Nathan, Jared (Nathan's friend), Kenny Barlow and I went to Zion National Park on the last weekend in August and went down Birch Hollow Canyon. These photos are from that trip. On our drive through the park we saw these bighorn sheep right off the side of the road. The one male had very large horns, bigger than any I had seen before in the wild. Because they grow throughout their lives, he must have been older, perhaps 7 or 8 years.
Birch Hollow was a wonderful canyon. We did 9 rappels and two downclimbs. The biggest rappel was 100 feet; many were 60-70. A few were fluted, which means it looks like there is something like a smooth, narrow waterslide carved into the rock. This makes them very photogenic and pretty. The rappels were pretty straightforward, not too difficult. It's a great beginner canyon.
The difficulty is the hike out. It's a long, uphill slog through very thick brush in parts. A real bushwhack, literally! At one part, Nathan stumbled for several steps in a row and had to put his hand down to steady himself. He pulled it up quickly, shouting in pain about being stung. My first thought was Scorpion!, but I didn't see one. So then I wondered what it could be. A bee? In the desert? I looked around more closely, and sure enough, there was a little 2-inch little scorpion beastie on the ground, about the same color as the sandstone. He was in quite a bit of pain, and we were still a mile and perhaps 45 minutes from the end. So we just pushed through and made it. We went to the ranger station, but he wasn't having any other symptoms and they said they don't really have poisonous scorpions through there.
He and Jared were quite tired, so Kenny and I did a second canyon, Keyhole, while they rested in the car. It's just a short little canyon, pure dessert happiness. No pics of that because it's full of lots of water and we were pushing hard to get through in the evening before losing daylight. What a great trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment