First Descent

[jdamin]

Last weekend we opened up a new rout on Maui and it’s looking like it will be among the premier routes over there. Dave Red, Tim Whalen and myself took on the canyon.
It actually started off really slow and I was pretty sure the canyon was going to be a dud. The main drainage was overgrown up to the first rappel which was 110’ with little natural anchor potential. I wound up having a bit of a hang up on this rappel too. After Dave burned down to go set the next anchor, Tim went down and was directing me to take up line from the bottom. I did this several times and re-blocked it several times and didn’t pay enough attention to which line was the original pull and which was the rappel line (the knot was well over the cliff edge so it all looked like one rope from the top). I began my descent and about half way down, sure enough, I was rappelling right onto the knot holding out rappel and pull line together. … that’s never happened to me before! Needless to say, it was an annoying, time wasting and dangerous mistake. About half a dozen fist-sized rocks fell near me as I jugged back up that line. After that little debacle, it was about 20 minutes of mostly flat, featureless walking on some of the slipperiest rock I’ve seen. The walk was broken up by two small slides but I was still not feeling too great about this canyon; especially after my issue on the first rapp.

We came upon Dave at the next drop and thankfully, things started getting interesting. There was a long, narrow slow that all the water was being pushed through and it was pretty overgrown. It was a good anchor and a fun little rappel. From then on it was a lot of fun. The canyon opened up and was full of little rappels into completely different looking pools. All the rappels were less than 60ft. We came across some great jumps and probably the best slide I’ve seen in a canyon. Hours later, we were all having a great time and wondering if we were going to ever even need the 300’ ropes we brought. We were all pretty sure we were nearing the canyons end. We figured maybe one more 150 footer to put us on the beach. Rounding the next turn we looked out and realized how wrong we were. We were looking down a long section of canyon straight out to the ocean and it looked like we were still 400+ feet above the beach. There wasn’t much room to get close to the lip of the falls so I belayed Dave over the edge to get a better look. There was a good sized ledge about 80’ down that we could rappel to and possible set new bolts if we needed. Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly as high as we though. It wound up only being 285’ with another 70’ rappel and short down climb after before we made it to the bottom.
Once down, we began scouting for a way back up the ridge. It was about 6:00 PM and night was going to fall fast in the jungle. We picked a spot to try for an egress and headed up. Using guava trees and jungle plants to pull ourselves up the steep, muddied and thickly jungled ridge, we were gaining some ground. It was going alright at first. There were the typical this sections of jungle you had to barrel through and average amount of mud that constantly tried to drag you back down the ridge, but the real issue came closer to when it got dark. We started hitting these solid rock cliff bands of 10-20+ feet. At this point it was dark and raining on us. At one of these cliff bands, we were contemplating going back down and waiting for daylight Monday morning to try it again (there’s no search and rescue out here, just a few other canyoneers). After a long slog uphill through the jungle, and some pretty gnarly scrambling, we made it to the top. I had long missed my flight back to Oahu that night and knew I’d be late for work Monday even if I caught the earliest flight back. After all said and done, it was a great canyon; one I will gladly run again. $106 dollars in flight change fees and plenty of dirty looks for getting on the plane with smelly canyon gear later, I was on my way home. I got into work two hours late Monday morning. Wound up walking straight into my bosses office and said with a goofy grin on my face “sorry I’m late, I got stuck in the jungle last night and missed my flight.” She looked at me for a second, then said “only in Hawaii would I hear something like that” then she laughed and asked me to tell her about my weekend. My boss is pretty rad.

We chose the name “Slow Burn” for a bunch of reasons. The biggest one for me was its slow start but steady and prolonged progression. It really is a great route, you just need to make it past the second rappel.

[jdamin]

[burley]

I began my descent and about half way down, sure enough, I was rappelling the wrong line … that’s never happened to me before! Needless to say, it was an embarrassing, annoying, time wasting and dangerous mistake. About half a dozen fist-sized rocks fell near me as I jugged back up that line.

Care to elaborate on this? From your description I understood you were the last one down (so pull cord was free) and rapping on the pull side? How did you not deck? Or am I missing something?

[Scott Card]

Gotta get there some day. Take cover. I hear a storm is brewing in your neck of the woods. Good luck!

[Renatomic808]

Care to elaborate on this? From your description I understood you were the last one down (so pull cord was free) and rapping on the pull side? How did you not deck? Or am I missing something?

I think he messed up, because he was too busy concentrating on holding in his canyon poop. He probably didn't weight the rope fully perhaps, before he even saw the knot. from there, grabbed out jugs to attach to rappel side?

Nice work on the first descent.. wish I could've joined, but I had some other priorities!

[jdamin]

Care to elaborate on this? From your description I understood you were the last one down (so pull cord was free) and rapping on the pull side? How did you not deck? Or am I missing something?

I could have explained that better - upon taking up the rope several times to set the length, I put the block on the wrong side of the quicklink without realizing it. I rappelled the proper side in terms of where the block was, but once I got half way down and could view the knot holding both of our ropes together, I realized I rappelled the intended pull cord side. I could have passed the knot but we wouldn't have been able to pull the rope, so I went back up, change the side of the block, and came down the original and intended rappel side. Hope that made more sense.

[jdamin]

Gotta get there some day. Take cover. I hear a storm is brewing in your neck of the woods. Good luck!

I highly recommend it. Feel free to reach out if you do. As for the storm, all that means is there's going to be more water in our canyons! Once they stop flooding of course

[Mojave Silence]

JJ--did ya get any good video?

[ratagonia]

Whoa, Awesome!

[Mojave Silence]

[ilipichicuma]

Sick! Strong work, JJ!

[ghawk]

Nice work JJ!! I'm glad the rope issue wasn't as big a deal as it sounded when I read the first post. You probably needed the ascending practice anyway, right?

[ratagonia]

How's the weather out there, around Christmas???

T

[spinesnaper]

Nice work.

[Renatomic808]

In the area where most of our canyons are, I'd say that the chance of flooding is about once a week, during that time of year. You may/may not be lucky, and run into a whole week of flooding. That will limit you to about 2 or 3 canyons that have been opened.

Air temperature would be in the low 80's. Water temperature would be in the 60's. I recommend at least a full 3mm wetsuit.

How's the weather out there, around Christmas???

T