Gravel Canyon: it's full of it.
Last week while doing a bunch of day hikes in Cedar Mesa I met up with Cody (@adamsco) and did Gravel Canyon with him and my son Aaron. My wife Robin opted to stay out of the cold water and went to Natural Bridges to have a leisurely day of hiking and grab us a camping spot there.
We met Cody at Soldier's Grave in the morning were we had camped the night before overlooking the canyon where the Cheesebox road crosses the canyon. We sorted gear and headed up the road to the Gravel TH. The crossing of the canyon was not difficult in Cody's truck but we found the overall road conditions to the TH a tad worse than we expected. The 12 miles took us over an hour to cover and by the time we were setting out from the TH it was 10:45.
I think we parked just a little too far north on the road and we had some small confusion finding the right spot to descend into the canyon. But soon we had walls of Cedar Mesa sandstone above our heads and we were headed down the wash.
Pretty soon we were past any bushwhacking and clambering over and around small boulders. We were also confused trying to match the beta about the raps with what we found and we finally understood why later on: the canyon has changed significantly this year with floods that have washed down large amounts of, yes wait for it...gravel! We found no water at all in the upper section. Zip nada. We also could find none of the features we expected with respect to existing anchors. We think some of those features have been buried and/or changed as well.
Here's Aaron enjoying some down climbing (sorry for the poor photo quality in this report I was using my point-and-shoot):
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At the first set of obstacles we down climbed the first one into a nice slot but then found a drop-off that was more difficult.
No obvious anchors were in place anywhere and we considered up climbing and trying to find a route around. Instead we were able to build a deadman anchor pretty quickly. We sent Aaron down with both Cody and I backing up the deadman to keep weight off of it and then had Aaron weight it after he was off rappel. I did the same and Cody rapped off the now-tested anchor. We were using my brand new 100 ft. Canyon Fire rope and I made a rookie mistake on the pull: I let a pig tail slip by and stuck the first pull of my rope! :eek2:
Time to try out some ascending techniques. Cody was very kind to ascend, re-rig and we got a clean pull that time. It wouldn't have been disastrous as we had brought an extra rope for safety and could have cut the rope and still had ~70ft. of my new rope. Instead I was humbled and thanked Cody for saving my rope.
We made pretty good time after that and soon found the famous hole featured in the Imlay calendar. The pool was gone! Bone dry:
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The next parts of the canyon were a lot of fun and very scenic. Tons of bouldering among the beautiful Cedar Mesa stones.
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We really liked this ancient log wedged between those boulders in a spot where you have to sort of crawl under them:
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Here's Aaron and I standing over an an interesting set of boulders followed by what it looked like underneath it:
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This shot give a good sense of those immense boulders down there!
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The boulder fields are interspersed with some nice narrows.
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But you were never long before you got out in the open again and soon bouldering.
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There was one rap I didn't photograph in which another party had also built a deadman. Again we backed it up with meat and tested it before finally trusting it but there were no problems. I think the chockstone that was mentioned is now buried or gone.
At the final rap we finally saw water below, the first water our feet would need to touch. How deep? Did we need to put on wet suits? We finally decided to keep our clothes dry and take the time to suit up. Good thing we did, because after this there were several swimming/wading sections.
I think I saw the horn that has been slung but we also found a fresh sling in place left LDC under a rock overhang. It had a wire gate biner on it that we couldn't abide so we replaced that with a rapid link and down we went.
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Next...more boulders, and boulders and boulders. Where was that ruin? Just as we turned a corner and it came into view the silence of the canyon was shattered with a piercing cry: Reehk! Reehk! Reehk! A Peregrine Falcon pair appears to be nesting directly above the ruin and one of the pair kept tabs on our progress and scolded us from above until we passed. That was a real thrill!
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At the glen we removed suits and had no trouble working our way to the rim after enjoying some more views of the narrows and the ruins.
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The ruins are just barely visible in this shot which give a sense of the scale of the canyon:
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Looking down canyon past the glen:
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As you can see the weather changed in the afternoon and it got colder and windy. We made good time back to the car but still with all the fussing with stuck ropes and anchors it took us a tad over 8 hours and it was 7:00PM as we loaded up and headed back out. The 12 miles went no more quickly and poor Robin was waiting in the cold, dark, windy campsite for us; more than a little worried about our late arrival.
Since we've been home she's been reminding me of that fact a few times to her advantage :haha:
Still it was a fantastic day in a great canyon. A big thanks to Cody for coming down and joining us. The next day we did some viewing of rock art before he had to head home. (More TRs coming in other forums)
