As a last romp in the desert, Kim, Ivy and I took a trip down to the San Rafael Swell. Neither of them had canyoneered in Blue John before, but really wanted to. I was familiar with the canyon already, and I love the long, narrow slots, so Blue John it was. The drive was interesting; we saw a herd of wild horses and got the car stuck in the sand. There must've been a strong storm or something, because the road was covered in deep sand--not like it had been last month. After we got the car stuck once, we found a great camp spot close to the trailhead and stayed the night.
At the trailhead in the morning. Here's to you, Aron Ralston! Cliché, I'm sure.
Over the last month this canyon had seen a lot of changes. There must've been a strong flash flood, because the slots were filled with standing water and slick mud. It made getting through the canyon a lot harder than before, and we hadn't counted for that difficulty. It took us almost twice the time to get through the canyon than it had taken Jef and I.
On our way back through the west canyon, there were several places in the canyon that it was apparent that there had been small rock slides. A little dust here, some rocks there... it was kinda cool. And then we came across this:
Gnarly. The trail used to be right under all that! There were gouge marks all the way down the canyon walls where the boulders had fallen. It probably happened within the last week or so, before it thunder-stormed and flash flooded. Kinda a big deal.
This is at the end of our hike, at 7:30pm. 10.5 hours of hiking, scrambling, canyoneering... SO exhausted. It was a great adventure.
