Not Mindbender

[kokopelli60]

On October 1, 2012 I descended Not Mindbender. Upper half was dry with ample evidence of a flash. Lower half was wet and very muddy. It was a beautiful day with a perfect temperature, the water was not cold.

[ratagonia]

Sweet, but... pretty remarkable swiftness on that last rappel...

T

[Slot Machine]

Sweet, but... pretty remarkable swiftness on that last rappel...

T

I've heard that time itself seems to speed up as one gets older, but I don't believe that this video was posted in its entirety, in real time. He simply paused the camera at that rappel, or possibly editied out the rappel before posting his video.

Let us all pause this Thanksgiving season and give thanks for quality trip reports... and snarky comments.



Interesting choice of canyon to solo. The climb out looks partner-worthy to me. Good video!

Bob

[ratagonia]

Thank you for the video, Kokopelli...

I, personally, was looking for what the anchor for that big rappel looked like - usually it is quite a mess. But you seem to have left that part out, which I kinda appreciate. Many vids contain endless rappel sequences, to the point of extreme boredom. Some of your downclimbing clips were really fun.

Did you fix a rope at the end before doing the canyon? Didn't seem like you needed it for the climb up. Personally, I find that climb to be a LOT easier without a pack on, so I would have set my pack at the bottom and climbed trailing a rope, then hauled the pack up once above the real climbing.

I see how my brief comment could be interpreted as snarky, should one be pre-disposed to finding snark in all I say. No snarkiness intended. Nice effort.

Tom

[Slot Machine]

I see how my brief comment could be interpreted as snarky, should one be pre-disposed to finding snark in all I say. No snarkiness intended. Nice effort.

Shouldn't one's snark-o-meter be cranked up to a "10" when reading your posts? Methinks it is prudent.

However, I was only trying to mix in some holiday-spirit snarkiness, not implying that you were being snarky, Tom. Not trying to being mean, just funny.

[flatiron]

Koko, excellent video. We did it 2 weeks prior to you and just after flash flood. The narrow channel at the 9:33 mark was chest deep water with waist deep mud. U don't show going thru it. Don't see much water, wonder how bad mud was? I 2nd Tom on climb up the Moki steps. With or without muddy shoes it takes some good climbing, def need 1 person in group who can tackle it. Great canyon!

[kokopelli60]

I did go through waist deep twig soup water and waist deep mud which I had to crawl on top of. In retrospect, I probably could have stemmed over the mud. The big rappel was in good condition and not a rats nest of webbing. The video is indeed edited as I recorded almost the entire trip. At the last rappel I simply forgot to turn my Contour on. As for the climb out, because I had done it before, I knew that it was not very difficult. How muddy was it, I took this photo of my gear when I got home.

[peakbaggers]

Enjoyed the video very much. Like Tom said, you focused on the downclimbs rather than just the rappels and that provided an entirely different perspective of the canyon. As for the music, I assume you got it off the Desert Vision video &/or CD produced several years ago by Paul Speer & David Lanz. I really like some of the music on it and used several pieces for our own videos. The "Eagle's Path" is one of my favorite. Used it for a canyoneering video of mostly Moab stuff. The second piece you used is well suited to the canyon - lending a somewhat mysterious and mildly dangerous quality. Good work! Nice to have someone trying some other music styles on these videos than just rock. One guy we met at the Sept Zion Rendevous even used opera in his!

[Mountaineer]

Did you fix a rope at the end before doing the canyon? Didn't seem like you needed it for the climb up. Personally, I find that climb to be a LOT easier without a pack on, so I would have set my pack at the bottom and climbed trailing a rope, then hauled the pack up once above the real climbing.

IMO, there is just one spot near the top that is sketchy. You have to put a foot on a small hold, and trust it for a final shot up. Good call, will leave my pack off the next time I do it. Yikes.

[Brian in SLC]

Nice! Looks great.