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| Canyoneering | 4.00 Miles |
3,000 AEG |
| | Canyoneering | 4.00 Miles | 9 Hrs | | 0.44 mph |
| 3,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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| | Intermediate Canyoneering - Difficult or dangerous; Tech Climb; rope reqd; descent anchor; exit technical; | | A - Dry or little water; shallow or avoidable water; no wet/dry suit | | III - Normally requires most of a day |
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| partners | | This turned into one of those days that had me rolling my eyes  at the end of the day and glad we still had a good time and that everyone was safe. 
Another sweet technical canyon out of Todd Martin's new GC canyoneering book!  Well driving to the Eminence Break TH is half of th adventure best done with a GPS unit.  The directions led us right to a muddy stock pond that required finding a route around it to the south. We camped the night above the tank and finished the driving in the morning.  Geared up and made the steep descent down the Eminence Break.  Loads of scrambling and maneuvering down the steep & loose route to make it out of the ravine and on the trail traversing above the north fork of Tatahoysa. So I didn't exactly super study the beta since I had 4 canyons in mind this weekend and casually studied them all... We should of stayed on the trail and continued to a major southern fork of the canyon that's out of sight, but instead we found a cairned route near a rocky fork of the main canyon and thought maybe it was the southern fork the beta talked of.  This quickly dropped us to the rocky north fork with a few drops that we bypassed around before it hit the Redwall Limestone layer and the confluence with the real southern fork. It became obvious that we dropped down the easier fork and missed a few rappels, but sounded like we had the better half of the technical narrows yet to come. Just below the confluence, we decided to rappel a slick 20ft drop instead of down climbing it. We soon arrived at some sweet narrows and a cool 150ft drop.  Just around the corner was a 110ft drop down a smooth chute with the final 150ft overhung drop just beyond that.
At the bottom, we dropped gear and hiked to a nearby beach where we ate lunch, pumped water, and took a refreshing dip in the Colorado River. We traversed the river almost a half mile downstream to find the lower Eminence Break trail and slowly made our way up that. Once atop the Redwall layer, the trail leveled off and we passed by the real southern fork that we kicked ourselves for missing after scoping it out. Live and learn, maybe next time... Hopefully others learn from this.  The trail traverses back to the upper main fork which is more like a wide scree chute that requires loads of scrambling and zig zagging.  The hot sweaty & steep hike out slowly bonked me so the last half mile to the top was quite exhausting & frustrating with two cramped thighs  yet still quite scenic. It again took our GPS in hand to navigate the drive back out...
All in all, another great trip down this rugged canyon in the unforgiving Marble/Grand Canyon region. It's a day canyon in an area loaded with other canyons, so I'll prob be back at some point to do the full technical run now that I know the area well. |
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| Yea, canyoneering is an extreme sport... EXTREMELY dramatic!!! =p |
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