A letter to family and friends
Danielle and I are back home after a terrific weekend touring the Colorado Plateau around the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, UT. We visited Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches. We rented a 4 wheel drive Montero (Mitsubishi), which served us well. We drove over 125 miles on 4-wheel drive dirt roads, sometimes over incredibly rocky and narrow ledges and washes and between boulders. We hesitated crossing the Fremont River, but my Arctic ATV experience gave me confidence, and some tips from the ranger showed me how to bypass the potholes. Our stock SUV effortlessly zipped through the 16" deep current & rocks. That day we drove 60 miles through the "south desert" to Cathedral Valley in the area bordering Capitol Reef.
We hiked over 30 miles during the week, including one 9.75 mile trip that I had thought was 4 miles. That day ended with a few hours on the "rim rock trail" in the Waterpocket Fold of Capitol Reef. We were greatly exposed and chasing the sun, but found the cairns well enough over the Navajo Sandstone. We learned a lot of geology this week, and can now recognize the layers of the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods: Dakota, Morrison, Entrada, Navajo, Kenyata, Wingate, Dewey Bridge, Moenkopi... We know which are muddy deposits from lakes, rivers, or coastal seas, and which are windblown sand. We learned which layers contain dinosaurs, uranium, and coal.
But it was learning to think like a goat that came in handy later in the week (Saturday) when we took the Lomatium Canyon trip in the Fiery Furnace of Arches National Park. This was only a 5 mile trip, but lasted 7 hours, involving not only the two rappels (100' and 40') we had signed up for, but some real climbing! This was our first time on belay. Matt, our guide, was perfect. About 32 with a calming voice and straight blue eyes, he talked us through some amazingly frightening "obstacles" (his word). The worse was a chimney, about 50 feet, with an inclining wall and a way too steep, long boulder. You inch along with your butt on the boulder and your feet on the wall, perpendicular to your seat and parallel to the ground. With hands placed on both sides of you closely, you are actually well anchored. But then after 20 feet of that, the boulder drops off to the right and the wall goes left, so you must move your left hand to the wall and your right foot to the boulder. Now you are sitting against your right ankle, with your left hand and foot on the wall and your right hand and foot on the boulder. You do this another 5 or 6 feet (not looking of course deep into that cleft that would swallow you on the left, or over into the canyon floor on your right), until the boulder becomes too steep. Then all you can do is slip down in some kind of semi-controlled way until your feet and grasp something on the rock.
The rappels were easy by comparison, for by then we had gained some courage and learned to think like a climber. As you probably know, the secret is concentration, focusing on the rock. You are walking, sitting, grasping, holding, leaning. You are NOT slipping in thin air off a rock wall, head first into a chasm, where you will surely die. That is true, but you are not thinking about that. You are resting your weight flat on your feet or you are squeezing between something. The height is irrelevant. You are simply thinking about what you are doing and your next move. Actually, after a while, you get the courage to look and realize the view is great.
The first rappel into Lomatium Canyon was an odd way to learn -- 100 feet down into a canyon only about 30 feet wide. Under "Abbey's Arch" with its spacious ledge far above, you cannot see the floor, and you cannot see others going down (we were a group 5 plus Matt). John, the 60 year old father of the twins Dan and Hill, went first. The first step is to lean back into the harness, so your weight is on the rope. You inch backwards about 20 feet on the inclined ledge until you hit the wall, then it's straight down. Matt said that John had a death grip on the hardware, a xylophone-appearing hardware that keeps the rope from sliding too fast. John said not to use the word "death." After John disappeared, we could still hear him. He said he lost a place for his feet. Matt said not to worry, that the wall would come back again, just to drop on the rope straight down. We each learned in turn that Matt was fooling us, that really after some 30 feet, the wall ended and we were dropping 70 feet straight down into the canyon with our feet dangling in the air! At this point, Danielle was screaming--something between extreme pleasure and pain. We found out later she had her eyes closed all the way.
After a walk through the narrow sandy canyon, we came to a dry waterfall, which we dropped over like pros, just 40 feet. From here, it was less than an hour's walk on ledges, boulders, fins, and minor chimneys to the parking lot.
Our rappelling adventure was the highlight of the week, but we had some other great experiences. We hiked in Canyonlands (after a 25 mile dirt road) to Horseshoe Canyon with North America's best pictographs. Also in Arches, we took the Devil's Garden trail, where I showed Danielle Double-O Arch, which she has known by the photograph on the piano wall of our living room. By chance, this week was Rob Bender's Classic Car Show Action Weekend in Moab, so we were treated to a fantastic collection of brightly colored old cars. People lined the streets Saturday night for the annual parade after the show.
Copyright © 2004 William J. Clancey. All Rights Reserved.