Tele-Imlay 7/2 to 7/3/2011

[Jaxx]

Three of us (Me, Chabidia, and his wife Alpine Butterfly) started up the angels landing trail at about 9:30 AM. We definitely underestimated the length of the entrance to Imlay. Our plan was to do telephone and then head over to Imlay and stay the night at the crossroads. Then we would finish Imlay on Sunday. We were thinking it would be a pretty leisurely day since were sleeping over night we weren't worried about getting in late.

It was over 100 F and felt even hotter once we got past scouts lookout and on the hot sand. Views were awesome of the canyon from up there. We got past the bridge around 1ish and had lunch and stashed our overnight clothes and extra pothole gear and headed up to Telephone Canyon.

It was literally hotter than hell at this point and I was feeling the effects of the heat. We had to stop a couple times in the shade to cool off. I went through 3 liters of water by the time we got to the junction at the top with Telephone. We filled up water at the springs and headed to telephone. We started the first rap at about 4ish.

There was another group in front of us and we caught them on the 3rd rap. We were stuck behind them for the whole canyon. We later figured out that they were having some of them go down and then pull ropes and then the last couple guys would set up their own rope and go down. It was taking forever and we were really starting to worry about the time it was taking. We asked if we could use their ropes and pass them and they were awesome enough to let us, but by the time we did that we were on the last few raps.

Telephone has a few fun raps and down climbs and the water was maybe knee deep but we mostly avoided it all.

At the last rap we butted in front of a few more of them and we were packing up to hurry out to our stash and get to Imlay. Their group was out of water so we told them we would filter water out of the potholes near the trail. We grabbed a few of their water bottles and rushed to our stash.

They caught up to us as we were topping off our water so we filled up a water bottle for everyone. It only took a few extra minutes. I have to say I love the Katydyn Hiker Pro filter. The bummer was that the water tasted like the smell of a petting zoo and was hard to drink.

By the time we got packed back up it was around 8:30. We knew we were not going to make it all the way to Imlay in the light but we wanted to get as much ground behind us as possible while we still had some daylight. We decided to stop just before the first saddle and ended up just doing our light bivy there instead of trying to go all the way to Imlay and getting ourselves lost. We don't have the best track record of navigation. I am glad we didn't try to navigate that trail at night. There really wasn't a good place to bivy and it would have made for a long night of route finding. It was really Chad's wife who convinced us to not try for Imlay in the dark. Best decision of the trip.

Our bivy equipment consisted of light jackets and emergency bivy bags. It was pretty chilly at night but we kept warm enough to sleep.

After drinking the stank water all night I remembered that I had iodine tablets. We used those with the taste neutralizing pills and the water tasted kind of like hose water. If only we had thought of that sooner!

We were hiking again at about 6:45 the next morning. We made it to Imlay at about 9:30ish. We got out of the drainage probably a few hundred yards before Imlay and made our way over the slickrock in a north east direction. It was pretty steep getting down into Imlay from up there but it really looked worse than it was.

After we suited up and topped off the water bottles we were off. The potholes began immediately. The first few potholes were log soup. The last pothole that had logs in it was really bad. It took a minute of floating and pushing logs around to get through it.

The rest of the tech section was pretty full and some of the potholes were super cold. I couldn't really feel the coldness through my wetsuit but my hands and feet were freezing. There weren't any really hard obstacles. We had used a backpack toss, some sling lassoing, and alot of beached whaling to get out of potholes. We did a couple of guided raps on some of the better looking anchors which were not that abundant. We did notice that on some of the potholes that looked really deep and hard to get out of if it was dry already had hook holes.

We didn't replace any webbing and we really should have. There is one piton in the second section of the potholes that there is actually a small hole in the webbing and there was sand inside the webbing below the hole, crazy. It is only a 15-20 foot drop but then you climb over a log and do another small drop. That had me worried on that sketchy webbing. I guess I was more worried about hurrying than the condition of the webbing though. We didn't know how much farther we had to go and we still had to drive home that night.

The last few raps are into warm, in canyoneering terms, and they are wide. I took my time floating and looking up. Beautiful canyon! We could hear the Virgin at this point so we knew we were getting close. At the second to last rap we found the previous group had made the anchor off a teetoring log with a long piece of webbing. I wondered why because I could see bolts on the wall. When I got over to the bolts they were broken. They looked like they were cut with rope or webbing! There were two other bolts on the right LDC. The hangers were spinning and made me a little worried so we decided to use the teetoring log anchor. That wet webbing gave me a little scare as it stretched, and stretched, then a little more stretch as I was hanging over the last 50ish foot rappel. Luckily I didn't die and the rap was really fun free hang into a cold pool.

The last pool is curved so you cant see the last rap but you can really hear the narrows raging below so we knew we had made it. We even did it while it was still light! The last rap out into the Narrows is so awesome. It is free hanging for most of it and then you touch down into the clean blue water of the narrows. Sweet!

The hike out took us about 2 hours. We were floating where we could but we were hitting a lot of rocks. I beat the crap out of my brand new ICG Heaps pack. I will never float the narrows again unless the water is super deep.

We were back at the visitors center at about 8. The pizza at the Pizza & Noodle has never tasted so good.

Next time I don't think I will add Telephone to the entrance of Imlay sneak route. I will probably just plan a siesta in the shade somewhere after the wooden bridge and wait the afternoon heat out.

Pics are on my other comp I will try to get them up tonight. My camera got a little wet so I didn't get any pics after the log soup.

We also had a couple of bro in laws bail on us on Thursday night so I just wanted to publicly shame them for not coming. You know who you are Boots and Redpb!

[ratagonia]

Awesome!!!

T

[Brian in SLC]

Nice write up!

[nelsonccc]

Where are the pics. I'm saying it never happened. Trent told me you guys didn't even go. Just hiked and camped......I smell some BS.

[Boots]

Where are the pics. I'm saying it never happened. Trent told me you guys didn't even go. Just hiked and camped......I smell some BS.

I 2nd this...pics or shens!