Saying Yes To Crack: My Bitter Battle To Not Die By My Own Choice... To Rappel Down A Slot Canyon In A Wet Suit

I’m not sure if it is brain damage from being hit by a car as a kid or just the ego of a newly single dude trying to make the most of a mid-life crisis thrust upon him, but I seem of late to enjoy putting myself in mortal peril for my own entertainment.  Though I have sometimes wondered if it might just not be a subconscious drive for more blog material.  In that case, I blame all of you.  Regardless (or “irregardless,” whichever your grammar orientation), having failed to learn from extreme sports (like mountain bike jumping) or failed to learn from near fatal dating endeavors into the wilderness (death by mooses anyone?), I chose to combine the two into some sort of twisted version of a Reese's Peanut Butter cup by joining a “canyoneering” LDS singles trip to Zions National Park. 

Now, like jumping mountain bikes after having only ridden once in 15 years, I was well qualified to head down a canyon which has an actual and recent death toll.  I mean I have rappelled a grand total of “one” times in the past year, which was in fact the ONLY time I have rappelled in the past 20 years.  And in truth, this “one time” was down a 15 foot rock I scootched down last summer in Orderville.  Still I had a pretty good instructor in the crack climbing beauty queen Steffan King.  So when they asked who had been rappelling before, I confidently stuck my hand high in the air.  After all, “I was a pro” said my brain-damaged brain.  Now lest you roll your eyes and shake your head at me, no Brett’s were harmed in the research of this post.  In fact, any injuries were well iced by the time I got done.

Moreover, since I was already an experienced rappeller, I felt I needed to up the degree of difficulty and sign up for the canyoneering option which required a wetsuit rental in the unpredictable Utah spring.  So among the morning snow flurries, I didn’t think twice as I tucked my buns into a neoprene wetsuit in the staging garage.  Once all gussied up in the wetsuit and climbing harness (looking strangely like a female X-Men) with the snow having subsided and the skies clearing, I was ready to venture off into the Utah desert... in a wet suit.

If you are thinking that Brett looks like a woman here, that is because this IS a woman.  Pretty sure this is Alicia.  I blame Shawshank Redemption pose for any confusion.

We loaded a crew into my truck and made our way just inside Zions National Park.  Our small group of 16, nearly evenly split between men and women, left the parking lot and scrambled our way into massive dark crack in the sheer red rock called Pine Creek.  Now right away Pine Creek made it quite clear what it had in store for us.  20 feet into the canyon we were wading through waist deep icy water that stretched canyon wall to canyon wall, which was only eight feet wide anyway.  Not satisfied that it had made its point clear, stepping into the next flooded section of Pine Creek I found my entire body fully submerged at least a foot underwater.  And so was our welcome as we entered, already soaking wet, into the shady and gusty beauty of Pine Creek Canyon for a 5 hours tour, a 5 hour tour.  (I just wasn’t sure if I end up as Gilligan or Mary Ann).

For those unfamiliar with slot canyons, they are just what they sound like; a canyon that is just a slot.  They are very tall and very narrow gashes carved through the sandstone by water and wind.  The canyon walls can be 200+ feet high in a spot where you are able to touch both sides of the canyon with each of your arms. I have provided a lovely picture for your reference.  This canyon offers around ten rappels (with one optional cannon ball, which I took) from eight to eighty feet and we encountered our first drop a hundred feet into the canyon, a 15 footer.  Volunteering to be first down (after all I was an expert) I lowered myself into chest deep water.  From there I was instructed on how to “fireman” from below in order to stop a rappeller who is descending at a rate that might turn them into pate.  This required my wading in this cold water as the rest of our group made their way down the first rappel.  

Now the thing about the first rappel into a slot canyon is that once you make that first drop, there is no turning back.  You are committed to completing the endeavor.   I am sure there is some profound metaphor to be found in this fact, yet my damaged and now frozen brain was already entirely too cold to philosophize on some deeper meaning of the moment.  Instead, all I could think about was finding a recently deceased Tonton in which to crawl into and worrying about where I would find a lightsaber to open said sleeping bag  of guts.  

