Thursday June 15, I was a party of three that did pipe spring.
There was not much availability in permits for canyons in the park, so we decided to do pipe spring since it’s out of the park and only requires one car (no shuttle).
The hike in is all over gravel roads. Per the beta, park at the gate. The night before, I put the gps waypoints from bluugnome in my Google maps phone app and then downloaded the Google maps to offline mode. That made navigating to the drop in point very easy.
There was a group of girls doing rappel practice with their dads as part of some church activity just before the first rappel. One of the dads was helpful and pointed us to the first rap. The first rap is not in the stream bed but on the left down canyon lip, from a tree.
The technical section of the canyon is relatively short but pretty. There was ankle deep water in the first couple rappels.
Toward the end there was a two stage rap. It starts from a smallish ledge and goes about 160′. Note that someone put an anchor on a tree on a not so good ledge about 140′ down. Skip that and go to the two anchor bolts about 20′ below. From the two anchor bolt it is 100′ down. The tree anchor will mess up your sequencing. Btw, these are rough distance estimates so don’t put full faith in them.
Below that are some pretty slotted narrows.
Then hang a left at the metal debris for the exit. Then another hard left up the steep Sandy slope to get out. I had been warned that the hike out was painful, but initially it is really a scramble out and not a hike out. Enjoy the canyon because you will really pay the price with the exit hike.
Overall a good canyon. We didn’t see anyone else after we saw the church group.
paulski
I hear the chorus of voices on this forum that are clearly advocating for helmet use. My interpretation is that the chorus is advocating for helmet use ALWAYS when in a canyon.
My executive summary: My personal choice is, and will continue to be, that I wear a helmet based on risk assessment of the specific situation. I sometimes wear one in a canyon, and that decision is based on my assessment of risk and a balance with other safety gear that I need to take (see below).
I always wear a helmet when mountain biking. This is a high-speed activity, and my risk assessment says that my reaction time is not fast enough to prevent likely head injury.
I always wear a helmet when whitewater kayaking. Sometimes I wear a full-face, depending on the characteristics of the river. The risk assessment is that my head is an anchor when I flip, so I need to protect it. And flipping is inevitable.
Over the past five years, I always wear a helmet when skiing. My risk assessment is a concern that out of control skiers may hit me.
[edit / addition – based on PM request]: I sometimes wear a helmet when canyoneering, based on the situation. I welcome comments on this assessment, but in summary, I wear a helmet if I see substantial risk of falling debris or substantial risk of slippage, offset by my view of other gear that I have to carry.
Material risk 1 for wearing a helmet when canyoneering is to protect from debris falling. This is a reasonable and higher risk on some canyons. I wore a helmet on Englestead because I didn’t want the risk of something falling on my head at the bottom of the initial rap. That, balanced with the easy approach hike where I could bring the extra gear in with minimal effort, was a no-brainer. And since I had the helmet for the initial rap, it is easy to continue wearing it through the rest of the canyon.
Material Risk 2 for wearing a helmet is fall / slipping risk. This is also can be a reasonable risk in some canyons, especially wet canyons. Unfortunately, I find that climbing helmets do not offer good protection for this type of risk. See below for my novice view on helmets.
Risk 3 for wearing a helmet is much smaller. The risk is slipping on a rappel and bashing your head in the wall. When canyoneering, I find that I load the rope and anchor right away. In Trad Climbing, if the climber falls, they fall the 2x the distance to their closest protection anchor. I am not a climber, so this is a novice observation. But Trad climbing seems to have more of a risk of swinging around on the rope and bashing your head in the wall. When canyoneering, the rope is loaded on the anchor, and shock loading and swinging on the rope is not a material risk. So the reduced coverage of climbing helmets, coupled with the reduced possibility of this happening when canyoneering, I assess this is not a concern for me.
