Mystery seemed like a fantastic way to start off a trip to Zion this year, especially with beautiful clear blue skies. Our party consisted of the same five of us who did it last year, me, Sylvia, Sara, Joyce and Zoe, plus a canyon newbie, Andrea, who has done plenty of climbing but this was to be her first canyon.
Our rental minivan got to the east mesa trailhead surprisingly easily; I didn't hear the sound of scraping metal even once, and we set off hiking from there at about 6am, reaching the top of the canyon a little before 7. We took our time setting our packs up, putting on gear and having a quick snack before descending death gully at about 8. On our way down we encountered a lot of recent debris, which made the footing a little treacherous in places, coupled with lots of newly fallen trees/branches. There were also 3 fairly large patches of melting snow, but these didn't present any kind of hazard.
At the point where there is that butt-slide downclimb/sequence, somebody has built a very neat little cairn anchor which we rapped off. The other anchors we encountered were all in good condition, so although we had gone in being prepared to resling anchors, in the event we didn't need to. The optional rap between Mystery Spring and Mystery Falls is currently sling less - last year there a nearby tree had a sling on it, but that was missing and we downclimbed anyway, so didn't leave an anchor there.
There is now one more rap, immediately prior to Mystery Spring, where that old tree trunk used to be down-climbable in the slot section just before the spring rap - that tree has now snapped in two and looks extremely precarious. There is a brand new slung tree anchor there to turn a dubious downclimb into a much safer rap though.
At some point in the canyon, poor Zoe came down hard on her knee and it got quite swollen, which made things a little tough for her on the downclimbs. Nothing was insurmountable though - we managed by providing skyhooks in the way of slings from above to hold on to, and for one downclimb, Zoe rapping down with me providing a meat anchor.
Andrea handled her first canyon really well, taking everything in her stride and adapting quickly to the two new 60 metre Canyonfires we took with us, after her initial shock about it being "like accessory cord!"
Speaking of the Canyonfire, I was really pleased with how it performed, although it's quite tight getting 60 metres of it stuffed into a Bagarino, which I understand is not specced to take that much rope. It *does* fit, but only just and I think that perhaps slowed things down a little. Between that, the leisurely lunch we took (cooked food in the canyon is always nice), taking things slowly and explaining some of the unfamiliar rope work to Andrea, it was about half past five when we arrived at the top of Mystery Falls. The two long raps took a long time with six people. It's perhaps worth a moment to describe what we did at each:
Mystery Spring
The hand line out to the anchors looked a little dubious and might be a candidate for replacement soon. It has quite short tails, but an experimental tug gave me enough confidence to use it as a handline (to which I clipped myself). I rapped first and unwound the rope as I went, hanging the bag from a gear loop on a Dynema sling. i tossed it from the top of the boulder. To deploy the second Canyonfire for the pull cord, Zoe clipped the bag to the rap line, which I held taut, and then let it go, sliding down the main line as a zip line. At the right point I let go of the zip line and the whole caboodle fell into the wet sand in front of me.
Mystery Falls
I tossed the rope bag into the narrows. Zoe was to be first, and I figured that the current taking the bag would provide a sort of auto-firemans belay, especially with the extra 80 feet of rope. It did, but Zoe found this inconvenient. She was also hindered by a narrows hiker who kept picking the rope bag up and messing with it, despite repeatedly being asked to leave it alone. Note to self - tossing the bag when there are non-canyoneers around is potentially a bad idea.
We rapped pretty much everything single strand, using ATC-XPs (apart from Zoe who uses a Pirana), in high friction mode, with an extra leg loop biner, and being ready to go to a Z for extra friction. This seemed to work well on the 8.3mm Canyonfire.
Anyway, we had an amazing time and we were back in time to pick up Keyhole permits for today, which we are now going to go and do. Signing off now.
