Leprechaun Canyon - Right Fork

Went through the Right Fork of Leprechaun Saturday and had a great time. It was the first canyon I've ever led so it was a more full-on experience than usual. With it raining in the area for the prior week, we expected a good deal of wading. The canyon (right fork) was almost completely dry. There was one small 30ft section at the end that barely covered our knees. We never saw the dino tracks but we wound up up-climbing a bit of middle fork and had fun in that slot - SUPER tight! We also had two "new" canyoneers with us so we set up three rappels. Great canyon - I'd like to go back and do the other two soon.

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Originally Posted by jdamin

Went through North Fork of Leprechaun Saturday and had a great time. It was the first canyon I've ever led so it was a more full-on experience than usual. With it raining in the area for the prior week, we expected a good deal of wading. The canyon (north fork) was almost completely dry. There was one small 30ft section at the end that barely covered our knees. We never saw the dino tracks but we wound up up-climbing a bit of middle fork and had fun in that slot - SUPER tight! We also had two "new" canyoneers with us so we set up three rappels. Great canyon - I'd like to go back and do the other two soon.

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Just a quibble, but we usually call them "East", "West" and "Middle".

Please realize the Middle is much more to bite off than the East or West, like 5X as much.

Tom :moses:

It also helps if you know what you are looking for. I walked over the top of those dino tracks a couple dozen times before I "saw" them.

Here is the thread from when we discovered the tracks with a couple pictures. If you find one of the tracks and know its a trackway the other tracks come into focus pretty easy.

http://www.bogley.com/forum/showthread.php?22301

Tom - duly noted. And thanks for the heads up on middle. I've also heard middle was pretty intense - for that reason we didn't venture far.
So is right fork east & left fork west?

And thanks for the info Iceaxe - hopefully I'll be able to find them next time I'm down there.

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Originally Posted by jdamin

Tom - duly noted. And thanks for the heads up on middle. I've also heard middle was pretty intense - for that reason we didn't venture far.
So is right fork east & left fork west?

And thanks for the info Iceaxe - hopefully I'll be able to find them next time I'm down there.

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Geographically, there is no standard as to whether left and right are looking up or looking down. Seems like history prevails. So, I have no idea. Yes.

The way you can tell the East Fork is that...





... Wait for it ...







it is east of the Middle Fork. (bah-dum)


Looking up the canyon, you are looking more or less North, so the East Fork is on the right.

Tom

Right??? Left??? Depends which way you are looking....

I did a little research on this about 10 years ago and historically right and left were most common heading up the canyon. I believe this is because most canyons were first explored from the bottom up. I'm talking about exploring canyons over the past 400 years, not just recent slot canyons.

River runners were the first to really screw things up, as their directions were always bassackwards, but were often prefixed with river left or river right. Meaning as you floated the river which side you should be looking towards.

And now canyoneers are following river runners in mucking up the system further and sometimes prefix directions with LDC (Looking Down Canyon) or LUC (Looking Up Canyon).

Anyhoo.... those were my observations and not anything official.

Tom and I have had this same discussion several times and decided in our infinite and god like wisdom governing all things canyoneering, that referring to the forks as East, Middle West was the preferred method in the name of safety. Because you can tell Search and Rescue the guy with the broken leg is in the East Fork and there should be no misunderstandings.

Now how is that for muddying the waters.... :cool2: