Playing Through in Pine Creek

Saturday Sept 17,2016

This trip had been planned months ago to reacquaint some family members with the sport, and to be one persons first trip through some technical canyons. When I realized the Zion Rendezvous was the same weekend I almost canceled knowing that the less technical canyons we had scheduled would most likely be extra busy.

My last trip through Pine Creek I only saw one small group that we caught up to at the final rap. Having the entire canyon to ourselves had made the trip a a memorable fun romp. This time as we entered the tunnel parking lot, I groaned as I watched one group of 6 walking down under the bridge, one group of 4 gearing up, and a group of 12 at the bathrooms. Sigh, we were going to be cheek to cheek in the canyon. At least most of the people I have meet in canyons have been friendly.

We waited 20 minutes to get on rope at the first rap, there were at least two groups totaling 10 people only minutes ahead of us. Second rap we stood around watching the group in front descend, and chatted with the group behind us. Nice guys, a part of the Rendezvous we learned. By now I heard that the group of 12 behind us had another group of 12 stacked behind them, and at least one and possibly a second small group behind them. Total count of people between rap 3 and rap 1 had reached approximately 40.

As I rigged the rope at rap 3 I grimaced at the rapide farm which had sprung up on the chains. I wish I had a picture, there were 4-5 various sized rapides forming multiple potential anchor points. Feeling some pressure to move quickly I didn’t waste any time on cleaning up the extras. I justified my actions thinking they were in good shape and I didn’t feel the need delay parties behind us to gather such low value canyon booty. Since one of our group was < 100 lbs and was not yet capable of managing their own friction I rigged for single strand.

After rapping into the cathedral I back floated for a moment admiring the light and shadows of my favorite area of the canyon. I then provided a bottom belay for the members of my party. Our rope bag was deployed and the last member of our group dropped in. The last person from our party unhooked from the rope and backfloated near the exit arch admiring this majestic place. I moved from my belay position to a spot where I could pull down and stuff the rope without interfering with the following party. We heard a call of “rope” followed almost immediately by a full rope bag missing the backfloating member of my party by just a few feet. This bag did not have rope deployed leading back to the anchor it was just the full bag someone didn’t carry down.

I almost chastised the person up top who threw the bag for the carelessness when I caught something larger shooting down the angled ramp and flying into the water. It created quite the splash impacting approximately six feet from the person backfloating My first thought was the extensions off the large blob were straps and a hip belt. I thought what @#$%! throws down something so large and heavy knowing how crowded the canyon was and that there were definitely people below.

Then my brain processed additional input and I realized what I was seeing wasn’t a pack. What I thought were straps and hipbelt were the arms and legs of a person! He had landed in the water flat on his back. A helmet emerged from the splash and a sputtered exclamation of “What the HELL!” was repeated several times. The dude stared at me looking shocked and angry. I looked back up thinking how did they possibly plan on this being a downclimb?

The splasher was still staring at me like I had personally done something unspeakably evil. I asked about his physical well being as he had apparently fallen from a good height. After figuring out that he was completely unhurt I started to process additional details. He appeared to be hooked on our rope and I could see the biner from the block on the rope fairly close to where he was attached. The splasher started yelling back up to the remainder of his party about his unhurt state. A second full rope bag splashed down in the cathedral, again with no rope deployed.

The people up top started pulling the remainder of the rope through the rapide up top (I had overdeployed 15 feet of rope or so and hadn’t bothered to reset the length once I reached bottom.) At this time the splasher started yelling at the people to leave the rope, they replied it’s biner blocked and continued to feed the rope down. The splasher tried to explain that the people up top needed this rope to descend since they had thrown both of their rope bags down.

Since the splasher was unhurt and now our rope was down (without me pulling it) I decided to avoid the following parties yelling drama. I also wanted to get the newbie in our party away from what just happened to prevent them from panic or other any other negative reactions. I moved to a position just outside of the exit arch and started to stuff the rope bag. The splasher gave up on providing advise to the members of the party up top and came over to talk to us. He realized that we were not part of the two large groups and said “I owe you an apology, I’m sorry” As we conversed we learned that the slasher’s group was one of the small groups at the back of the line who had been granted permission to play through using the larger groups ropes. The larger two groups had rigged each of the two prior drops with each strand isolated to facilitate multiple people attached to the rope at one time. My comment of they stoned the rope was meet with comprehension so I assume the splasher has understanding of both biner blocks and stone knotting. In the splasher’s foursome only one man had not been through Pine Creek before.

Here is what we believe happened: The splasher arrived at this final drop after the our rope bag was deployed and while the the last member of our party was still on rope. He assumed that this was again a rope rigged by the larger party and had two isolated strands. He didn’t inspect the anchor or rigging. He attached to the strand which didn’t have our last rappeler on and threw down the rope he had. Of course he started down after the last person had unweighted the rope and was floating over near the exit arch. When he attempted to descend on the wrong side of the biner block the rope pulled through the rapide He fell onto his back on the ramp, and slid. The ramp was long enough and he had sufficient momentum to launch him slightly out from the wall. He fortunately landed in the deepest part of the water in chamber. The water where he landed was full swim depth, other parts of the chamber had rocky debris above the water.

As we parted I think the adrenaline rush had receded had he was realizing just how close a call it had been. I again remarked how glad I was he was unhurt, he replied “I almost hit you, and you could have been calling the coroner.”

I’ll admit, that night I had nightmares about how bad this could have turned out. The splasher and the person he almost landed could each have been killed. The how could this have been prevented thoughts still bounce through my head.

I’ll let individual commentators draw their own opinions on the lessons learned. (Ducks and covers hoping this doesn’t devolve into DRT vs SRT)

;TLDR Dude failed to inspect rigging, hooked up on the wrong side of the biner block, fell 50 ft into deep water, used up a lifetime of luck and was completely unhurt. TADA! Don’t try this trick at home kids.