Trip Report Boss Hog, Short, Duckett, Fry, Death, Goblin's Lair [Archive]

SRG

08-28-2012, 05:04 PM

So my buddy Will and I left Denver on thursday(the 23rd) night. We got a later start than we'd have liked to and it was pouring rain from Denver to Grand Junction. Around 3:00a we finally rolled into our campsite at the Upper Hog Trailhead. After 3 hours of sleep we woke up on Friday to a clear blue sky and headed off for Boss Hog. The canyon looked as though it had flooded recently and there was mud and crumbly water-saturated sandstone all around. It was a blast, LOTS of fun downclimbing and high?stemming and a pretty cool rappel. Dropped into the slot at 8:30a and we were at the bottom of Hog Canyon by 10:00a. From there we headed to the "waterfall". A flood had beaten down reeds and vegetation, so we walked right down the middle of the watercourse past Hog Spring. The waterfall wasn't flowing and the water in the pool was questionable, but the spot was absolutely beautiful. The weather was in the upper 80's, but was forecasted to be in the upper 90's the next day, so we decided to escape to Cedar Mesa where water abounds.
Here's the vid of Boss Hog. I know it's long. I left out music 'cause I think all the grunting and sloshing and scraping gives a good feel for what the canyon is like.

http://youtu.be/g0zRWjvy-4Y

We planned to do Short Canyon that(friday) evening. At Duckett Crossing, White Canyon was flowing. We decided that we could ford the flood easily in Will's Xterra, but we almost got stuck in some deep mud on the other side of White Canyon.
After locating the trailhead and setting up camp, we dropped into Short around 4:30p. Short was more fun than I had expected. There were some easy down climbs and nipple deep water. I encountered a rattlesnake that really should have bitten me, in the pic of the rattlesnake there is a muddy boot print right next to the snake, that is where I stepped... I don't know why it didn't bite me. We took the climbers exit, and maybe we didn't look hard enough, but we couldn't find a 5.4 exit, the one we used was quite a bit more difficult. Finished around 6 or 6:30 probably? Here are the pics.

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The next day we did Duckett. We weren't sure what to expect in this canyon and it turned out to be the highlight of the trip. Duckett is a seriously fun little slot. The first pothole had really gross green water in it, so we went over it with a full body stem 15ft up. The stem wasn't too difficult but the downclimb to dry land had very tricky moves.
Immediately there was another pothole with a downclimb into grosser water and this one couldn't be climbed over. We ended up rigging a double potshot retrievable guided rappel. The pothole had a good sized chockstone on it's downcanyon side. On the upcanyon side of the pothole had two chockstones on top of each other. We threw a potshot over the downcanyon chockstone and pulled it until it wedged. We then tensioned the line and wedged another potshot on the higher of the two upcanyon chockstones. To this potshot we tied a pull cord(orange webbing) to the bottom so that when we were down, we could pull it over the chockstone that it was wedged in. We started our rappel from the lower of the two upcanyon chockstones. We both got down dry and got all of our gear back.. success! The rest of the canyon is alot of fun downclimbing and apparently usually swimming although we didn't encounter any. It ended with a rappel into a spectacular lush box canyon. Duckett took us a bit more time than short did.

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After Duckett we check out fry. Upon completing the first narrows, potential storm clouds turned us back.

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The next day we checked out Death Canyon. This canyon is short and easy. Really straightforward route finding.

Later on that day we did Goblin's Lair, or more accurately Chamber of the Basilisk. This is an unexpected feature. If you check out the Chamber of the Basilisk, make sure to follow the path that the water takes at the bottom of the cave, It leads to a smaller multi chambered cave. Awesome.

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All in all it was an awesome trip. It never got too hot, couldn't have hoped for better weather in August.

-Sam

SRG

08-30-2012, 02:02 PM

Nice work with the Potshots!

1.5 hrs for Boss Hog? That is quick!

Thanks alot Slot,
Yea that was pretty quick I guess. There were just two of us and the 1.5hrs was from right when we dropped in to when we finished the tech section.

Awesome report! Enjoyed the vid, pics and TR. How long was the stemming? You get any video of the climb out? :crazy:

Thanks Kish, There were lots of downclimbs throughout the trip, but the only real lateral stemming that we had to do was for a brief period in Boss Hog. It was pretty short, maybe 200-300ft, but it was feet-to-kness/back-to-elbows and I thought it was strenuous... knee and elbow pads saved skin but we were both raspberried up at the end.

Didn't get any video of the scramble out. We took the class 4 exit gully, not the 5.7 exit between Hog 1 and 2. It was pretty easy to find(we scoped it out from the top on the approach hike). I didn't find the exit gully to be very exposed or difficult. The BlueGnome beta has pictures and explanations of both exits.