Route Editor
Route Scout
| Illusions Canyon, AZ |
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DESTINATION Illusions Canyon 10 Photosets 2019-07-13 2019-06-22 2019-06-01 2015-07-25 2015-05-30 2013-07-14 2011-09-18 2011-06-18 2011-05-28 2010-10-02 |
| HAZ Member Vaporman's 229 Photosets 2010-12-31 2010-12-30 2010-12-30 2010-12-26 2010-12-26 2010-12-24 2010-12-19 2010-12-18 2010-12-18 2010-12-12 2010-12-09 2010-12-04 2010-11-26 2010-11-20 2010-11-14 2010-11-12 2010-11-07 2010-11-06 2010-10-21 2010-10-02
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This canyon has been on my list all year since I first found out of its existence... Had to wait for summer to come along and then slowly gain the canyoneering experience to even attempt a canyon of this magnitude. I tried getting the Fantastic Four back together for this amazing canyon, but one had to bail due to being too busy with the chicas 
and another had to bail the morning of due to waking up with a massive headache. 
Steve, you still good to go? 
The upper fork had some thick bushwhacking but we'd pick up a use trail most of the way down and avoided a dryfall before hitting the main relatively flat canyon with some 40ft narrows to down climb into. The looked fairly wet already, so we took advantage of a wide flat area and gear up for the wet romp coming up. 
It started off easy enough with some light down climbing and pools to wade or bypass... At the beginning of the technical section, we hit the canyon register, signed in, and read off many of the canyoneering pioneers who traveled before us. It started with a few short 20ft drops, plenty more pools to wade & swim, as the down climbing got slowly more difficult. 
We then hit the beginning of the deep, dark, twisty & wet narrows section that started with a cool down climb alongside or thru a cool arch. I had my full 3mm wetsuit on but even I started to get chilly thru this section. Thankfully we able to keep a good pace with just the two of us and all the potential keepers are currently full so we didn't have to spend anytime bobbing in the cold water trying to work our way out. 
Rappel #5 was an optional down climb of about 20ft. Rappel #6 was a slippery 10ft drop into a shallow pool otherwise it would have been down climbable... A tricky down climb to rappel #7 which was anchored from a floating branch 
After about 2.5 hours, we finally emerged from the narrows sections but not sure if we were completely done. After a bit of dry rock hopping & bushwhacking, we decided to drop our gear & suit but a bit further we hit rappel #14 of 40ft & had to throw our harnesses back on for one final rappel. 
