North Wash: Right and Middle Leprechaun, Left Blarny, Hogwarts, and Death Canyon

[RyanGJ]

Three 70 degree blue bird days, only a handful of other people around, and 100% bone dry canyons (well 99.9, there was one puddle!). Even the Sandthrax campground was near empty!

Did Right (East) and Middle Leprechaun. Beautiful slots! Yep the middle is a skinny as they say. Yield the advise of doing right first and checking out the final slot section. If you don't fit here the middle fork is not for you!

The right fork was also a blast on its own. Webbing in the right is getting a bit on the worn side. The middle had all new webbing. Both were completely dry. Right took about 3 hrs with a party of 4 and Middle took about 4.5 hrs with a party of 2.


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Rope Grooves from using the top anchor. Better to do a downclimb to a better anchor position.

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We also did left Blarney. A single rap and lot of fun down climbing. Also 100% dry. There are several anchors established through out the canyon but everything it is relatively straight forward (and more fun) to down climb everything after the first rap. Took a party of 4 about 3 hrs.



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There was an anchor here without webbing and some describe this as a second rap, but the downclimb is fun and not bad at all! A rap would be harder here then the downclimb!



We did an evening at Hogwarts. The Hogwarts semi keeper pothole is dry. All anchors in good shape with newer webbing. Took 2 of us about 2 hrs.



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We also did a quick “on-the-way-home” canyon described on Ryan’s site as Death Canyon. While the canyon is a quick romp the final rappel deadman has been washed out. We ended up rapping of a single knot block. If you are considering doing this canyon and want a better anchor you can rebuild the deadman, but it will require up-hauling rocks through a rather slimy and mudding pool. There is nearly nothing to work with at the drop itself. Better choice may be to use releasable off a chock stone that is about 60 feet from the final drop. Can be done in an hour, more if needing to rebuild the anchor.



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[geckobiker]

Picture 5, describe anchor please.


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[dakotabelliston]

Looks like a great weekend !!! Thanks for the great pictures.

[RyanGJ]

Picture 5, describe anchor please.


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I believe your referring to the picture of the start of Blarney. It is a simple biner block (clove hitch on spine of biner so that the tail end of the rope does not pull through the rapid) that you are looking at. The anchor is large boulder that is out of the picture.

This is actually the only mandatory rappel for the canyon. We could easily see the bottom and used the "rope bag at the bottom approach" for speed sake (admittedly negligible in this instance). Before LMAR (last man at risk) rappels down, the end that held the biner block is feed down until it touches the bottom and then LMAR does a double rope rap.

Honestly this approach is not my favorite as standard set up, but it was the primary set up for the group I was with, and one of the most common approaches I have seen. All the remaining rope is at the bottom and therefore useless in case of emergency (this was a very experienced group and this was a very straightforward rappel). Additionally the biner block in this case is really unnecessary as LMAR will double rope rap anyway, we could see the bottom to know if both ends made it.

It is however quick as you don't need to set any rope length (as long as your rope is long enough!) until LMAR. Even then LMAR could just attach a pull cord and then you never really have to spend time setting rope lengths. I believe that is the reason for the popularity of this approach. It is quick with reduced risk of unexpectedly having the rope set to short. There is also potential risk in a double rope set up as the ends could be uneven with one reaching the bottom and the other not. However there are safe and easy ways to prevent or deal with either of these scenarios.

A simple double rope rap with visual of both ends down would have been (arguably) the simplest approach. Biner block with rope bag up top and would leave you with the best set up for contingency.