Baptist Draw / Upper Chute Canyon with BSA Troop - April 20, 2013

[Kuya]

Baptist Draw is always a pleasure for me to hike. I have done it 4 times now and every time I do it I love it! This time it was my pleasure to guide my Scouts through the canyon. Needless to say we all had a BLAST.





We arrived at camp at dusk Friday evening. We were on edge of a storm, but fortune smiled upon us. The wind was negligible, and we only heard a few drops of rain fall early (like 3AM early) Saturday morning. Come morning, we all woke up to beautiful blue sky with puffy clouds scattered all over. PERFECT canyoneering weather!


Before we knew it, breakfast was cooked and cleaned up and we were all heading toward the canyon. It didn't take long for us to get there and to start having fun! The scouts were LOVING the canyon. They were climbing, and stemming, and jumping all over the place. It truly was a blast to be in a canyon that was so pretty with such a good group of guys!


The technical part of the canyon was managed perfectly. My biggest concern is getting all these scouts safely through the technical stuff, and we managed to get through all that stuff flawlessly. It was perfect.


Baptist draw is a very beautiful canyon. It is narrow and dark and relatively easy The drop into Upper Chute canyon requires a 70' "ish?" rappel and is one of the highlights of the trip! It is a very beautiful rappel. As you are descending, you realize that you are rapping right next to this beautiful alcove!


Before you even get to that big rappel, a few hundred feet earlier you run into a 20' drop. most people rapple this section, (it is a really beautiful section with a narrow drop) but it is narrow enough to downclimb. On this trip one of the leaders actually did it. with little coaxing, he actually down climbed what we all had to rappel. He made it look really easy too! It was very cool!


Before we knew it, we were in Upper Chute canyon and hiking up the canyon. There are a few boulder problems that ya have to climb up and over. It was great to see how the scouts conquered these obstacles. It is things like this that make a simple canyon more fun!


The narrows in the Upper Section of Baptist Draw are some of the very best to be found in the San Rafael Swell. They are so pretty. The whole group seemed to just LOVE the canyon. The particularly "dark" and more narrow sections of the slot canyon are the ones that were talked about the most. The kids just seemed to be having a lot of fun. It made me happy to see everyone else being happy.


Before we knew it we were through all the narrows. It was now time to exit the canyon and head back to our car. The exit requires ya to hike up and out a sandy wash. It isn't to difficult, but it is never super fun to hike in soft dirt and sand. The exit for this sections meant that we had to hike back to the place where we started the descent into Baptist Draw. We had to descend back down into that canyon (just after we had gotten up and out of the narrows of the Upper Chute canyon) and then hike straight back UP and out of that again. It was a good challenge for all the boys.


All in all, it only took our group of 12 about 4.5 hours to do this canyoneering route. I had planned on 5-6 hours, so I was very pleasantly surprised to see us done in almost 4!


The Feature Film! :D

[Iceaxe]

I love the movie trailer format.

[peakbaggers]

Blake,
You didn't mention any water. Was it all dry?
Also, 12 people through in 4.5 hours? Did you jog all the way?

Good report!

[Sombeech]

he he, nice video

[yetigonecrazy]

yeah buddy!!

i had passionate, active scout leaders like you when I grew up. was so lucky to get to go caving, and hiking, and canyoneering, and skiing, etc, as well as learn so many great skills beyond.

so cool your boys got to do that!

[Kuya]

Hello Tim :)

No jogging involved :) Just a good group of scouts that were having fun. We encountered one tiny pool of water that was easily bypassed. It was in the upper section of Baptist Draw.

[WorkBad]

Wow! The editing in this video was amazing. Nice TR. Can't wait to do this one myself.

Sent from my tin cup using Tapatalk 2

[Kuya]

Wow! The editing in this video was amazing.

Don't give me too much credit. iMovie does most of the work! ;) Gotta love their trailer templates

[Slot Machine]

Nice trip report Blake!

Also, 12 people through in 4.5 hours? Did you jog all the way?

Really, that is very impressive! We've done the 10 hour version , now I would like to try the 4.5 hour version...

Would you mind sharing where you guys parked? A GPS point would be stellar. Thanks in advance.

Bob

[Kuya]

Hi Bob :)

I love both versions of this slot canyon. but the route that takes you up and out the Upper Chute canyon is my favorite now. More bang for your buck I guess.

Here is my GPS track. It should give you a good idea of where we parked and hiked.

also, im not sure how impressive it really is to do that canyon in 4.5 hours. My group didn't seem to be pushing very hard. We did have a lot of fun though. Maybe me getting one boy ready for the rappel while the other one was rappelling helped speed things up a bit? idk.

[Kuya]

Video TR from one of the other scout leaders.

[vitamind]

great job on the movie and im sure the kids had a great time!

[Iceaxe]

Nice video.

Tap'n on my Galaxy G3

[Brian in SLC]

Fun video! Nice editing.

[Kuya]

Finally! I finished editing my video footage. Here is the feature film highlighting Troop 1524's descent of Baptist Draw and Upper Chute Canyon. Enjoy :)

[Cannon]

Looks great, Blake!

[Kuya]

Looks great, Blake!

Thanks! It was awesome meeting you at the WFA class. Good luck out there with your scouts!

[Slot Machine]

Hi Bob :)

I love both versions of this slot canyon. but the route that takes you up and out the Upper Chute canyon is my favorite now. More bang for your buck I guess.

Shoot man, I hated Fault canyon. Never again. The lower part of Upper Chute (down towards Fault) is quite good though, certainly worth doing once.

I'll take your route next time. Thanks for taking the time to post your GPS track!

[Kuya]

Shoot man, I hated Fault canyon. Never again. The lower part of Upper Chute (down towards Fault) is quite good though, certainly worth doing once.

For sure! the fault line exit is not the funnest thing to do. but the hike through Chute canyon is awesome. Baptist draw was my first tech canyon that I did, and I loved it so much the first time, that I took my friends and family with me the second. as far as the difficulty of the exit, at the time we didn't know what we didn't know. I was just ecstatic to be in a beautiful slot canyon with my wife and our friends.

all in all, as much as I love all of Chute Canyon, the exit up and out is by far my favorite. hope you get to get out and see it soon