Neon Canyon 3/13/14

[TommyBoy]

So this was day three of our trip, unfortunately I didn't take any pics of Headless Hen and the few I took in Raven didn't turn out well, so I'll just mention that we did them and move on. Every one bailed on this trip except my good friend Dale so we drove down Tues. morning hiked down and did HH then camped down by the head of the canyon woke up Wed. and did Raven then hiked back to the car to head over to Egypt TH. We arrived at the TH around 3:30 and started repacking our bags for all the gear we would need for 4 days down at the river, we started hiking around 4:45. I had never been down to Escalante before so I just followed my friend who had, which is how we got lost (just a little bit) on the way down. In his defense he was following a series of cairn's that just stopped all of a sudden, he had thought they were headed down a different route than the one he took last time, but he wasn't certain and so he followed the cairns. At this point it was around 7:15 and we were running out of daylight, so we decided to turn around and go to the point where he felt he knew the route down. We arrived at the Escalante River around 9:30 that night and after a quick dinner we crashed for the night.

The plan had been to do choprock the next day, but after Raven being a little more physical than we had expected and arriving so late, when our alarms went off at 6am we just said screw it we're doing Neon today and went back to sleep till about 8.

Here we are getting ready

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On to the aproach

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We decided to hike a little further and drop into a side drainage just above the normal head for a little extra fun

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Only canyoneers would be dumb enough to go swimming outdoors in march and call it fun
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As you can see there was a lot of water in the canyon that day

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This was the coldest day of the trip since there was lots of water and not much work involved. All the other canyons we did were either drier, or else involved lots of work which warmed us up. Oh and the pothole in Neon was completely submerged in water. It was so full that when we swam over it, we couldn't even feel the exit lip.

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We got back to camp around 2:30pm and after hanging everything up to dry the sun came out and we took a nap till about 7:00 then we cooked dinner and went back to bed in preparation for the next day.

[ratagonia]

Awesome. Yeah, those March trips can be tough, especially when you find tons of swimming in Neon. Coooooold!

Tom

[Byron]

[QUOTE=ratagonia;554791 Coooooold!

Drysuit, baby!

Now I'm startin' to get a hankerin' for the desert. I just returned from a long vacation only to be slammed with work. I'll have to figure a way around that.

Looks like fun. I thought the trees there might be lit up by now.

[qedcook]

Tag-along on this thread, but where did you drop in? What is the best place to drop in for a canyoneer that can hike fast and that wants to see as much of the canyon in one day as is worth seeing?

[TommyBoy]

We were using the climb-utah beta and we hiked to the GPS point for the top of Neon and then kept going to where the canyon forked and our way was blocked by a slot joining Neon from the left side. We hiked up this side slot maybe 100 yds to a point where we could just walk in. The side slot isn't that far past the GPS point though, maybe 5 min of moderately paced hiking.

[ratagonia]

Checkout the downloadable Neon Map on the Escalante Tab:

http://www.canyoneeringusa.com/utah/introduction/maps/map-download-center/

Shane shows what I call the Fork Chop entrance. Most people down there are "Bucket Listing" the Golden Cathedral rap, and take the Sport Entrance. The next entrance up, the More Fun entrance, picks up the second keeper pothole, thus has more fun. Above that is mostly walking for quite a ways, but it is good walking (or swimming).

Let me give you a caution, however. When full of water, those superlong swims really take it out of you! The technical canyon action is very spread out in that canyon, but there is lots of walking and/or swimming with nice scenery.

Tom

[MrAdam]

Tag-along on this thread, but where did you drop in? What is the best place to drop in for a canyoneer that can hike fast and that wants to see as much of the canyon in one day as is worth seeing?

We dropped into the Fork Chop entrance marked on Tom's map when Neon was in low conditions and felt like we could have easily gone in at the tree entrance and still had time to spare. The sport route is really short, downclimb, keeper and golden cathedral rap if I remember right. I would have been slighlty disappointed if that was all the canyon we did that day.

[qedcook]

Shane shows what I call the Fork Chop entrance. Most people down there are "Bucket Listing" the Golden Cathedral rap, and take the Sport Entrance. The next entrance up, the More Fun entrance, picks up the second keeper pothole, thus has more fun. Above that is mostly walking for quite a ways, but it is good walking (or swimming).
Tom

Thanks, just the info I was looking for. Looking at the satellite imagery, it looked like there might have been some slot stuff higher up, but I couldn't quite tell.

Thanks again.

One last question, how much of Ringtail can you see from the bottom up?

[ratagonia]

Thanks, just the info I was looking for. Looking at the satellite imagery, it looked like there might have been some slot stuff higher up, but I couldn't quite tell.

Thanks again.

One last question, how much of Ringtail can you see from the bottom up?

There is plenty of good slot above there, but above that next little fork coming in, it splits into 4 or 5 forks, and becomes hard to get into.

The thing about Neon is, there are several quite interesting sections, but they are quite spread out.

Ringtail from the bottom is fun, very dark (bring a headlamp), and takes maybe 45 minutes up and back at a very casual pace.

Hiking around and coming in from the top is good fun, but not to be underestimated. A couple rappels and a couple keeper potholes... and a couple swims at times. Maybe 4 hours total from mouth to mouth, +/- a lot depending on how you are with keepers.

Tom