Helmet Assessment: After my first trip Canyoneering, I read a lot of these post that strongly advocated for wearing a helmet always. Here is my experience:
Pro-tec Ace: Since I am a cheapo, I pulled out an old kayaking helmet to use for my next canyoneering trip. The Pro Tec Ace Water Helmet. I reasoned that if the Ace helmet protects against multiple impacts kayaking, then it would work for canyoneering. Unfortunately, the helmet is heavy and is definitely not comfortable for the sweaty canyoneering environment. It is good for a water environment (hence the “water helmet” tag). The Ace helmet provided protection against both falling debris and slippage / falling risk. But it definitely was a burden to carry and wear. I would use this helmet for a very limited type of canyons.
Petz Meteor: I subsequently did research on climbing helmets and bought a Petzl Meteor helmet based on good reviews. Unfortunately, unlike my kayak helmet, climbing helmets seem to offer primary protection for the top of the head and not the temple. The top of the head protection is good for falling debris, but offers reduced protection for slipping and falling risk. So I only use this helmet for big-drop canyons with more debris falling risk.
So what is the advocated protocol for wearing a helmet when canyoneering?
Wear a helmet only when rappelling?
Only in technical sections when rappelling, downclimbing, or scrambling?
Or do you put it on for a hike-in and hike out as well?
Parallel Example: I think examples can be cited where people have had head injuries where a helmet would have saved them. For example, should pedestrians in Manhattan always wear a helmet in the winter due to risk of ice falling from skyscrapers and striking pedestrians on the head? This is a real situation, although the odds are unlikely.
http://www.ctbuh.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=RQcqzB7ALu0=&tabid=53&language=en-US
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/man-conked-falling-ice-midtown-article-1.2999514
Another lesser factor in the helmet use is the amount of gear that needs to be carried. Helmets are lightweight, but bulky. If doing a remote canyon, in a small group, then I assess and prioritize the gear that I want to bring. I personally like to have redundant rope, in case I stick one rope, then I want enough rope to get out without having to rely on that stuck rope. I also really like to have enough water and I err on the side of caution with water. So I balance what safety items are important. Rope, helmet, water (required to survive), maybe extra biners & webbing, etc.
Webbing:
I agree that advocating for and using black only webbing simplifies the process. I personally like to simplify things like that in life.
But I currently have some excess “natural” colored webbing in my inventory. Rust color and olive drab. As I use that webbing up, I will replace it with black webbing.
If someone comes in after me and replaces my natural colored webbing with black webbing, it doesn’t impact me since it doesn’t cost me anything. It just seems wasteful to remove perfectly good natural colored webbing that meets the park service’s standards.
Edit:
BTW, I do appreciate the efforts, advice, and expertise of the more “seasoned” members of this forum. I have lurked here and i use the comments to challenge my thoughts and solidify my techniques. I may not see exactly eye-to-eye on this issue, but thank you for leading the way in developing this activity.
Downward Bound
Even on the easiest terrain, things can go wildly wrong. I have a mountain bike circuit, really technical, I’ve done more than 500 times, without incident. Then one day, only 100 yards from home, a neighbor’s dog attacked my front wheel sending me over the handlebars. I was only traveling about 10 mph on level ground. I landed headfirst on a small pointy rock and you can see the results. If it were not for the helmet I was wearing, I would probably be dead. Sooner or later, you will pay a big price for not wearing a helmet.
The third picture shows the damage to the helmet. That would have been my skull without a helmet.
hank moon
My friend Buddy used to hand-drill bolts w/o safety glasses. He did this for many years, thinking he knew the risks, and accepted them. That thinking eventually bought him a glass eye.
My friend Wolf sport climbed for years w/o a helmet. He now has permanent brain damage (luckily he can still function, albeit quite differently).
Etc…
Plenty of stories out there of folks not wearing helmets, having a close call that converted them. That’s just human nature. We all think we are special, that we can get away with it. Until it happens, and you will never expect it when it does. And it happens in less than a second – BAM! If you’re lucky, you’ll wake up wondering what happened.
Sewn up…har har…
Contributing to the sloganeering: Crack a helmet, not yourself!
