Canyoneering history of the Colorado Plateau

[moab mark]

I have been reading thru the tales over on the canyon tales site. Does anyone know of any other sites with the history of canyoneering in Southern Utah? Who is Dennis Turville, Mike Bogart, Jenny Hall and all the rest of the pioneers? Cool site.

For those of you not familiar with the canyon tales site heres the address.
http://www.math.utah.edu/~sfolias/canyontales/intro/

[Iceaxe]

It probably depends on what you mean by "pioneered". I doubt you will find much on the CP that was not first done by Uranium miners, cowboys or Native Americans. For example.... every canyon on Lake Powell was done by the survey crews before the dam was built. And when doing the crux of Trail Canyon look on the south wall and you will see some old moki steps.... those are just a couple examples...

For my own personal use I often refer to "first document descent", which means a canyoneer has pictures and a TR that establishes a time-line for an early recreational descent.....

YMMV

[Ryebrye]

It probably depends on what you mean by "pioneered". I doubt you will find much on the CP that was not first done by Uranium miners, cowboys or Native Americans. For example.... every canyon on Lake Powell was done by the survey crews before the dam was built. And when doing the crux of Trail Canyon look on the south wall and you will see some old moki steps.... those are just a couple examples...

For my own personal use I often refer to "first document descent", which means a canyoneer has pictures and a TR that establishes a time-line for an early recreational descent.....

YMMV

Clearly you lie. There are secret canyons in Lake Powel that only a guide angency knows the magical password to. When parking a boat nearby a solid wall of rock, the guide will press his face against the sandstone and whisper an ancient incantation. After a moment of rumbling the worlds most amazing pristine canyon will appear in front of the guide and he will lead you through a fantasyland that would make Willy Wonka blush.

Clearly no mortal could have ever completed those canyons prior to this guide service, clearly nobody as lowly as a "surveyor" could do so!

[Don]

Canyon Tales. I love that site. Really should not click on that link while at work...

[Jaxx]

+1 on loving the site. Stefan has an awesome map to that must have taken days to put together.

[Don]

Oh yeah, speaking of Stefan's map. How big is 7740 x 5544 pixels? I mean, I'd love to print that map and hang it like art in my apartment. Can Kinkos print something big enough to get full resolution so it looks good?

The link the The Map.

[ibenick]

Oh yeah, speaking of Stefan's map. How big is 7740 x 5544 pixels? I mean, I'd love to print that map and hang it like art in my apartment. Can Kinkos print something big enough to get full resolution so it looks good?

I'm sure they could do it up at least 3' wide and still maintain decent quality. On my trip to Coyote Gulch last month I stitched together several screenshots from Google Earth, labeled key points in photoshop and printed it off on a 36" wide plotter we have at my office and it looked fantastic. The finished product was 36" W x 18" H. Quality of the attached pics is not the best as I took them with my phone but the map was high enough quality that I could identify very small details in the canyon.

[Iceaxe]

Clearly no mortal could have ever completed those canyons prior to this guide service, clearly nobody as lowly as a "surveyor" could do so!

Back when I was a big time boater we used to chat up the old man down the street for info on cool stuff around Lake Powell, the dude was part of the group that surveyed the entire high water mark for the future reservoir. Canyoneers are probably one of the few groups that can really appreciate what an amazing feat that really was.

I did ask the question once about how they surveyed the high cliffs and was told they used a high power rifle and would shoot the cliff face and the bullet hole would become a survey marker they could triangulate off of.... I thought that was kinda cool....

[Cirrus2000]

What, you guys hadn't seen that before?!? I love that map!

A couple of months ago, Jenny was back in Choprock (Kaleidoscope), 28 years after her first descent of the canyon with Mike Bogart. She has posted here, in fact, but is pretty active on the Yahoo group, and is starting to make a bunch more trips back to Utah...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canyons/message/55845

[Iceaxe]

Here is some really great information about first descents....... this is a must read for all canyoneers....

First Descent? by Dave Black

[Cirrus2000]

True - the term should be "first recorded descent", if anything...

[Don]

Here is some really great information about first descents....... this is a must read for all canyoneers....

First Descent? by Dave Black

How do you tell if a canyon is a first ascent or not?

You don’t. You can claim it if you want, but there will be some quirky smiles from guys like me when you do.

-Dave Black from the above linked article.


I like that.

[stefan]

i somehow missed most of this thread. glad y'all like the map and the site.

don, i haven't printed the map big enough to be able to read the lettering well. it's kinda expensive to make big printouts ($8 a square foot at kinkos, i think). i have, however, printed out many satellite images of canyons on 11x17. i typically make sure the image has a resolution of 300 pixels per inch and this makes a very crisp, smooth image using a nice laser printer. i have not taken the time to figure out what is the minimum pixel count per inch necessary to make everything look just as sharp to the eye close up. also, i can imagine for some images, you could get away with a lower resolution.