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| Canyoneering | 3.00 Miles |
1,000 AEG |
| | Canyoneering | 3.00 Miles | 4 Hrs 45 Mns | | 0.63 mph |
| 1,000 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 | | II - Normally requires a half day |
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[ show ]
| no partners | | A fun halfday canyon that's been on my radar since last winter but just hadn't gotten around to descending it. A couple groups have scouted it out while up on the mesa doing Sierra & Tango Canyons but it's questionable if anyones fully descended it yet. 
As we climbed up onto the mesa, it started raining on us fairly well but we figured we'd keep pushing on and see it if let's up. Which it soon did as soon as we topped out on the ridge.  Up on the mesa, upper Romeo canyon is a shallow brushy drainage that's scenic but easy walking for the most part until it hits a HUGE cliff with a 300ft drop-off.  We scouted the drop by walking the ridge and eyeing the midway alcove and decided to sling a large boulder near the rim. Being the 'fearless leader' and since I built the anchor, I tossed my 250ft rope which easily touched bottom and I was the first to rappel down.  Other than loose rocks and dodging an aggressive agave plant, it was a fairly easy ~180ft rappel and wouldn't have been that tough of an ascent if I had to retreat back up the rope. Once down, I searched around for a solid pinch point in the rock jam and found a few good options so I yelled to my buddy to start rappelling while I got to building the next anchor. Funny enough, I found an old ATC left by a previous canyoneering group scouting this canyon out a couple winters ago.  My buddy on rappel also inadvertently knock off some loose rocks that'd fall into the steep chute and explode like grenades full of gravel but I positioned myself to avoid the shrapnel... Once he was down, we pulled the ropes with some resistance since it was going thru a large patch of shin diggers.  Thankfully the ropes pulled and we crawled thru the boulders to get to my anchor and set that up for the 2nd drop. It's an odd start over rough rope-unfriendly ledges so use rope protection and readjust the biner block. Let's just say my 250ft rope is now 210ft...  The drop looks big from above but the ropes easily touched and only ended up being 120-140ft with most of it free hanging. The tricky part was near the bottom, my rope got tangled in some nasty thorny tree branches so I'm hanging 15ft off the deck flicking it out of them and then have to drop right into them and past them while trying not to get torn up too bad. Luckily I was able to help keep my buddy away from the worst of it and the rope pull was fairly easy. It looked like we may have had a 3rd rap, but the drop to Fish creek was just lots of down climb, boulder hopping, and bushwhacking.  Somewhere around the time of that final rappel, the rain started up again and it really picked up when we hit the creek. So we got fairly soaked while hiking back up lower Fish Creek back to the highway but we were happy as clams having just had an amAZing day of BIG rappel sequences in the Supes.  |
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Autumn Foliage Observation Moderate
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| Yea, canyoneering is an extreme sport... EXTREMELY dramatic!!! =p |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
Getting back to Fish Creek was a bit pokey. There were 6 on the team. Great way to start a new year!
