Originally posted this as a question to figure out conditions of these canyons but didn’t get any feedback so I’ll turn this into a real Trip Report since I visited these canyons over the weekend.
Ended up only doing Alcatraz and Eardly, June 17th and 18th, respectively. I typically only do canyons in the fall so it was interesting to try them out so late in the spring (practically summer).
Alcatraz was almost completely dry except for a couple spots that required some knee deep walking. The part of Alcatraz that was unique to my typical canyon adventures this time around was the amount of Daddy Long Leg spiders. We encountered what had to amount to over a thousand throughout the canyon and typically they were in clusters of 50-100 at a time. The darker the canyon became the more we saw (who knows how many we actually didn’t see but were there lurking in the darkness). The last mae west section on the canyon where you have to get your body over a pinch point was full of the spiders. To avoid being completely covered in them we had to chimney higher than normal to get past the section. It was an added level excitement that we weren’t expecting to have to deal with. Even came across a black widow in a super dark spot that had to be avoided.
Things of note: Saw a couple oddly placed bolts 3/4 way through the technical section and a rope coming down from the east wall right after the technical section and the canyon begins to open up. Inspected it and didn’t see foot prints in the sand below it – not sure why it would be placed there or how long it had been there. Didn’t seem too old.
Took us (a group of 3 fit canyoneers – 1 experienced and two beginners) about 9 hours to get through Alcatraz with a total of about an hour and a half of breaks throughout. Feel like the 4-5 hour time listed on climb-utah is a little misleading but maybe I’m not as competent as I think I am – leaning towards the former, though
Eardly is a fun one to do when you know it’s going to be hot out and you want to do zero gravity in the same trip (we ended up deciding to skip zero after a tiring two days in the heat, though).
The hike up and down to get into Eardly is beautiful but strenuous with the heat. We took the shortcut route in and took our time route finding down the steep canyon wall. After getting down into Eardly the rest of the canyon was straight forward. Lots of wading, swimming and a handful of short rappels. Eardly holds a special place in my heart as it was the first canyon I ever did 11 years ago (also the first time I got hypothermia!) so it was fun to get back to that side of the swell. As far as water level it seemed pretty typical to me – no keeper sections and enough water to swim and get out of the pools. A few cool pools but for the most part the water was a nice temp throughout. No wet suits needed even with some shivering in the shaded technical section.
Trying to attach some photos of the trip via a url link but they are showing up in the wrong orientation – anyone have suggestions of how to avoid/fix this? Also, took out a drone this time and once I’ve processed some of the footage I’ll try to add it to this post as well.