@paulski, @deathtointernet mentioned a few of the standard reasons people go helmetless – would you care to share yours? And please do let us know if/when you feel duly chastened
ratagonia
Is that what you like? Being scolded? Big Boy?
Rapterman
^What they said^
And, as a practical matter, IF you canyoneer a LOT and for LONG enough
Some one in your crew WILL have their noggin saved by a helmet.
townsend
On the helmet, you underestimate risks OUTSIDE of falling debris. It is possible, even likely, that during many descents, you may swing into or “bump” your head against a canyon wall, and the helmet will protect against that impact. That is also why we wear helmet when rock climbing, whether top roping, sport, or trad. It happens. People get concussions even snow skiing.
An epidural or subdural hematoma is a death event in the wilderness. Once the brain starts bleeding, intracranial pressure increases.
It’s not cool to go helmetless. Don’t be clueless.
deathtointernet
Exactly. Every person I have seen not wear a helmet did it for silly reasons. Oh, they maybe said “it blocks my vision” or “These are all short raps anyway,” but in the end they did it because they wanted to look cool in photos, or because some bada$$ climber was along and he didn’t wear one. I’ve watched people carry helmets in their packs through entire canyons because one person in the group they thought was “cool” said they don’t wear helmets. So scolding? Yeah, because there’s folks just getting into canyoneering who might decide not to wear a helmet because someone more experienced who looked cool online said they don’t bother with helmets.
You can never evaluate all the risks. One of my best helmet stories is the lizard that fell 140 feet into the canyon nearly directly onto my head. Came down pretty hard! I’ve had tourists in Zion chucking rocks into a canyon as I walked by underneath, and when I yelled they chucked some more. I took a rock to the top of the helmet in Death Valley about sixty feet down a rappel because the rope somewhere way at the top scraped across something I didn’t even see on the way down, and I probably would not have survived it without one. You can talk about personal responsibility all you want, but I’ve been in the game long enough to have people look to me (not like Tom or Ram or anything, but you know, a few folks), look to my photos and whatnot, for how to canyoneer, and that means I have to set a good example.
And Tom, in my mind I’ve always just read every single one of your posts, going like, years back, in a scolding tone. Was I wrong???
Krampus
What would a good trip report be without a lecture from Tom?
ratagonia
I scold. I’m the bad cop, Ram is the good cop.
Black Webbing
For years, Parks have been advising climbers to use color-matched webbing for their anchors. It has not worked. I have started a quest to look for a way of addressing this issue that works.
I suggest black webbing ONLY for canyoneering. Black is ALWAYS a natural color. I observe that humans follow clear and simple rules (“black webbing only”) better than they follow rules that can be interpreted many different ways (“use color matched webbing”).
Canyoneering in National Parks is usually managed by climbers. Climbers essentially give lip service to using natural-colored webbing, but don’t make it a rule. My observation is that climbers use all sorts of colors on anchors. (As do canyoneers). I observe that land managers have not noticed that the ‘color matched webbing’ recommendation has not worked. Climbers have not noticed that the recommendation has not worked. The actuality in the field (color matched webbing is used sometimes) has been accepted by climbers and climber-land-managers as the best that can be done. I disagree with this assessment.
The goal is to maintain the illusion of a natural environment as much as possible. This removes the unnatural bright colors from the environment, making the wilderness experience slightly more wildernessy.
Please join me in this experiment.
——
A similar quest is to remove litter from the canyons, specifically in the form of excess slings. When people come to an anchor with only one sling on it, or with a ratty looking sling, they often add another sling. The standard in Zion often seems to be that each anchor needs one sling of each color in the rainbow to be SAFE!!!! One black sling is sufficient. Let’s cut the crap out and carry it out, and leave one black sling.
Tom
ratagonia
Good on ya, thanks for the report.
Please note that Pipe Spring Canyon (and the MIA Exit route) are on Church property, and we are a guests on their land.
The Stake that owns the property runs summer camp for their youth. So those were not “a group of girls doing rappel practice with their dads as part of some church activity” — though perhaps technically correct — but part of the summer camp program.
