the waterfall, so we rigged a sling anchor round the tree (which we removed afterwards), and she made it down that way, to congratulations from some of the bottom-up hikers watching from below (I think that gave her a bit of an ego-boost :naughty: ). The rest of us went down the usual way, from the bolt and chain anchors. Someone had left a piece of black, non-climbing spec webbing tied to them, made into a sling with a couple of EDKs, and I removed that.
The water level was pretty reasonable, with some stuff we'd had to swim last year being wadeable. The water also seemed quite warm.
On the hike out, one of our party was finding the boulder hopping tough going, and it took rather longer than we'd hoped, which caused us to run out of water by the time we reached the ascent (we'd had 4-5 litres each). That made the climb less than fun. One of the things that made my day though, as an amateur herpetologist, was seeing a couple of racer snakes up close (one on the approach and one in the boulder-hopping section).
As we were hiking out, we saw a search and rescue helicopter hovering some way down the left fork, and later heard that the ill-equipped group we'd seen before had missed the exit climb and tried to make their own way up the cliff, only to get stuck. I was disturbed by the number of people I saw down there with no proper equipment, and apparently no idea of where they were even going in some cases (and by the rather dubious webbing sling which I removed), and find myself surprised there aren't more accidents in there, given how popular it is.