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Fun afternoon in Spry Canyon
Went through Spry canyon this last weekend with my son for the first time - what a fun canyon! The initial climb up was a bit heinous in the heat since we waited to the crack of noon to make our start. Found the canyon quite easily but of course ignored Tom's route advice to go right when descending off the bench into the bowl where lodge and spry meet - so we had the pleasure of doing and extra rappel off a tree to get into the bowl. Noticed we were not the only idiots in the world as the tree already had a webbing anchor on it!
Someone has recently replaced most of the webbing - so thanks if this is you reading this! :nod: and the bolts all seemed to be in good shape. Ran into a group of five who graciously let us pass them using their ropes, two gals in the group work in the park maintaining the trails - made sure to thank them for all their great work keeping Zion a wonderful place to visit. So next time you run across a park employee, make sure to stop and thank them for the work they do there dealing with the millions of visitors.
The silver lining of doing the late start was that the canyon was in the shade on the way out - however, we almost went though all our water (3/4 gallon for two) with the heat so make sure you bring plenty with you.
Lastly, we did not bring wetsuits and glad we left them back at the hotel. We encountered waist deep water at best that was not that cold. If you want to go the extra effort you could avoid getting wet altogether.
Finished the canyon with a glorious swim in a Pine Creek swimming hole prior to walking out to catch the shuttle at canyon junction back into town.
Note, we found a couple of the early rappels and down climbs to be "spicy" as Tom notes in his book so if bringing a large group or noobs - plan for long day.
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