I went down south from SLC to help my wife for a work trip. She was part of the many cogs in the wheel that produced Redbull Rampage on Friday 15 Oct 2021. She is way cooler than me and i am always happy to be a part of her adventures.
She needed the truck so I rode my mountain bike the 17+ miles into Zion from the Fairfield Inn in Virgin, UT to the Pine Creek exit trail and stashed my bike in some trees. There were some cool college kids from Dixie State just finishing the canyon that gave me a ride up through the tunnel where they had spotted their car at the trail head.
Canyon was very full and very cold. I wore a 4/3 full suit and a 3mm shorty over the top. Add the 10mm dive boots and i was still chilly. For the long swims, I was very grateful for my 5mm dive gloves. The wind was blasting as the canyon opened up and being very wet i soon started shivering during the final two rappels.
Took me 2 hours and 20 min to finish the canyon solo and 6 hours from hotel to hotel.
Search and rescue was conducting practice operations out of the tunnel window that overlooks the final rappel. Nice to see those guys in action and know they take things so seriously. They ought to have a word with their fellow rangers over at capitol reef.
When we came out of Poe canyon last march, a park ranger stopped us at our cars and inquired why we were there. She said they had just had a meeting and were still trying to figure out why cars randomly show up and stay for 3-4 days parked along the burr trail. She had a vacant expression when we said we just hit up Smiling Cricket. She said she had never heard of that canyon and that none of the park rangers even knew it existed. That was a bit of a wake up call since we had all told our wives to contact the capitol reef park rangers if they don't hear from us within three days. We had a pretty lively conversation and she told us that the only canyon SAR training they receive is an annual refresher on basic rappelling. The skills they practice did not instill much confidence in us that we would be in good hands were we to have an emergency down in Poe.
I suppose that up's the exhilaration of adventure...but not something that I feel comfortable being quiet about. Not for the sake of the rangers but for my fellow adventurer’s to be aware of their limits and not be lured into a false sense of security that the local SAR always knows better than you.
Be prepared. communicate. Establish redundant contingencies. And accept the fact that life sucks sometimes. Understand acceptable risk and have fun. 😎