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| Canyoneering | 13.00 Miles |
1,500 AEG |
| | Canyoneering | 13.00 Miles | 1 Day 4 Hrs 30 Mns | | |
| 1,500 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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| no partners | | I did this as an overnighter since I worked a halfday Saturday morning and wanted to do some exploring once I was down in WCC. I was a little confused as to where the beta wanted me to drop in, but I figured it didn't really matter too much since I was in the general vicinity and this was upper Meadows for sure. Looking at it again from Google Earth, I left the powerlines one dirt road too early and ended up dropping in one of the upper forks to the north. The canyon is a bushwhack in the beginning, then loads of boulder hopping, some down climbing when you hit the Coconino sandstone layer, startled a pack of large elk along the way, and eventually u hit that first 80ft rappel. There were scattered showers in the area and so far it'd been dry, but when I hit the technical section it started sprinkling on me off/on. Some more down climbing and rock hopping and you're at the 2nd 45ft one, though just above that rappel is a small pool that I caught a good-sized black bear taking a bath.  He took off at lightning speed as soon as he saw me. Needless to say, I setup that 2nd rappel awful fast with a bear just around the corner.  Some more rock hopping brings you to that 80ft slick chute and the rains picked up just for that occasion. Of course I rappelled it since it was soaking wet and then after that 25 footer just past that, the rains just completely let up just before sunset. I finished thru those lower narrows and popped out to WCC around 7pm as dusk was setting in. No great camping options in the area, so I found a small rock ledge to spend the night. The rain dropped the temperature a good 10° that was forecasted, so it was a little chillier that what I was prepared for but I managed to get enough sleep.
The main reason I dropped in on Meadow Canyon is that the section of WCC from Hanging Gardens to Rim Tank Canyon is the last few miles I've yet to hike of the whole WCC from Bull Pen and up both tributaries over the last few summers.  The next morning as it was slowly warming up, I hiked 15 minutes upstream to Hanging Gardens to enjoy that beautiful gem though the ferns above it have mostly died off for the season. Since it was warming up, I decided to continue upstream thru a few swimmers and check out White Box for 3-4th time. There was a rope swing setup that I just had to try.  Headed back downstream, loaded up my camping & canyoneering gear and continued downstream towards Rim Tank Canyon. The first half mile or so is kinna bland, then it starts to cut into the Supai layer and some cool pools appear every now and then. It's so sweet to be in a clear creek surrounded by loads of green trees & shrubery while the canyon is multi-colored/tiered with Supai sandstone on the bottom, Coconino sandstone taking up most of the middle, and capped off with a Basalt layer. Now I thought I'd seen most of what WCC had to offer, but then I hit that section that I think most people call Red Boxes though I thought Red Boxes referred to some swimmers below Rim Tank... But these Red Boxes consisted of like 10 pools all back to back with small cascades in between most of them. The first 7 were mandatory swimmers while the bottom 3 could be bypassed or waded. I was so blown away with the beauty of what I was seeing that it wouldn't have suprised me one bit if I came around a corner and found a plaque with 'Made by God' on it. The next half mile or so got bland again and then I finally hit my exit canyon. Now that scramble up Rim Tank Canyon is quite the butt kicker and I don't think I'll be back anytime soon.  I finally topped out around 6pm and walked back to my car parked not too far off of the highway to find that it's been vandalized... 
They knocked off my sideview mirrow, jumped on my hood so hard there's dents left in it from my engine, and they kicked dents into all four of my doors.  I'm guessing by the closeness to that rough FR142, they left very muddy shoe prints all over my car, and they definely weren't hiking shoes that it was probably some 4x4ers or quaders who were riding in the area and couldn't think of anything better to do that trash the crap out of my car. Thankfully it was still drivable and they didn't try to break in or smash any of the windows or lamps/lights.  I spent this afternoon after the hike suction cupping some of dents out and trying to JB weld my sideview mirror bracket back together...
Now that I got WCC all hammered out, I guess I need a new goal. How about the 6 published technical canyons and I've done 2 of them so far. |
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| Yea, canyoneering is an extreme sport... EXTREMELY dramatic!!! =p |
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