Right Fork of Leprechaun Canyon - North Wash - March 1st 2013

[Kuya]

Right Fork of Leprechaun Canyon

I like skinny slot canyons! This weekend I wrangled a few of my friends and neighbors to come with me to the North Wash (near Hanksville, Utah) and climb through one of the skinniest slots canyons in the state (as far as I am aware of anyway)


4:30 AM could't not have come soon enough for most of us. Early Saturday morning we all piled into Jacob Dempsey's truck and started our 3.5 hours trek to southern Utah. Along for the ride and adventure were my friends Dave Owen, Jacob Dempsey, Tyler Tingey, and Joel Graham.


Joel and I have been planning this trip for a few months now. He and I attempted to do this canyon in February, but we got snowed out and ended up doing the Chamber of the Basilisk instead (Awesome trip by the way This time I extended the invite to a few more friends.


It was the first real "technical" slot canyon for Jake and Tyler, and what a adventure we all had! None of us had ever hike through this canyon before, and none of us really knew what to expect. Many of us had looked at some YouTube videos of the canyon, as well as read all the beta we could find on the canyons, but the canyons far surpassed and surprised us. I will admit, i was a bit nervous taking a bunch of friends (some new to the sport) through these kind of canyon having not done them myself before. In the end, however, my worries were never more than just that: a worry. All had a great time and peformed exceptionally well.


This canyon was exceptionally beautiful. I was very NARROW, and had some wonderful features. It required a few rappels in order to descend safely, but the rappels proved to be the easy part of the canyon. This canyon was full of down climbing and scrambling, chimneying and stemming. Those kind of activities require a lot of physical exertion and are pretty intense sometimes! I learned really fast that I had packed way to much in my backpack for this canyon. Dragging and lifting that heavy pack was a literal pain in my neck/side/butt!


The narrows in in this canyons were breath taking! The narrows were full of s-curves, awesome rock formations, and nature's intricate erosion art in the sandstone walls. At times I even found some of the group members lying on their back on the ground, looking up and just soaking in the beauty! When we started the decent into the canyon, the sun light was even reflecting onto the canyon walls seeming to make the canyon glow orange. It is a beautiful thing to see when that happens!


After about 4 hours of hiking we exited the canyon and made our way back to Jakes truck. Here we ate some lunch, hydrated ourselves, and everyone downsized their packs in order to get ready for the next Canyon-Middle Fork of Leprechaun Canyon!


Right fork of Leprechaun canyon is a BEAUTIFUL canyon. It didn't prove to be to difficult and it packed a whole lot of gorgeous all into one section of slot canyon.

[peakbaggers]

Nice photo journal, Blake & the trailer is a riot. Way to play it up!

[Kuya]

Nice photo journal, Blake & the trailer is a riot. Way to play it up!

Thanks! Those trailers are fun to make :)

[Slot Machine]

East Lep is such good one. Great video and TR Blake!

[Rob L]

Love the video!

Great combo of short video, text & stills.

Rob

[WorkBad]

You have out-done yourself with that video edit. Seriously pro! Loved the pics too, great job!

[blamkin86]

Good Lord I love your video work. Don't have the patience OR skill for it- good job man.

[Kuya]

Good Lord I love your video work. Don't have the patience OR skill for it- good job man.

You have out-done yourself with that video edit. Seriously pro! Loved the pics too, great job!

Love the video!

Great combo of short video, text & stills.

Rob

Thanks guys!! Seriously though, you are giving me way to much credit. these videos take me like 15 minutes to make. iMovie has some templates out now that allow you to make "movie trailers" from your home videos. As you can see, they are awesome!

[Kuya]

Video of us doing this canyon last weekend.

[Sandstone Addiction]

Sweet video Kuya. Loved it all. Thanks.

[AJ]

I echo the other comments. Nice job!

However, you state that Right Leprechaun is "This weekend I wrangled a few of my friends and neighbors to come with me to the North Wash (near Hanksville, Utah) and climb through one of the skinniest slots canyons in the state (as far as I am aware of anyway)"

Or, maybe you were talking about Middle Fork. (You mention getting ready for Middle Fork, but don't know if you descended it or not.) Right Fork is a fantastic canyon, but not one I even put on my "skinny canyon" list. It's just a fun and playful romp, and it's the best canyon in that stretch of Irish canyons IMHO.

Be careful who you take through Middle Fork of Leprechaun, and especially down Shennanigans (Butler); those are the ones near there that make the "skinny" list. ;)

[Kuya]

I echo the other comments. Nice job!

However, you state that Right Leprechaun is "This weekend I wrangled a few of my friends and neighbors to come with me to the North Wash (near Hanksville, Utah) and climb through one of the skinniest slots canyons in the state (as far as I am aware of anyway)"

Or, maybe you were talking about Middle Fork. (You mention getting ready for Middle Fork, but don't know if you descended it or not.) Right Fork is a fantastic canyon, but not one I even put on my "skinny canyon" list. It's just a fun and playful romp, and it's the best canyon in that stretch of Irish canyons IMHO.

Be careful who you take through Middle Fork of Leprechaun, and especially down Shennanigans (Butler); those are the ones near there that make the "skinny" list. ;)

Good catch, Yeah this was the canyon we did to prep for Middle Fork, I should probably make that more clear. I agree with you, though it is a narrow canyon, it is pretty wide compared to its next door neighbour.