It hasn’t been all work and no play for the Jacks this summer, however dull we’ve been. Thanks to our good friend and neighbor Robert, who serves as our guide and covers all of the logistics, we’ve also taken a few Saturday morning hike/rappels through the slot canyons in and around our local national park, Zion Canyon. We’ve hit our old favorites – Birch Hollow, Fat Man’s Misery, Key Hole, and Pine Creek, as well as some new favorites – Kanaraville Canyon, Echo Canyon, Chasm, Englestead Hollow, and Spry Canyon. We’ve done all this hiking with only a few of slight casualties – like when CJ got one foot caught on a scramble down a boulder and then fell headfirst about 8ft and caught himself on his hands injuring his right wrist, or when Annie got a lock of her hair caught in her rappelling gear (the “figure 8”) when only about 15 feet down a 100 foot free-hanging rappel (she now has just a hint of bangs,) or when I inadvertently let my red-hot “figure 8” (after a particularly long hot rappel) touch my neck, branding me for life (is there such a thing as a 4th degree burn?). Our latest adventure, the Englestead Hollow hike, was a new “high” for us – it started out with a 300 foot rappel down into the canyon, followed by a series of shorter rappels, scrambles, and plain jumps, capped off by a long hike out through Orderville Canyon and then the Zion Narrows – all told it was a good solid 9 miles spread out over 9 hours of hiking. You can read the technical details of most of these hikes at the following website: http://www.zionnational-park.com/zion-national-park-canyoneering.htm.
The attached photo is of me rappelling down that first long (300 foot) wall into Englestead Hollow.
