Moab Gathering Nov 11 - 13

[jman]

I am SO sorry everyone!! I just posted my pictures in the previous thread and was going to delete a duplicate entry but deleted the entire THREAD! I am sooo sorry.

I emailed the admins to see if they can undelete it, but if not, this will be a substitute. On a plus side, thankfully no one's TR got deleted (except for mine). Plus everyone's phone number got erased....so that's a good thing too right??

Anyway, I'll try to recall the TR and people involved the best I can.
@Scott P @CanadianSam @Bill Parmenter @DiscGo





So it was great meeting all of you: @Scott P & Fam, Digby (from Canyon Collective), @Bill Parmenter, and the two Canadian cousins @CanadianSam)!

It was fun getting to see the faces of everyone plus going through some of the best "canyon" routes in Moab.

On Saturday, everyone did Elephant Butte in the morning. It was a perfect day for anything outside. Highs in the mid-60s.






















































It was about 1:30pm when we all finished and in my mind we still had the whole day left.
Sure, we could do either U-Turn, Tierdrop, or Not-Tierdrop since they were all so close, but I was thinking so why not show the group the "best"?? The best being Pleiades up in the La Sal Mountains.
Scott P and family didn't want to get cold nor wet, so they opted out, which is understandable, cause come on Brett, it is November....in the mountains....in a wet canyon!!

To preface, I have done Pleiades three times now which have been after October. This was my 7th visit to the canyon. I LOVE this one! ...and so did the rest of the group! After each rappel, EVERYONE was saying "this is soooo cool", "this is amazing!" "wow, this is so beautiful". etc.

As to be expected with this canyon in late Fall, the spring was garden hose strength, but very cold. And if done slowly and carefully, you can avoid getting wet (except your feet up to your calves). Only Digby wore a wetsuit, the rest of use were in shorts and sometime of jacket or heavy coat.

Since last year in October, Pleiades has seen some changes. The tree that use stand as the gateway to the canyon, well it broke somehow (lightning, old age, etc.?) and scattered its remanants in the top half of the canyon before the 1st rap. Not tricky to go through, but is another minor obstacle now.

Also, the free-hang rap has had some significant erosion. In years past, the watercourse would flow over a part of the rock and create a nice waterfall. Now, with all of the erosion, it now goes under the rock that you rappel off. I'm sure in higher flows the water flows over it, but in later months, that waterfall has disappeared which was kind of a letdown.

However, with that erosion, one can bypass that free-rap completely by climbing through that newly carved erosion tunnel into the "cave" (as i call it). I didn't take a picture due to lightning but I did include an edited picture of the spot below at the bottom of the pics.






























And this pic below is where the erosion happened. Where the red is drawn out, is where one could climb through and bypass (up or down) this entire rap now. Definitely different!




After the last rappel, it was completely dark now (6pm) and so we donned our headlamps and headed back to the cars where we would regroup and hit up Pasta Jay's for dinner. 2 1/2 hours for this canyon isn't bad for 7 people.

I'm sorry I suck at story telling but hopefully others, like @CanadianSam, could pipe in with their thoughts and stories of their Moab trip?



And again, I offer my sincere apologies for deleting the previous thread on accident.
-Brett

[Rob L]

I am SO sorry everyone!! I just posted my pictures in the previous thread and was going to delete a duplicate entry but deleted the entire THREAD! I am sooo sorry.

I emailed the admins to see if they can undelete it

I always thought you and Accadacca WERE the admins!

Nice TR nonetheless .

Rob

[Scott P]

[Scott P]

[dakotabelliston]

This is awesome !!! Wish I could have made it !!!

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