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Thread: Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

  1. #1

    Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

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    Group size: 5
    Gear: Normal technical gear, 300 ft and 200ft ropes, drybag with camera gear.

    We started out our trip through Englestead down Orderville and down the Narrows at about 8am on 7-31-2-12. The weather was looking good though we were aware of the 40% chance of precipitation. The headwaters were at a 20% chance so we considered our chances of getting through the canyons with no incident very carefully.

    We spotted a car at Canyon Junction, and parked at the Zion Ponderosa car park as detailed in most available beta and made the approach through Englestead Hollow, reaching the top of the canyon and the first rappel at about 10am. We continued down canyon with no incident, completing the 11 rappels and eciting into Orderville around 1pm. The weather still looked great, about 85* on the canyon floor and partly cloudy.

    We packed up the technical gear and continued down Orderville, stopping occasional for the photographer. We reached the major logjam in Orderville around 2:15pm and began the wet sections. Everything went smoothly with the first drops of rain reaching us when we arrived at the guillotine. Here, we began picking up the pace to a brisk jog, and began to jump down nearly all of the obstacles, avoiding the handlines, since the water level had risen and the small pools were now all at least 5-6 feet deep.

    The rain at this point could be described as torrential, and Orderville had gone past its normal flow and was in river-like conditions. We began looking for lightning strikes so as to tell whether the thunderous noises we were hearing were actually thunder, or the headwaters of a flash. By the end of Orderville, there was a strike of lightning right on top of us, the lighting and thunder happening simultaneously and providing that nice hair-stands-up-on-your-arms-and-neck feeling.

    We hit the junction of Orderville and the Narrows about 4pm, still on track for good timing for the trip as a whole. The junction leaves about 2.6 miles till you reach the Temple of Sinawava and are free of the narrows. At this point. the rain was constant and about .5 miles down canyon it began forming waterfalls coming from either side of the narrows' walls. Not small waterfalls either mind you. many of them spanned up to 100ft sections of the cliffs overhead and brought down rocks, sand and other debris. Their flow could be compared to the falls coming out of Heaps at Upper Emerald Pools in full conditions. We hurried down canyon as quickly as possible. We passed the large protrusion of rock on the right where you can generally climb up to the right and skirt around for a dry passage, or where the water on the left of the outcropping in generally deep enough to float in normal conditions. We paused here to evaluate the current options and chose to continue on. We reached the leftward bend about 100 yards before the marsh-like section on the left (LDC) when we began to find it extremely difficult to continue crossing the Virgin to gain the next section of high ground.

    ***This is the point where we decided to hunker down and wait it out***

    Within about 15 minutes, the Virgin had risen from its normal flow (already elevated from 40 cfs to about 150 cfs) to what we later found out to have been measured at 1800 cfs at Canyon Junction. Now since this is the junction of the Virgin and the outflow of Spry, Pine Creek and other tributaries, through some research we were able to safely estimate that the Narrows flashed to about 1300 cfs while we were waiting it out.

    Here is the documentation of water flow recorded at Canyon Junction.

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    Once the water subsided enough for us to make a bid for the end of the canyon, we carefully began to cross the river as is necessary, looking for the shallowest and most friendly-looking sections. Just 100 or so yards down from where we had sheltered, we encountered a man (a NYC firefighter from the Bronx) and his two children, a boy age 14, and a girl age 8. They had been on a day hike up the narrows and had entered before the park service had posted the large flash flood warning sign at the Temple of Sinawava trail head.

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    The 8 of us then made our way down canyon, arriving at the end of the river walk trail at about 8pm. We reached the buses at the temple of sinawava at about 8:15pm and shuttled back to the car. We decided it would be in our best interest to leave the car we spotted at Zion Ponderosa until the morning so as to be able to have daylight and give the ground a chance to dry out so that extricating the vehicle wouldn't be as much of a potential nightmare.

    We drove back to our place in St. George and finished off the day with a round of pizza and some night golf. What more could you ask for.

    If you would like a link to more pictures or other information about the trip, continue on this thread or PM me.

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  3. #2
    Content Provider Emeritus ratagonia's Avatar
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    Re: Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

    Awesome trip report. Good job not getting into real trouble.

    Welcome to the Bogley. First class first post!

    Just a picayune point of nomenclature: "spotting" a car usually means placing it at the spot where you come OUT. It makes more sense to say you parked a car up there, at the start.

    Tom

  4. #3

    Re: Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

    Thanks for that Tom. I'll fix that up for everyone else.

    -Jeff

  5. #4

    Re: Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

    Cool story bro! Do you think that Orderville flashed or just the narrows? Only reason I'm asking is because I see the same logjams every year in the same places through there. They don't seem to move or change much.
    Your safety is not my responsibility.

  6. #5

    Re: Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

    I would never really be able to confirm 100% if anything BUT the narrows flashed, but judging by the increase in water flow as we were leaving Orderville, I would say that there is a very good chance that Orderville and one of it's tributaries (i.e. Englestead or Birch Hollow) flashed.

  7. #6

    Re: Zion Narrows Flash Flood post Englestead

    Good stuff...

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