With each descent our group ventured further into the spectacularly beautiful bowels of the canyon with flowing twists and turns of carved rock.  And with each descent and passing hour we got colder and colder.  Dropping down to a new level, nearly almost always into water, we would greet our recently descended canyoneering mates and try to stave off hypothermia.  Jogging was tried.  Shadow boxing was attempted.  Burying ourselves in the sand was experimented with.  A little dancing was even seen.  Yet, the standard method of warming your fellow adventurer that was adopted was by deep embrace – ya it’s a singles activity, but I assure you it was entirely necessary.  Picture a scene of two longtime lovers deeply embracing at the moment one of the two has just returned from a long and uncertain journey; now insert dialog from a church meet-n-greet during this embracing .  “So what’s your name?”  “Where are you from?” "What do you do?"  “Do you have any kids.”  And this was not limited to the opposite genders either.  The ladies were holding each other close.  The men…  well we’d sooner die of exposure than warm ourselves that way... so no dude-on-dude cuddling occurred. Such were the absurd scenes of the faux intimacy-of-necessity as we struggled to keep our core body temperatures up. 

We hit a couple of spots where the only place to wait for the next rappel was in the water, a rather unpleasant prospect.  So we tried to wait above and do the two rappels in rapid succession.  At one point, you descend into the large open cavern called the cathedral; it’s like dropping in for Sunday services from the ceiling of an ancient Byzantine church.  It was amazing, still cold, but amazing.  Another fascinating, yet chill inducing feature of Pine Creek is a 60 yard swim through this tight slot in which you can touch either side of the canyon.  Passing a frog affixed to the wall of this slot my chilled brain contemplated capturing said amphibian, but I had enough sense to know that it would be hard to swim holding a frog.  So I let the urge pass and the cave frog go. 

The further we ventured down the canyon, the more the wind picked up.  The more the wind picked up, the more Thermodynamics 101 says you will get colder.  It was right.  The colder we got, the more creative and aggressive were our tactics to stay warm. We eventually found ourselves stacking up front to back like cordwood in little nooks in the redrock.  Covered in dirt, limbs shaking, and teeth chattering, awkward unfamiliar closeness turned to uncomfortable conversation as the Seinfeld shrinkage episode required some explaining as several of the men began expressing their concerns that they would never spawn children after this trip.  Still, we kept moving.  And as the rookies hid and huddled, the experienced guides in the group manned in the rappels, both outside and inside of the water; tough guys.

Several hours later we finally emerged from the dark canyon and found some sunlight!  We basked in the radiant heat of the sun as long as we could and ate our lunches.  I apparently failed to seal my sandwich bag and all of the swimming left me with ham sludge in a sack.  I took a pass and stuck with a granola bar.  While the sun was nice, the wind also picked up at this spot with a few more rappels to go.  Forward once more.  We let the coldest ones of the group go down first, which was all very subjective as I felt like an Otter pop, but also knew that the one thing that repelled women more than a cold-beach-Costanza, was an unchivalrous fellow.  So I waited until the end of the non-guides to make final the two drops.  

Pine Creek did save the best rappel for last.  It was an 80+ foot drop through a twisted slot opening into a huge room.  After sitting in the cold wind until the end of our group, my legs were stiff as I tried to pivot out over the abyss after one of our guides, John, hooked me up.  Fear coursed through my veins for a moment as my legs could hardly move.  Feeling my harness hold, I relaxed, managed a smile for the camera, and began my descent (first photo).  By this last rappel I had finally got the hang of it and was dropping smoothly.  I might even dare say I looked cool - we  but for the skin tight ensemble I was wearing.  Of course there is always a payment to trying to be cool and the friction from my smooth descent left my belay device too hot to touch (the warmth was strangely appreciated still).  Yet, we made it!  All of us, no hypothermia, no falls, no injuries… this calls for a picture! 

What an adventure!  Now of course it was not over.  We had a mile and a half bolder scramble to get out of the canyon which featured a slight ankle sprain and a tumble into a cactus - I can't make it out fully in tact.  By now our bodies began to finally heat up and the memories of the chattering five hours faded to the thrill of the adventure and accomplishment.  That was one of the coolest things I had even done (pun intended).   As we reached my truck and packed in all 16 of us like Indian nationals swamping a train for a religious holiday, we cracked a few rootbeers and reveled in the fact that we just did that…for fun.  No one lost it or complained; we sucked it up and had an adventure of a lifetime.  And though I don’t speak for all of us, I bet we would each happily say yes to this crack again; just maybe further into the warmth of the summer this time.

  

Hats off to our volunteer guides who got us newbies through Pine Creek in one piece.  Men of saintly patience and grit.  Thanks!