So, it’s been over two years since I have posted on this blog. I’m sure nothing interesting has happened in that time, so I’ll just skip to the latest trip and maybe (probably not) fill in other stuff later. I was going to just post pics on Facebook and call it good enough, but it is hard to tell a story on FB. I posted a “here is a pile of pics from my trip” post, with a link here to provide more detail.
Last year on my Utah trip I got to explore two technical canyons, something I haven’t done in a while, and couldn’t wait to go back for more. I had grand plans for a ridiculous number of canyons in very few days. Unfortunately I got sick just before leaving for this trip, on top of my body trying very hard to cope with my current medical treatments, and then the weather decided to get involved as well to limit my options. This post details the highlight of the trip, a day spent exploring East Leprechaun Canyon.
Friends Adam and Ellen from Colorado joined me for about half my trip, including this canyon. We spent the night before going through guide books to pick a route for the day, knowing that bad weather was going to limit the days we could be in the canyons. The three Leprechauns share an exit, and we had initially thought we would do the middle canyon, but in rereading the description it sounded like both Adam and myself might not fit through the middle canyon, and all of our packs were even bigger yet, so we opted for the east canyon instead.
The hike up was mostly in open desert, hot and dusty, and we were lucky to have multiple mapping options on our phones to guide us to the start.
When we arrived at the head of the canyon for the first rappel, it was apparent this was going to be a squeeze.
The bottom of the first rappel dropped us right into a narrow section.
The curves in the passage and the designs in the rock were stunning.
A good example of how tight many of the passages became, there were a lot of places too narrow for our shoulders, and too narrow to turn sideways with packs, where we ended up taking off our packs, holding them either in front or behind us, and shimmying sideways to get through.
Lots of down climbing and stemming over too-narrow sections made for a good physical workout.
Throughout the day, the smiles never stopped.
We got to a section of beautifully sculpted narrows just as the sun dropped enough to light everything up.
The last rappel dropped down, and down, and down, and eventually passed under a truck-sized chockstone and deposited us in a huge, dark subway chamber.
Exiting the chamber there was an optional super narrow section, I climbed on top and got pics of Adam squeezing through.
From there we hiked down the lower canyon and back to the parking area.