Tom
paulski
Clarification noted. We didn’t get into the details on the church program in our discussion with the dad. I felt like it wasn’t our position to encroach on their activities, so we left after our pleasantries.
ratagonia
Exactly. “Best behaviour”.
But I do want people going IN to understand that the MIA area is Church property and they are to be on their best behaviour when on Church property.
(Sigh). Being on best behaviour also means following standard safety protocols, which includes wearing helmets when canyoneering. Good for you, good for your friends, good for the land owner, good for the community. Win win win win.
paulski
This is digressing from the original positing, but I fail to understand the helmet and webbing color strict mentality of some of the community. I know that it has been discussed elsewhere, and perhaps could be discussed in those threads. But some in this community strictly advocate for a standard that exceeds what is required by property owners / managers (Park service or the LDS church)
I am an adult and I understand the risk that I take with / without a helmet. I take those risks with eyes wide open and I accept the consequences of my actions.
If the LDS church stake that owns the property requires a helmet to enter a canyon on their property, then I would respect that request. But that is not a requirement.
A helmet protects (somewhat) from fall protection, and it primarily protects from falling debris. I feel that I manage those risks well enough.
I respect those that decide to wear a helmet, or if someone wanted to wear a full body climbing harness for that matter. It is a personal decision.
I personally use a safety tether when at the edge of a rappel. Some people may not.
Zion Park states in the permitting process that the permit requires the user to “use subdued colors for hangers and slings”. The associated picture in the permitting system shows a sling with tan webbing. Yet for some reason, some people in this community insist on using only black webbing and insist on cutting out any webbing other than black. The property manager (the Park Service) has a less stringent standard than some people here.
I welcome some insight into my thoughts. I say this not as a means to attack, but as a means to logically ask questions that seem obvious to me.
Regards,
Ram
Hi Paul
I will take a stab at your inquiry. You are right that members of our community have and are trying to establish higher standards than are being required from officialdom. It is a voluntary effort to establish new norms and has been largely successful in our little blog fiefdom. You DO have the right to make these choices for yourself. My effort here is to re-frame the argument a bit and advocate for helmet use. It is directed not just toward you but others lurking. I know that my views have morphed on many subjects, as others have shared different views, on this group, over many years. That has been very valuable to me. So here goes…
I don’t wear a helmet exclusively for my own safety. While I do believe it makes me safer, I do it because I feel that I owe it to others. First there are my partners. By reducing the odds of major head injury to myself, I protect my partners from the huge hassle and dangers of having to deal with me, in case I am injured. If that happens, my partners are exposed to addition risk. I owe it to them, to do all I can to avoid that. My health, strength, skills, belong to the group, not just me
Second….I owe the same consideration to my family. Anything I can do to reduce pain and hardship for them, while I indulge in these frivolous gravity sport passions, seems the responsible thing to do. There also the 55 employees in my company that count on me for all or part of their livelihood. These folks will never see a canyon, but I owe them. The last line of my recent injury report reflects these ideas.
“My apologies to everyone who I know and love and loves me.”
Another and different effect we can have by getting hurt, is potential loss of access. High profile injuries and rescues have cost us access in the past and may do so again, in the future. Officialdom’s knee jerk reaction to expensive and dangerous SAR events is often an attempt to close off access. One recent example is Eaton Canyon in San Gabriel’s. Many hikers were going up canyon, over unstable slopes to gain access to some upper waterfalls. Many injuries resulted and the land managers response to was close the canyon above the bottom falls to travel. It took a year of hard work by your representatives in the Coalition of American Canyoneers to get the canyon open to travel and then by permit only, by canyoneers, even though they were not the one’s who precipitated the problem. The point is….access is fragile and perhaps one could look at our taking precautions for ourselves as protecting the freedoms of others, in our community.
Well…how did I do?
Ram
Yellow Dart
Aye to that; I lurked on here for 4 years before tapping a single post. The reports, pics, and debates of best-practice are what formed the basis of everything I know of the sport, being a an auto-didact from the Midwest. Y’all are read by more than you know.
