TR- Uturn, Elephant Butte, Medievil Chamber (Morning Glory), & Dragonfly

[RyanGJ]

Had a wonderful spontaneous trip to Moab. We hit some of the short and easy canyon favorites of the area.

Uturn-
Took the four of us 1.5 hrs to complete, including time for webbing cleanup. All anchors are in great shape. While there are bolts in place we were able "ghost" this canyon without using the bolts. The first rappel can be down climbed, but it is a bit tricky. At the next rappel some of us jumped (can't say I would recommend it, but is doable) and the rest used a short rope (65 ft) around a rock in the water course as a hand line. We were easily able to flip the rope off the rock. The next rappel can be down climbed, just look to the right for some features. If you wish to rap there is an arch that can ideally be rigged with a retrievable anchor, leaving nothing behind. The final rappel is where a lot of issues are being created. In my opinion its best to rap where the canyon comes to a head. While this can be "ghosted" we left the anchor in place to encourage people to rap form this point. We removed over 80 feet of webbing from various rappels along the canyon rim on the way to Park Ave. There is one picture of me carrying 50 feet of new bright red webbing someone left to rap from the rock next to the large balanced rock. There were literally 5 separate anchors for rappels, each with about 30 or more feet of highly visible webbing in place. This has created numerous and very obvious rope groves all over the place! While the park is pondering how to manage canyons, I believe its best to keep a low profile.

Elephant Butte-
Took 4 of us 2.5 hrs to complete including summit time. If you haven't been up this route finding challenge I highly recommend it. I love it more every time I do it! There seems to be more or less an established user trail now. This is avoidable by keeping to the rock and washes, but at least its concentrating the impact. All anchors are is good shape. The water before the last anchor was very minimal, it's a fun stem to avoid it!

Medieval Chamber (Morning Glory Arch)-
Using the return climbing exit it took us 2-3 hrs including waiting on groups ahead of us. This was my first time to the famous arch. We encountered two large guided groups that were moved through quickly. The arch itself is a fun feature. The simultaneous rap was much easier than expected, but defiantly has a little pucker factor getting started. Fantastic! As we did not have a shuttle we took the climbing return exit. I would NOT recommend doing this exit with inexperienced folks!! It is very exposed and a fall would likely be fatal. With that said we found the route to be obvious and with good holds when needed. I found this more exposed than the exit of Lost and Found and MMI. This canyon was really a blast for the novelty of it.

Dragonfly-
This took about 3 hrs using the earlier exit out of Courthouse Wash. I really enjoy this little canyon! Was the first "wet" canyon for half our group. Anchors are in good shape. We used the earlier exit out of Courthouse Wash for the first time. This was an excellent way out! It cuts off over a mile of road walking and about 20-30 min of time overall. Route finding the exit was easy and we never had to touch soil all the way to the road. The potholes were full (see pictures)! On a good note I noticed far less user trails/ crypto busting than I have previously. Looks like the word is getting out to not bust the crust!

[Sombeech]

FYI, your picasaweb album MoabCanyons2011 might be set to private. It's not showing. As for your public albums, you've got some pretty cool ones in there.

[RyanGJ]

I always forget that private is the new default for Picassa, fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!

[Sombeech]

Nice shots.