UT: Ticaboo Mesa – Psycho Damage and Pothoez

This past weekend we met up Kayd Burton and his group down in Smith Fork so that we could introduce members of our groups to X-rated canyons via Psycho Damage Canyon. 3 people from my group, and 2 from Kayd’s group had never done an X before, and the two in Kayd’s group hadn’t even done an R canyon before. We started with the upper R section of Psycho, which gives people a taste of silo crossing and stemming so that they can decide whether they are ready for the X section or not. My wife Olivia is still nursing her broken hand back to health, so she exited at the cross-joint after the R section with two others who wisely decided that they weren’t ready for X based on how they did in the R section.

I continued to the X-section with Nate, Josh, Kayd, and Sam who is a teenager. The X section of psycho starts off with some silos that are lower to the ground and progressively takes you higher and higher off the ground.

Nearing the silo, everyone was doing great, Kayd and I were the only ones who had done an X-canyon before. At the main silo I showed everyone the narrow stem that leads to the Silo but forgot to have my right shoulder facing down canyon, so I had to reverse all the way out and flip around. If crossing the silo through the squeeze at the mid-point, having your right shoulder facing down canyon allows you to get an important foothold that allows you to enter the silo. In 2017 during our fist attempt of the canyon, my wife had gone into the silo the wrong way and came close to falling because of it. Once I got turned around, crossing the silo was no problem, and I even found a stance at the other side of the silo to hang out and take pictures from.

Josh and Nate were not psyched the narrow squeeze since they are very tall (6’2″ and 6’3″). I told them they could cross over the very top of the silo and that it had been done during the first descent of the canyon. Kayd and Sam the teenager followed me through the silo without an issue while Josh and Nate crossed above. Watching them cross from below was freaky, they were on their shoulder blades and feet crossing the silo with over 60 ft of exposure beneath them.

We climbed up the other side of the silo to meet them and they both remarked that “it wasn’t that bad”. They would have made it through the squeeze just fine, but props to the guys for taking the hardcore approach for their first X. We descended a fun elevator shaft to the first pool, while the larger members of our group had to do a sketchy elevator to a bombay to get down.
We wanted to stay as dry as possible, so Josh meat anchored all of us at the final down climb and pool so that we could use the rope to access a climb-around on the LDC to avoid the swim. Kayd helped Josh at the end and we all made it across without full-on swimming.

The three that had bypassed the X section were waiting for us at the bottom, so we collected our stashed gear and did the approach for Pothoez which conveniently finishes at the same place Psycho Damage does. Pothoez is somewhat of a shallow and uninteresting canyon until it’s final sequences, which is very good.
The first pothole we crossed was 20ft+ deep and yielded to two full potshots and josh’s long appendages. We all did an assisted rappel/zipline across that pothole off a natural arch on the upper LDC. The final drop requires crossing one of the deepest potholes I have ever seen, it had to have been at least 30 feet deep with a good amount of water still in it. The pothole is wide and not easy to cross on rappel, but Sam was able to pull it off after a few tries. Sam tied into the end of the rope on the ground and fireman-belay assisted the next person across the pothole. We figured out the the best way to do it is to rappel left-handed so you can access some key holds.
We didn’t have enough time after that to do Wormhole Canyon, so we headed back to the cars and drove to Hanksville for burgers. The road is in good condition and can be accessed low clearance sedans if you come in from the north above Ticaboo. Psycho Damage is a fantastic canyon and well worth the trip out there.