Capitol Reef Weekend

I haven't been much of a fan of Capitol Reef National Park. I went there once a long time ago and just  did a cheesy little hike to an arch and saw that the only paved road cuts across a narrow section of this incredibly long park (I'm talking like 100 miles long). Otherwise it just has a bunch of 4WD/dirt roads that go to other areas of the park that I could never access because I didn't have a 4WD vehicle. Apparently, Mike and his friends make an annual trip of Capitol Reef and explore somewhere new every time. So my eyes were opened to the possibility of the park! They found a series of canyons called "The Wives" that we could canyoneer through, and they decided to have us try Wife 3 and The One That Got Away.

Wife 3 began with a bang! A 200-foot rappel with 150 of it being a free rappel (which means you're just hanging on the rope without being able to touch the canyon wall). It was quite the welcome-back-to-canyoneering rappel for me. The next rap was pretty intense too: I had to chimney across a crack (that had a deep drop) out to a rock stuck in the crack in order to get on the rope to rappel down the crack. After that, the raps weren't quite so intense.

At the beginning of the day: Lane, Dave, Mike, and me

Me and Mike on the approach hike to Wife 3

Mike on the approach hike to Wife 3

Me on the approach to Wife 3 - quite the tight rope walk!

That's me! Beginning the 200-foot rappel

Me finishing the 200-foot rappel

Me hiking down from the 200-footer in the background

Me, Dave, and Lane in the canyon

Mike standing on the rock stuck in the crack with Dave in his spider hole where he helped me and Mike get on our ropes for the rappel

Mike starting another rappel in Wife 3

The One That Got Away (TOTGA) ..... well, it actually got away from us. It was supposed to be just a down-climbable canyon, meaning no ropes were necessary. We started it with a pretty crazy down-climb. But then we came up on a pretty deep and dark crack that we were supposed to chimney down - but it was deep! And the walls were all curvy and rough - not good for my limited experience of doing the chimney move. So we ended up hiking back out of it - and even getting up the down-climb we did was challenging.

Climbing back up the down climb in TOTGA

Dave and Lane exploring the bottom of TOTGA

Mike and I hanging out on the cliff-side while Dave and Lane explored the bottom of TOTGA

On Sunday, we ended up trying to hike up the west side of Burro Wash, but I think Lane (Mike's friend) said it ended up not being Burro Wash. Those guys .... they must have done so many trail hikes that they've become bored of them so their kind of hiking is off-trail, bouldering, and all that crazy stuff - so that is what we did for our "hike" on Sunday. But they were good to me, and I didn't complain. :)

And here I am bouldering and trying to keep up with the guys

This is where we stopped since I wasn't really inclined to climb that

Mike and I taking a little lunch nap

Quite a bit of this hike was on a 4WD road

I wished these "mattresses" were softer and more horizontal

Mike trying out the "mattresses"