For Memorial Day weekend I did a couple of canyons. On Saturday I took my wife, brother, brother-in-law, and a friend. The friend had never been canyoneering before, but did great. We chose to do the East fork of Leprechaun. Everything went smoothly. This is the first time I’ve been the most experience person in the group. I did make some mistakes, but we’re all still alive and it was a good learning experience. I’ll edit this post with some pictures once I get them all collected, but wanted to get some discussion going. On the second rappel, the anchor is a large triangle shaped sandstone maybe 60 lbs. buried half in the sand with some other rocks piled on top. A group of ten was just finishing up when we got there. There is a small lip along the ledge that would keep the anchor from going over if it happened to slide. As one of our group got to the bottom and still on the rope, he tripped or jumped or something that put a fair shock on the rope. I was shocked to see the anchor leap out of place and rotate upward a bit. It looked so solid. We couldn’t reproduce the effect so we continued to rappel off this anchor. I’m feel I’m just barely confident with placing anchors and leading a canyon, what do you all think?
Anway, we had a great time. After we got to the main fork confluence, my wife opted to stay put while the guys hiked up the main fork and made it almost to the west fork before turning back. My brother found an interesting hole to squeeze into under some large boulders and we really like the super skinny stuff.
Monday, my wife and kids went to the family reunion (the real reason for being in the area) and the guys went off and did Chamber in the roost. We found it to be really hard. Since we are all very skinny guys, we were able to scoot along the bottom almost through the whole canyon. Looking at other trip reports, I realized others had stayed above ground much more that we did. We didn’t think to all wear long sleeve and pants. Now there is a trail of blood at elbow and knee height all the way down.
more to come…
Mike
My thoughts deadman/cairn anchors are:
1. Inspect – dig it up, check webbing, etc. A bunch of folks just rapped off it and lived….should work right? Maybe not (search for the Constrictnine accident).
2. Back it up – take the pull side of the biner blocked rope, find a sturdy place and tie into it, now you are ready for some failure.
3. Settling vs. Failure – sounds like your rock was in the process of failing to me, a little movement with a new anchor is normal but this one is heavily used.
4. Rappel Lightly – make sure folks (especially fatties) get a nice low start and maybe slide the first bit so the rope can rest over the edge
Might be a good idea next time you run into this type of anchor to dig it up, redo it, back it up, and feel confident about your ability to create these anchors. Its a required skill on the CO plateau.
Also, sounds like your crew could use some knee/elbow pads for those skinnies man!