Imlay Canyon: Why I was stupid then, but not now

Or a title might be: It’s all that backcountry rangers fault, I’ll tell ya.

One of my friends (Josh) that worked at East Fork Bear River Scout Camp (in the Uintas) with me in the summer of 1990 was the person who I first went rock climbing with. We decided to do a cayoneering trip right after school ended (1991) and before the next summer scout camp started. We had also just got our drivers licences and were free to go anywhere we wanted.

We decided to go do lower Kolob Creek which is a pretty easy technical canyon (from what is now called the MIA exit). The backcountry ranger refused to give us a permit on the grounds that we had to be 18 to get a permit. *(That September another partner and I successfully got a permit for the Right Fork North Creek withoout any questions or trouble, so I think this ranger refused our permit without grounds. If anyone knows if there really is a rule that you have to be 18 to get a permit I would like to know about it).

What to do? We went drove to the trailhead anyway and sat down to think what we should do. We wanted to go somewhere. We thought about going to Kolob Creek anyway, but were afraid that we could somehow get caught by the park service (this was more a concern to us than safety at this point) since we had asked for a permit. We decided we could hike south and check out Goose Creek. Josh had taken two 50m(?) ropes, so off we went. The head of Goose Creek looked too high and scary for what we had rope for. We hiked in the evening down to Imlay Canyon and slept carefully hiddenn in the bushes next to the scummy pond. I had heard of Imlay Canyon from Steve Negler (spelling?) oof the WMC and from what I heard it was a fantastic canyon. We still had a whole days food and it shoudn’t take more than A day to descend the canyon.

In the morning we checked out the head of Imlay which looked like it would be easier to get down the headwall than Goose (probably an incorrect assumption?). It sure was a cool looking canyon. We bypassed many flowing waterfalls, traversed ledges and did some big rappels from huge trees where the ropes barly reached the bottom. (BTW we didn’t bring any slings with us or a bolt kit). It was scary because we thought our ropes might be to short. There was running water all the way down to where the canyon flattened out breifly and below the headwall, but I there wasn’t any swimming if I remember correctly. By looking at the topo map, we thought the next section of the canyon should be easy until we got cloose to the Virgin, and then there should be more rappels. The next section of the canyon was dry, but as we went on the canyon got more and more difficult. We hit some really nasty potholes. Lukily the water wasan’t as low then as it has been at times, but it was still very difficult as some potholes were 10-12 feet below the brim. The thing that saved our lives was the fact that we had brought life jackets (but still no wetsuit or slings). Another thing that saved our lives was the fact that the canyon was already bolted (snce we didn’t have sling or runners, the rope was looped directly through the bolts at times). Had we not had life jackets, and had the canyon not been already bolted (not meant to be a pro-bolt statement at all; I’m pro natural anchor all the way now, but I don’t think I can do Imlay without boolts to this day), we could have perished. Since we left a hike plan for Kolob Creek, we may have never been found (we intentionally hid out so no-oone saw us). It was cold and the canyon was tough. We had never seen potholes like this and now were very scared. We surmounted many potholes by throwing a large stick tied to the rope over many logs (while treading water sometimes), but got to a pothole we could not surmount after several tries. It was now dark and we were very cold. We set the sleeping bags on a flatish rock. Our plastic garbage bag water-proofing leaked and we also lost a cooking pot in a pothole. our sleeping bags only were a little wet, but out food and stove were coompletly soaked. We tried to start a fire from a ruined shirt so we could cook some cup a soups and warm up. We had a very small fire for a tiny bit, but didn’t succeed in cooking anything. We ate our cup a soups cold (and soaked with nasty pothole water). It was a long night. In the morning we again tried stick and small log tosses to get passed the pothole. It didn’t work as we couldn’t get the stick and logs to snag. We came up with the idea of using our shoes. We took our shoes off (hoping we didn’t loose them in the pothole and tried those. One shoe didn’t work, but when we tried two it worked. We surmounted the pothole! It took the rest of a difficult 3rd day to get down the canyon and to the Virgin River. We hitchhiked back to the car in the back up a truck. If I remember right we ate something like 5 hamburgers each back in St.George because we were so hungry.

Had the park service gave us a permit, we would have had a smooth ride through Kolob.

A few years later, I heard a park ranger relate the story. I don’t know how he heard about it as we never told him, in fact we told very few people of the ordeal.