Spiderzak
06-12-2013, 10:35 PM
June 8, 2013
Our group of 3 wanted to develop our pothole escape skills in a canyon in the swell, so we decided to go after "the Squeezes little brother"; Cable Canyon. We went expecting wet conditions, but instead encountered dry conditions overall, though still swam once or twice, (depending on how hard you tried not to). We carried wetsuits, and actually had them on for half an hour until we decided dehydration could prove to be a bigger concern than hypothermia the way things were going.
Hindsight being 20/20 of course, I see now a trend of trips reports, candition updates and comments in the beta that would have led us to expect a rather dry pothole experience, rather than the wet one we were anticipating. On the same hand, the wet conditions folks were finding a bit farther north just two weeks prior led us to expect potholes quite full. This canyon seemed a bit of an anomaly.
Regardless, we had a great day, got to practice our partner assisted exits and downclimbing, swam through one pothole and waded through a few more, saw some cool canyon and formations, and laughed all the way through. On one pothole we did use a rope to exit, rather than just a partner assist, and this is adequately described as the toughest pothole to exit of the canyon. Throwing a bag to the other side would be difficult due to its configuration, but we were able to boost the first member to the edge, and this was likely much easier with only shin-deep water rather than chest or chin- deep water.
The beta we used corresponded well with what we found except for the section from the Moroni slopes to the canyon bottom. What we saw and what we read didn't match up too well, we never found the "well defined" sheep trail and we missed the first rappel. I suppose it's possible we didn't hike quite far enough up the side of the canyon before dropping in. Where we did drop in, we found a solid cairn anchor that we used to get down to the canyon floor.
The first picture shows somewhat where went to get into the canyon. We crossed the ridge and dropped in by the left arrow, then traversed the "finger" towards its tip on the right side of the photo, then down and left, and found slickrock too steep for us to downclimb. That's where we encountered the cairn anchor. We thought you could probably choose not to cross the ridge and go in where I drew the dotted line, still ending up at the cairn anchor.
Our group of 3 wanted to develop our pothole escape skills in a canyon in the swell, so we decided to go after "the Squeezes little brother"; Cable Canyon. We went expecting wet conditions, but instead encountered dry conditions overall, though still swam once or twice, (depending on how hard you tried not to). We carried wetsuits, and actually had them on for half an hour until we decided dehydration could prove to be a bigger concern than hypothermia the way things were going.
Hindsight being 20/20 of course, I see now a trend of trips reports, candition updates and comments in the beta that would have led us to expect a rather dry pothole experience, rather than the wet one we were anticipating. On the same hand, the wet conditions folks were finding a bit farther north just two weeks prior led us to expect potholes quite full. This canyon seemed a bit of an anomaly.
Regardless, we had a great day, got to practice our partner assisted exits and downclimbing, swam through one pothole and waded through a few more, saw some cool canyon and formations, and laughed all the way through. On one pothole we did use a rope to exit, rather than just a partner assist, and this is adequately described as the toughest pothole to exit of the canyon. Throwing a bag to the other side would be difficult due to its configuration, but we were able to boost the first member to the edge, and this was likely much easier with only shin-deep water rather than chest or chin- deep water.
The beta we used corresponded well with what we found except for the section from the Moroni slopes to the canyon bottom. What we saw and what we read didn't match up too well, we never found the "well defined" sheep trail and we missed the first rappel. I suppose it's possible we didn't hike quite far enough up the side of the canyon before dropping in. Where we did drop in, we found a solid cairn anchor that we used to get down to the canyon floor.
The first picture shows somewhat where went to get into the canyon. We crossed the ridge and dropped in by the left arrow, then traversed the "finger" towards its tip on the right side of the photo, then down and left, and found slickrock too steep for us to downclimb. That's where we encountered the cairn anchor. We thought you could probably choose not to cross the ridge and go in where I drew the dotted line, still ending up at the cairn anchor.