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| Canyoneering | 11.00 Miles |
1,800 AEG |
| | Canyoneering | 11.00 Miles | 10 Hrs 15 Mns | | 1.07 mph |
| 1,800 ft AEG | | | | |
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| | Intermediate Canyoneering - Difficult or dangerous; Tech Climb; rope reqd; descent anchor; exit technical; | | B - Up to light current; wading/swimming; possible wet/dry suit | | Risky - Extraordinary risk factors exist; solid skills/judgement reqd; no beginners | | IV - Long, full day, bivy possible |
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| partners | | I thought about giving this a 4B due to all the awkward undercut rappels and large keeper, but we honestly didn't find this canyon to be that difficult.  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. 
It was only the two of us and our cars so we choose the logistically easier way of parking a car at the FR231 bridge and driving the other to Barney Pasture, dropping in an hiking the LONG way upstream West Fork back up to our car at the bridge.  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. So I had managed to stay mostly dry so far but we hit the first of a few chilly swimmers so I suited up and we dropped into that medium sized cold pool at the bottom of a small chute. This was followed quickly by another swimmer that required some light down climbing and either a drop or a short slide to enter into. Just around the corner was the 'dreaded' keeper.  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. We passed a couple good campsites and Flintstone Canyon fairly quickly, but the section from there to Casner Cabin Draw which I hadn't done before seemed to take forever. It was a cool section with some interesting narrows and a handful of pools to wade & swim across sans wetsuits. Barney Springs canyon wasn't as challenging as we thought but we underestimated this neverending West Fork that had us falling down at least a few times each.  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. |
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| Yea, canyoneering is an extreme sport... EXTREMELY dramatic!!! =p |
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