My grandfather once related to my teenage-pyro-self that it’s “Fool kids like you that made it illegal to sell dynamite at our hardware store.” Relation being, enough people get hurt, there goes the fun for everyone.
Luckily I figured out how to detonate ANFO, but that’s for a different forum all together.
I’m not sure I’ve ever posted anything without a chaser.
ropeslinger
Ram – Couldn’t have been stated better. It’s concise and hits all of the major points. Pipe Spring is one of my favorite canyons. I would hate to lose access to it.
Tom – Thank you for establishing the new bolt station. It’s in the perfect spot, albeit a little less exciting than using the tree on the ledge and praying for a good rope pull. Thanks again.
paulski
I think that is a fair reasoning to advocate for helmet use. Although tone can sometimes imply that someone is scolding, rather than advocating. Tone on an internet forum, without personal relationships can also be misconstrued.
I respect your decision. I think everything in “adventure” sports is a risk assessment. My risk assessment is that not wearing a helmet in certain canyons is a low risk. I did wear one in Englestead because I was concerned about debris falling on my head on the initial rappel. I wear a full-face helmet when I whitewater kayak steep creeks. I do not wear a full face helmet when kayaking big water dam release rivers. I do so based on a risk assessment, but the consequences could be similar to canyoneering.
I still welcome comments on the webbing issue.
Regards,
Ram
My reaction to you my failure…and I do perceive it as a failure…. to set the right tone in my comments, was to review my post and I did come up with a few short additions I could have made to be more effective in my communication with you. I thank you. After all the goal is to be effective with what we mean and share.
There has been a small avalanche of posts supporting helmet use and I find it gratifying, because perhaps we have been effective in our advocating over the years. Still I feel a tad of unease, because I want the ideas, along with freedom of choice to rule the day. I looked for a way to express that unease and I think this concept comes closest
“Tyranny of the majority. … It involves a scenario in which decisions made by a majority place its interests above those of an individual or minority group, constituting active oppression comparable to that of a tyrant or despot.”
Perhaps not entirely on target, but……maybe you get the gist. I want people to do what they do because they think it is a good idea and the right thing to do.
Several years ago , on another canyoneering site, one of leaders of the groups daughter was in an auto accident. She was thrown clear of the vehicle, as she was not wearing a seat belt. Fortunately she survived. The vehicle was crushed. A fair assessment of this one specific event, according to authorities, was that wearing the seat belt, in this instance, would have been fatal. There was significant railing and ranting against the MANDATORY use of seat belts, by many folks who posted, in support of the family.
Clearly your odds are better with the seat belt on and providence played its hand, in this specific case. Enough so that I thing seat belts use in mandatory in every state (?). Wearing a helmet while on a motorcycle is not the law in every state. And wearing a helmet while canyoneering, is required nowhere. I will call it a successful day if a few more folks, lurking about decided it was a good idea and start to use one.
Four final thoughts.
1-Brian (BDC) once posted that he thought that wearing a helmet increases the odds/frequency of banging your head, as it does narrow periphery vision a little. After trying that on for a time, I have concluded that he is right. And that it does not matter ultimately
2-I was in Cathedral Canyon, near Lee’s Ferry, years ago (2009?). It is non tech canyon and it was the last canyon I did without a helmet. I smacked the heck out of my head coming out of a crouch to soon, where the walls overhung a little. Got me a big egg on my head, a little blood and a rare for me headache. Was that with you, Hank?
3- Being on blood thinners, it is more appropriate for me to be in a helmet than anybody. I am much more vulnerable to bleeding, both surface and internal. My joke is that “I wear the damn helmet even going to the bathroom.”
4-The helmet can be a little warm on a hot day, BUT…what is this about it being unfashionable? Dang, it makes you look “bada**! Great for pictures and your non adventure friends will be impressed.
Cheers
Ramoo…who has banged his head countless times….damn helmet!
ratagonia
Tone on an internet forum is often in the mind of the reader, rather than from the mind of the poster.
But yes, I scold. That’s my job!