Old Adventures

With winter starting to set in, but not enough snow for snowboarding yet, my weekend adventures have been severely limited. I believe this is the best time to bring out some of my old adventures and share the experiences. I'll start off with some rappelling.

Rappelling - Summer 2007

Rappelling is a natural fit for me. I love hiking in the mountains, especially cliffy areas, so tying a rope to something and getting down quickly seems like the next progression. I had been rappelling a couple times in my life previously; once during a youth high adventure trip to Canada, and then in one of my freshman classes at BYU. I enjoyed the first couple of times that I went, but didn't think too much of it afterwards. Fast forward to the summer of 2007, when I was preparing to get married. In deciding on what to do for my "bachelor's party". I decided that the second half of the day would be spent rappelling in Rock Canyon with a couple of my friends and my brother Rob. He was the one with all the gear and basically served as our guide. Despite our adventure being cut short by a somewhat nerve racking equipment malfunction, I was hooked.

Soon my friend Geoff had bought some equipment and we were off to our second rappelling adventure. This time we set off to Spring Canyon just to the west of Helper, Utah. The spot we decided would be best was named Death Cliff by us because a local man died rappelling at this spot a few years ago. In fact, you can see the blue boulder at the top of the cliff that has "R.I.P J.T." spray painted on it. That didn't help our nerves any. The first half dozen times your rappel, it's pretty scary. You have to put a lot of trust in your equipment and keep your wits about you or things can go downhill (or downcliff) very fast. Anyway, there's a flagpole on top of this cliff raised in 1911 that is used to tie to. Despite being old, it's very very sturdy. We tied the rope off and after a quick refresher from Rob on the fundamentals, we sent him down first. Unofficial rule of rappelling is that the person who ties off the rope goes down first. Rob always made it look easy. He just glides down the rope with no cares in the world. After he was down, we waited for him to get back to the top to check my gear before I headed down next. After checking out ok, I slowly backed over the cliff. This was the most nervous I had been in a long, long time. The smile on my face in the picture to the left was forced, and hides my extreme terror. At this point, I almost said, "Ok, I'm coming back up", but I decided to press forward. Inching down the face of the cliff, I slowly became more comfortable with it. By the time I hit bottom, I was relieved, excited, still nervous, and ready to do it again. I only went one more time as there was a lot of time spent on switching gear as there was five of us and only two harnesses. At this point it still made me nervous, but I couldn't wait to go again. Wendy came and watched us from the bottom and was excited to do it herself. Next thing I know, we make a road trip to Salt Lake and are the proud owners of our own gear. We bought harnesses, gloves, and a rope. We were now self sufficient.

The next weekend, we got the crew together again to go rappelling and headed back up to Spring Canyon. Instead of Death Cliff this time, we went directly across the narrow canyon to a lower and easier to access rappel. We found a perfect spot that was only about forty feet this time and had a cool free fall that you had to jump off. This was the area where my confidence was improved and I could actually talk as I was going down the rope. On the right you can see Geoff taking a leap from what came to be known as the NGL. We all went down the NGL and another spot close to it known as Next Up countless times getting more and more confident each time. At this point we were ready to do something bigger. Something legendary. We were ready for the Government Caves.

I had been to the Government Caves a couple of times before. They are out in the middle of nowhere in the San Rafel swell in Emery County. These massive holes in the ground were created in the late 1940's when the Department of Defense was looking for a location for what would become NORAD. The government carved out these tunnels then packed them full of TNT to test the strength of the rock. Three large holes blasted straight through the roof. Seeing that the rock was too soft to withstand an attack, they moved on. The caves have remained untouched other than graffiti ever since. The western most hole is by far the largest and has a significant drop. It is probably somewhere a little over a hundred feet. Rob came down on Labor Day 2007 and brought some friends and we headed out into the desert. Some anchor bolts already exist at the top so it was just a matter of tying in and sliding down. The picture to the left is Anthony sliding into the freefall portion of the rappel. Rob, of course, went first and I followed. I have to admit that I was quite nervous backing into that massive hole. It would have been a lot harder if we hadn't been rappelling a lot on smaller drops. I started down the rappel without incident, but as I reached the freefall portion, I started to decend a little fast. Instead of using proper technique like I should have, I gave the rope a death grip to slow down. I reached the bottom without incident, but my tight grip on the rope caused friction burns bad enough to blister even through my leather rappelling gloves. My day was over. I took a lot of pictures and we had a lot of fun. We brought a grill and cooked some burgers and dogs and everything was great until it was time to leave and the battery was dead in my Blazer. I had been playing music for a couple of hours, but I had never had a problem with killing the battery before. It must have been the unrelenting heat that day. Rob ran back to the closest town in his ride and picked up some jumper cables from Anthony's wife and all was ok again. The only damage done was to my ego I think. I was pretty embarassed. The picture to the right shows Wendy on rappel at the Government Caves.

That fall was my last in Price and I have since moved to Cedar City. I haven't found the same group of friends to go rappelling with yet, and I miss it, but I have been a couple of times since being down here. Rappelling is one of those things that is terrifying at first, but very addictive. Hopefully in the future, I will be able to participate in some canyoneering which combines hiking and multiple rappels through narrow canyons. Zion National Park is considered one of the best places in the world for canyoneering and its only an hour or so away for me.

This spring, a climbing store here in Cedar City was liquidating its inventory and Rob and I scored some good gear for cheap. This included a new harness for me and a set of ascenders for Rob. Hopefully I will be able to use this new gear in the coming year on some new unforgettable adventures.