Not Birch - exploration of a dud

[ratagonia]

It's been on the list for a while, but... another not-too-promising prospect hidden in plain sight. Google-Earth was not too helpful, and the topo map not so good either. I was hoping for a canyon that would allow a reasonable climb-out from Orderville in the vicinity of Birch Hollow, to make it easier as a one-car trip. What we found was rugged terrain with substantially more verticality than expected.



We in this case being Diana Hall, Bill Westerhoff and myself. There were several possibilities in the area, and I can say all have now been scratched off the list. The canyon we did at least had a bit of drainage to it, and was not terrible. In this case, the Utah saying "didn't suck too bad" is literally true. But I think that 200' rappel will discourage attempts to climb up this thing. We brought a bunch of ropes to fix the least-steep of the 4 possibilities, with the idea of going down this one, then back up, then over to one of the others. Ya Know, most of these exploration gigs don't really work out.

We left the trailhead not too late (9:30) on a grey but not cold day. Hiking down the atv trails to the canyon head involved good conversations most of the day. We thwacked our way down some steep brush to get into the drainage, and soon came to the first rappel. Took the shortest rope that would reach, secured it to a rock, rapped down in. Suffering comes from attachment, as the Buddha might say, and I suffered every so slightly to have my dream shot down so early.



There were some short rappels and little downclimbs, and then the sense of air ahead. Well well well, guess we're rappelling here! We tied off a pinch and I threw the 120' rope down... bag dangling in the air. Hmm. Let's try the two hundy. Looks like it makes it! I rap down with the bag spinning furiously, one foot off the ground. A ledge at 120 feet allowed us to tie two shorter ropes together for that rappel, and we mosey's onward, me still carrying the 200'er, just in case. Another rappel found us popping out into Orderville canyon. 12:30. Awesome.



Except, the days are short this time of year. At this point, we could walk UP Orderville to the vicinity of the carpark, take the old road on the North side and descend Walker (still had enough rope), then come back down and jug back up. Hmmm, add the hours = 7 pm at earliest. Bushwhacking out in the dark - no thanks!

We figured we had an hour to spare. We walked up Orderville a bit and then climbed up a side canyon I had heard called Squeeze Play, between Walker and Esplin. It went in quite a ways without much difficulty, and ended at an interesting slot. We could see a headwall above, and knew there was another headwall above that. But again, an immature drainage without sufficient flow to keep it clean - not the best. We turned tail and ran.



Jugging on small ropes is always... enterTAINING. We made our way upward. Thankfully, none of the rappels had more than very brief vertical sections, and even the 200' rappel had two substantial ledges to break up the climb, so not too too strenny. At the hardest downclimb, Bill solo'd up and gave Diana and I a belay for the last moves over the top - thank you Bill. We found ourselves at the top of the first rappel, packs again full of rope, with an hour of light to get out. So we did.

Not destined to be a classic.