Fri 8/19 : Entrajo Canyon

Today was planned as a canyoneering day, but we did not start the day with a firm decision in mind as to what canyon we would be going to. We got off to a slow start since George was flying out of the Moab airport, and Brad had to go along in order to pick up his luggage which the airline promised to deliver to the rental house, but never did. Finally, it was time to pick out the days adventure, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Lynn had turned against the original plan of going down Zero Gravity canyon, since it had no rappels and he thought that it would be too easy and over too quickly. (An assessment I disagreed with) Instead, he had heard about Lomatium Canyon from one of the clerks in the outdoor outfitters store that we bought some climbing gear from, and decided he wanted to do that. I was very opposed to this idea, because while not technically difficult, that canyon resides within the Fiery Furnace section of Arches national park. This area is usually described as a labyrinth of twisting canyons, and there is no map available. Also, a permit (easily obtained) is required in order to enter that area without a ranger guided tour.

Thankfully, during the Pleides trip we were on yesterday we discussed some of the possible plans with Dave (the guide), which told us that without somebody who knew their way around that area, it would not be a very good idea to go in on our own. While this was exactly what I had been saying for the last couple of days, it seemed to have more impact coming from him. He suggested a couple of other canyons that we could also consider, including Entrajo and Eardley canyons. Entrajo had the advantage of being close by to Moab, but being rather short with only a couple of small rappels and some potholes. Eardley was much further away, required a 3 mile hike from the parking lot to the trail head each way, and was listed as a 7 to 8 hour canyon starting from the trail head.

Naturally, Lynn's vote was to do Eardley, and then Zero gravity since they were right next to one another. I was also opposed to this, since Eardley alone would be a completely full day, and I had no interest in doing such a long hike. We put it to a vote, which Brad abstained from, leaving Vince and Joanna to decide. They were planning on beginning their drive home early the next morning and wanted to pack up tonight, so they decided to go to Entrajo in order to be back on time.

We grabbed some sandwiches at the grocery store and headed to the trail head, where we stopped for lunch before heading up canyon. We had an interesting time finding our way up the canyon, using Vince's and Brad's GPS to attempt to find the waypoints listed in the route guide. After another hike that I can once again describe as a forced death march (Lynn hikes much faster than I do, and never seems to get winded), we found our way into the canyon bottom. We're pretty sure we messed up somewhere since we wound up not quite as far up in the canyon as we were supposed to be, but I don't think we missed much except for possibly some pothole obstacles. The canyon was pretty easy and fun. Due to a lack of recent rain, the water levels in the potholes was low enough that we didn't get very wet, and the rappels were easy and fun. There was a couple of narrow slot sections, so it was a pretty canyon.


Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip was getting the Prius back up the steep, loose gravel road we had parked at the bottom of. We had to get up a bit of momentum and floor it the entire way up so that the traction control did not stop us, but we made it up in a single attempt.

We had considered climbing on Wall street later that evening, but with all the packing going on and our collective exhaustion, we wound up staying in and playing a couple of rounds of Carcasonne, which everybody seemed to enjoy.