Sentinel Canyon Escape

It was planned to be our semi annual meetup for my friends Gary and Bob. I always try to plan something special for these two as they have supported me and my small business of Seldom Seen Adventures from the Beginning. A week or so before they arrived I took a drive out to view a canyon system that has been on my radar for while. As I walked down the ATV path to the massive headwall, I saw what can only be described as virgin land and a canyon untouched. It looked like a Venezuelan Sink Hole where animals and plants go on untouched by man still. 250 feet down you could hear the sound of rain from the springs that pour out of the walls. One extra large Ponderosa Pine stood perfectly as an anchor. I went back to my car scheming ideas on how to study this canyon out. Five miles or so, a small stream, lots of bushwacking, what else? I know the Vermillion Cliffs very well, I have explored the region off and on for the past 6 years. Most springs in the area sink back into the sand just feet where the start. Most canyons are very ledgie, with very few actually slots. All this went into my mind trying to formulate a plan.

The Friday before I had nightmares about the canyon, as if some presence existed desiring me to revere it or shy away from it. A thought ran through my mind of this massive ponderosa tipping over while on rappel. I got up and went out to my living room to meditate on the subject. Maybe there were Native American Relics there….perhaps the spirits were trying to scare me off.

Saturday morning was the first of two days with gary and bob. I had originally planned to do Sentinel with them on this day. I backed off the idea thinking of testing the waters with a shorter canyon called the Carmel Drop. This on average with Clients takes close to 6 hours to accomplish. We did it in 2 hours roughly. Impressed by the efficiency, I mentally decided on Sentinel for Sunday. Morning got off to a great start as we set our vehicles at the start and the end. Pulled a 300 ft rope, 200 ft rope, and 150 ft of pull cord along with a well stocked pack and suited up. We had no thoughts for wet suits.

After going through methodical checking of equipment, rigging, and ensuring rope lengths, I headed down the rope into the canyon. All but the first 30 feet are free. Soon after Gary and Bob had joined me.

Soon we were heading down the canyon. What we found was very different from what we had expected. A good flow of water created deep pools, a couple we were able to go around, one fun down climb in a cascading waterfall. Then it got deep and narrow. All the sudden there was a pool of unknown depths in front of us. November, no wetsuits, game changer. We had found a class C. It didn’t take long for us to decide to bail and look for an exit. We had no desire of tackling this challenge.

We found what looked to be a break in the cliffs (LDC) so we headed out of the drainage up through some of the most terrible bushwhacking I have ever done. 45 degree slope holding onto Oak Brush, unrelenting. Soon we made it to our supposed break in the cliffs. I headed up a ledgie slot-of-sorts to a platform with a 20 ft exposed crack. Dead end. I had no intention of risking a fall. We headed back down to the brush and Gary found another ledge system. We climbed up about 30 feet of scrambling where we though we had another chance at escaping. This proved to be too risky as well. We all sat down on our ledge, now wasting a lot of our daylight…..what to do. I thought about it for a bit and decided to send out a non emergency spot message with the intention of having my father who is versed in canyon travel to bring out a rope and lower it down to us so we could ascend out. 3 hours passed and he didn’t show up. It was now about 4 PM. I started thinking that I would not want my Father to be out here after dark working near the edges trying to figure out where to throw down rope. We had marginally enough gear to endure the cold, and a very small amount of firewood and grasses, we were stuck on a ledge. For the first time, I pushed the 911 button on my SPOT beacon. All the sudden the thoughts of failure rushed through my head. You should have planed better for this Nick. What is my wife going to think? They are going to be worried and not know what is going on. The community may scrutinize me etc. About 5 PM we saw the plane do fly bys of the canyon, with my strobe feature on my flashlight I flagged the plane down, it belted out a siren acknowledging that it had spotted us. About an hour later right as it was getting dark we heard voices. Soon we had a pack of bivy gear from KSAR and we settled in for a cold night.

I sat there stewing half the night how I let everyone down. It is my job to ensure stuff like this doesn’t happen. Sure these aren’t just any paying customers, these are my friends who have some experience with first descents in the Escalante region. I wouldn’t take regular clients down first descents. About 3 AM Bob woke up and started talking to me about this and that, nothing too important, but somehow it finally clicked. I stopped us from injuring ourselves by doing something stupid. Yes there were precautions I should have taken, like have a rim team on standby…. Better Emergency Bivy equipment, a wet suit…

The morning took forever to come, I would lay down for 20 min, start to shiver, stoke the fire, warm up, lay back down, then start to shiver again. We were able to conserve what little wood we had all night long.

Soon we heard the laughing and talking of the KSAR crew above us. An hour or so later, we begain to get lifted out. We soon noticed that had we tried to climb up any further, we would only have been cliffed out on a more precarious ledge further up. We were about 120 ft from the top still. From the top at the extraction, we could see down into the bowels of the canyon. Lots of water. We are glad we didn’t try to do it without wetsuits. I think it would have been a death sentence. By the end, we had only traveled a half a mile into this amazing place.

Here is what the canyon looked like: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Seldom-Seen-Adventures/134775423240934

Special thanks to KSAR for helping us out. We are in their debt.

Nick Smith