Route Editor
Route Scout
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| HAZ Member Vaporman's 229 Photosets 2010-09-25 2010-09-18 2010-09-11 2010-09-05 2010-09-04 2010-08-22 2010-08-22 2010-08-21 2010-08-11 2010-08-10 2010-08-09 2010-08-08 2010-07-31 2010-07-27 2010-07-26 2010-07-25 2010-07-24 2010-07-11 2010-07-10 2010-07-05
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It's definitely not for beginners and we lucked out with the keeper being just a couple feet below the lip and a length of webbing to help us pull ourself out without any trouble so I'm giving it a R for that but it doesn't quite earn the 4B IMHO. 
We got lil of an early start that chilly morning and dropped into the upper reaches of Barney canyon and slowly trekked our way down canyon. After about two hours of rock hopping, some light downing climbing and traversing around treefall we finally hit the technical section. 
This narrows section was pretty cool and the first two rappels were in the 20-30ft range but the third rappel was interesting. The 3rd rap was about 60ft into a sweet grotto but you had the chose of rappelling from a pile of logs for a interesting rope pull or make an exposed traverse on the right to some trees and make an awkward undercut rappel off of the protruding edge. Todd of course took Todd's advice and made that exposed traverse look easy. 
Another side canyon comes in and we reach an optional rappel but we down climbed down a chute on the left side to avoid it and came up another sweet section of narrows. There's a large pile of boulders at the beginning of it with rap #4 of about 45ft to get past them to a ledge with rap #5 right after it of about 30ft that's kinna awkaward because you're leaning at an angle to get past the large chockstone and then down into a chute that you can either down climb out of the bottom or just climb out of the chute and traverse on. These were followed by a tight 15ft down climb to get past another huge boulder as the narrows get deeper & deeper and had me thinking I was back in Zion again. 
Rappel #6 was about 50ft down to a gravely ledge with two logs that would make great anchors for the next drop but someone decided to add a bolt. Rappel #7 was a sweet sloping 80ft drop into another grotto that made a great place to put my wetsuit on. My new camera case I was trying out wasn't clipped on quite as good as I thought and came off at the top of that 80ft rappel and bounced all the way down to the gravel pit below but thankfully the semi-hard case worked and my rugged camera fired back up like a champ. 
There was a visible piece of webbing on the other side but once Todd got down to the pool he was a better piece of webbing to help easily pull ourself out with since the water was only a couple feet below the lip. That other webbing ended up being attached to a large 'bat hook' which we thought wouldn't have been to effective at hooking the other side of the lip. 
From the lip of the keeper, we didn't use the bolt there and just did rap #9 of 50ft from the same anchors above the keeper and our rope pull was still fairly easy. The final 10th rappel was just afterwards of about 80ft with a slimy pool that was thankfully easy to avoid. Dropped out gear and some more rock hoppin & bushwhacking brought us to West Fork and thus began the long rock hop up canyon. 
Eventually we passed Casner and I knew from a few weeks ago that the deep pools were over and the canyon slowly got easier until we hit some side trails on the flat banks until we finally reached the bridge and my car to drive back to Todd's car and call it a thoroughly sore and fulfilling day. 