For Adventure, that is!
We arrived in mid-September for CD’s second volunteer stint in Zion N.P,
and took leave of that paradise the first week of November. While I successfully teamed up with other like-minded sojourners attending the Zion and Escalante ACA rendezvous, most of my time was spent alone in the “wilds” of Zion and its immediate surroundings. Being a cautious soul, and having soloed many of the easier canyons during my last visit (February to April); I found the safest approach to slacking my outdoor adventure thirst was ascending non-technical peaks.
However, there are a couple of canyon experiences I’d like to share.
Shortly after our arrival, I had an Echo permit for 2 during the first day of the ACA Zion rondy. No one expressed interest in joining me, so I jumped in by “myself.” Of course there were other parties present, but with their smiling aqueiance, I quickly moved past them and found myself at the front of the line and in the thick of it. You must remember that this was only two days after the disastrous flash that claimed lives, both in Keyhole and over in the Hildale community. It had been a somber and sobering experience watching from the Pa’rus trail as the helicopter slung bodies into the recovery area the day before my Echo descent, a feeling that I found slow to dissipate. Echo was great, as usual, yet I did have a couple of new experiences (for me).
I was taking note of the flash debris as I tromped along in Echo and I found myself passing under a log jam with some good looking webbing dangling from the tangling. As reached up to see if I could pull it loose my higher brain functions kicked in and I realized it was a really bad idea. I coulda easily pulled the whole shebang down on top of me, just like some video game trap, but without the possibility for reanimation! I let go quicklike and moved on…on to the log soup. Now it wasn’t bad by some accounts, but interesting none the less.
Climbing over some, playing ice breaker with others, I was glad for the wetsuit protection to keep the abrasion at bay.
During the Escalante Rendezvous I tagged along on an Egypt 1 trip. Muddy?!! OMG!
We all had a slippy-sliddy time of it, and a month on I’m still finding red residue. BTW, Jenna did an outstanding job of escaping a normally minor pothole. It was sooo slippery that she resorted to a packtoss and quickly subdued the problem.
While the above canyon tales may hold interest for some of the Canyon Collective, my primary occupation continued to be soloing easy little peaks, some quite rightly identified by Mr. Purcell as obscure. They include Moon-Eye Point, Transview Mountain (x2), Tinaja Knoll (x3), Mind’s Eye, Goose Creek Knoll, Roof Peak, Hepworth Peak, Lost Teton (w my daughter),
Dalton Point, Cave Valley Knoll, Dakota Hill(s), and Sandstone Butte.
I’m off now for a couple of months in Colorado and California, with various stops in between. The best news is that we’ll be back again in January, staying thru the end of April, and this time CD’s been picked up as a Zion N.P. seasonal Ranger! As I’m running out of the “easy” stuff to do I’m going to really have to pick up the pace. Can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to my return! Until then, please be kind to the planet and watch out for each other.
TD
Edit: removed “and” from the end of the last sentence