Two friends, both named Sam had never been to Zion. We needed to do a Sams’s intro to Zion weekend trip and we decided on doing Spry and Pine for their first big day.
The evening before around 11pm while dropping a shuttle car off at the Spry exit we got pulled over for a brake light being out. Waited for our friends in the shuttle car to arrive and rode on the outside of the truck for about 10 seconds while directing them to the Spry exit. Got pulled over immediately again. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes I guess. Not my brightest moment but thankfully no ticket.
Next morning woke up and headed into the park and started hiking up Spry about 8am.
(Photo cred to @NM Ben the group’s shutterbug)
Got to the first rap without event in about an hour, pulled out the rope and cord and got going.
(One of the Sams’ on rap)
While waiting for everyone to get to the bottom of the long rap we had a fun, impromptu knot clinic where everyone exchanged their preferred method for tying an alpine butterfly. Amazing that no one had the same method with 6 of us in the group.
After hiking for a bit, the beta we had recommended staying out of the slot when it starts and staying up and left and rapping into the canyon off of a tree. I wanted to see what we were missing and stemmed through the slot section while everyone else rappelled. Definitely felt like that was the way to go in the future, but the tree rap looked fun too.
The water was low and only required a bit of stemming to stay dry:
Several short raps later we encountered a pool that required significantly more effort to pass if you wanted to stay dry.
Props to (Tom I believe) whomever recently moved one of the bolt anchors to minimize rope grooves. Seemed like a much better placement and didn’t require getting so close to an edge for the start anyway.
(The other of the Sams’ with – I believe – a pringle in his mouth)
(Spry did not disappoint, gorgeous scenery in every direction)
After getting to the last rap of the canyon 3 of us ran ahead down the boulder field to get the other shuttle car and brought it down to pick everyone up. We all ended up back at the car around 12:30. After a brief lunch it was time for Pine.
Pine was spectacular as always. Water seemed a bit on the low side but we still had a swim at the cathedral and immediately after in the slot, and plenty of wading besides.
(@R. Freimanis on the far side of the cathedral pool)
(@Kevin from ABQ jumping into the pool)
(Obligatory Cathedral Rap Shot)
Interesting mishap at the cathedral. One of the Sams’ thought someone was paying attention and threw down a coiled rope from the top of the rappel. As it turned out, no one was looking and after we got all packed and ready to go we realized we were missing a rope. We spent about half hour wading around and scraping our feet on the bottom trying to find this rope, all to no avail. Finally we make a new plan, we’ll attach all of our CRITRs and SQWURELs together in a giant prong-y ball. Attach it to one end of the rope and throw it and let it drag across the bottom and hopefully hook onto something. We throw the mass of aluminum into the pool and slowly draw it in with baited breath. When it finally came up we were disappointed to have not found our rope but there, on one the end of the rope, hooked around a CRITR was shiny ATC with someone’s name engraved on it! The canyon giveth, and the canyon taketh away. This confirmed our belief that the bottom of every pool must be littered with random pieces of aluminum if we were able to net some “loot” on our first throw. We tried a few more times and nothing came of it. Finally before we left Ben decided that according to Murphy’s Law the rope must have sunken to the particularly deep section of the pool we’d been avoiding. – close to the arch. After trying to reach the bottom several times unsuccessfully I finally made it all the way down and found the rope in the silt. All in all it was a happy little misadventure.
(Our improvised dragline loot)
Continuing down canyon we were impressed as always by the mood-lighting and depth Pine provides:
Shortly after the above photo was taken, Ben found a hypothermic snake that had somehow fallen into the canyon. As an avid reptile lover one of the water bottles was emptied to make a home for the snake until he could be brought back into the sunlight.
(Snek lives!!)
After taking a leisurely break to sun ourselves on the flat rock after the slot opens up we exited the canyon and pulled our clothing out of the dry bags and began the hike out. NM Ben continued to prove his worth as a photog. and took maybe one of the prettiest water ripple photos I’d ever seen:
Once again 2 of us ran ahead to go get the shuttle car and bring the car from the top of the canyon back down for everyone to load up. All in all it was a fantastic day with a fantastic crew:
(Again photo cred to @NM Ben (the ginger on the rock) for valiantly lugging a pelican case filled with camera gear through all the canyons)
After leaving Pine and eating at Pizza Noodle for a few hours a devious plan began to take shape.
I’d been pestering people about doing a third canyon that day just for laughs. We already had keyhole permits but everyone was tired. It was already 10:30 so we probably didn’t have time anyway but I kept pushing and finally NM Ben and Kevin from ABQ decided to join me. We figured we could do the canyon in about an hour if we really hurried. We also had planned on not wearing wetsuits, figuring that we wouldn’t need them if we kept moving. On the car ride over I thought to myself “hey, if I’m not wearing a wetsuit, is my clothing really going to insulate me that much?” After a little bit more pushing I convinced Kevin that we should run through the canyon naked with Ben along as clothed support. We decided to walk from the car to the canyon entrance in our undies just to make sure we wouldn’t traumatize a late-night biker or something. We got to the start of the canyon, disrobed, harnessed up, and absolutely FLEW through the canyon – or rather, we would have, if we hadn’t heard the sound of female voices from up ahead. Oh no.
Oh boy.
Here we go.
Harnesses off. Undies back on. Harnesses back on. Enter the clearing between upper and lower keyhole. Walk up to a group of about 6 women and 2 men all decked out in wetsuits and glowstick necklaces and bracelets. Tried our best to maintain eye contact and act natural as one of the men said,
“You seem to have forgotten your clothes.”
“Yeah I guess we did”
Stifling our laughter was no easy task They were a nice group and let us play through on the rope they already had rigged double strand. (If you were in that group hello again!) Kevin and I handlined down, ran down the canyon and swam the pool and started changing again while Ben rigged the next rap. Harness off. Undies off. Harness back on. (Although Kevin deserves credit for somehow managing to take off his underwear WITHOUT taking off his harness, your guess is as good as mine) I went down first and Kevin clipped into the rope and started descending. Up top Kevin sees a flashlight beam accompanied by a female voice approaching the logjam. Kevin desperately tries to clip in as Ben says “That’s your cue.” JUST as one of the girls approachs the logjam above the pool kevin gets hooked in and practically throws himself off the edge. Talk about a close call! From there it was all a blur of picturesque stemming, sliding, and swimming. We reached the exit of the canyon without any other surprises, threw gear over our shoulders and made ourselves “decent” one last time as we ran to the car. We’d started at 11:02 and had really wanted to finish before the day changed over.
We did Keyhole, in our birthday suits, car to car, 34 minutes.
Fantastic day.
