Irish Jihad 2013 - A Fundraiser For SAR

[penmartens]

It was probably the blast from your slipstream that raised devils of sand and toppled a pack that gave the 'illusion' of speed. My apologies.

Seriously, it would be great to get together. My season runs Labor Day to Memorial Day. Maybe we can put something together for next fall.

Penny

p.s. I figured out what setting to use to make paragraphs.

[penmartens]

We had one more leg of our journey to complete--the 3 Leprechauns. We had wanted to get these out of the way early in the morning, but waited until the heat of the day when it would be warmest and we would be wettest. Hot it was! We sweated, broiled, and wilted our way to E Lep. Once we stopped to hide in a little shade and cool down. It seemed to take forever to get to the drop in and real shade.

Most of East was dry but there were a couple places with pools. Tyler lead the way in going around them on ledges. One pool I didn't want to fight with and just went in. It was hip deep and felt refreshing. On we went, racing for the deeper parts of the canyon and more shade. There was that usual pool that is deep. Tyler went over it. Mark and I went in. It went to my armpits. It felt good to be cool and wet. Then we came to the confluence, the end was feeling close.

It had been our intent to go up inside the canyon from the lower confluence to the upper confluence, but with the water I was hesitant. If there were pools in there it was going to use a lot of energy to go up with muddy wet feet. Tyler really wanted to go up. He and I went in as far as the boulders. It was dry, but I didn't feel good about the time and energy consuming risk if it was what I imagined.We headed down canyon and out to the standard route for West and Middle Forks.

Go up at the Cottonwood. Who doesn't know that? We started up. Our conversation was about the soccer team who had crashed in the Andes and survived by resorting to cannibalism. Suddenly, I realized I had no idea where we were. Try as I might, I couldn't recognize anything about the route we were on and couldn't conjure up any memory of the route we were supposed to be on. Dang, I have done that route dozens of times. My doubt put doubts in my teammates. They couldn't remember, either. Frustrated and terribly disappointed we headed to the kiosk and a map and GPS that were in Mark's vehicle. We had been confident in our skills, experience, and memories and had brought neither for our trip.

We estimate it cost us about an hour and a half of time, and immeasurable amounts of energy, to find ourselves back on exactly the same route in the same place but with the map and gps in hand. Our mistake had cost us. We would be almost done if we hadn't turned back. Now, we were weighing carefully which canyon to do first, West or Middle. Each had their good points. I didn't want to do either in the dark.

We dropped into West. It took about 20 minutes longer than usual. We were tired puppies. The guys seemed to have a little steam left that they could access when needed but I had nothing. We left two of our packs at the confluence of the west and middle forks. We carried a little water, snacks, a short rope and headlamps.

I showed Mark and Tyler the awesome shortcut up the nose. We played it extra safe and pulled out the rope. We were tired and we didn't need anyone careening down the rock to splat in the middle fork. The heat of the day was past. We hiked up in the lengthening shadows and dropped into our last canyon before dark. As long as nothing went awry, we would be out before dark. We slithered and slid through the upper part of the canyon where it isn't very narrow. Gravity was our friend as we leaned out into empty space and let her do the work. The middle section, the tightest section, doesn't lose much elevation. That is where the work is. You use your own energy to push and pull and squiggle and squeak your way through. I was bringing up the rear. I would come around corners to find my partners with their arms on the wall, heads on their arms, resting. Their faces were fairly blank. Tyler was uncomplaining and determined; Mark, determined and cheerful. "Way to go, Penny," he would often say. None of us cared about our time. We just wanted to get out, to stop, to be done. We got back to the upper confluence, resorted out packs and headed into the deepest darkest section of the Leps. There was water in there--not as much as I had expected, but it wouldn't have been fun to go up. We probably made the right decision, but we wouldn't have been disoriented on the route earlier in the day if we had stayed in. Oh well.

As we walked out of the subway section the sun was still shining. We had done it! All we had left was the little hike to the highway and then the walk back to the kiosk. We found energy hiding in the depths and walked with purpose. It was slowly sinking in what we had accomplished. We stopped to talk to some people camped at the bottom of the Leprechauns. They hadn't ever heard of the Irish Jihad but were pretty sure they had missed out on some fun. I looked at my partners trying to figure out what these people saw in our wet, muddy, tired, end-of-the-day appearances. I saw accomplished canyoneers who went out to push themselves to the limits; to see what they were made of; to strive; to do.

As we walked down the highway, three abreast, taking up more of the road than we had the right to, I found myself grinning. What a great day! What great partners! What a great adventure. What a great experience. I looked at my teammates to see if they were wearing the same stupid grin I was. It was too dark to see their faces. The light was gone. Our day was done.

Penny,
The Dark Pookas of Endeavor