In a ironic twist, on Brads previous visit to Moab he missed out on visiting Dragonfly Canyon, and now that he was leaving we finally had time to do this trip. It seems fate has decided that Brad is not to be allowed in this canyon for some reason. Since our last attempt to visit Dragonfly Canyon was aborted after an excessively long hike through arches beforehand, we planned to make this canyon the centerpiece of the day. In lieu of a "real breakfast" that would require an early awaking, Eric and I decided to grab some McDonald's on the way out and eat on the way.
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| Standing under Wall Arch in 2007 |
After finishing up in the visitors center, it was time for our first canyoneering adventure of the trip. One thing I did learn from last time was to park closer to the bottom of the canyon rather than the top. The necessary cross desert hike is much easier both before the day gets too hot, and while we are not yet exhausted. It did make for a longer initial hike, but was well worth it at the end. After the usual frustrating exercise of trying to make it to a particular spot while avoiding stepping in cryptobiotic soil, we eventually arrived at the top of the canyon.
After a short and easy down climb into the upper section of the canyon, it was only a very short distance to the first pothole obstacle. (Dave managed to make it a bit harder by finding the most challenging possible route avoiding the easy smooth areas that me and Eric stuck to.) Last time I visited Dragonfly the water was very stagnant and silty, roughly the color of a chocolate milkshake. Given that it had not rained in about a month, I had assumed it would be just a dirty if not even worse and had already warned both Eric and Dave what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the water was more of a turquoise color, and we could actually see through it for a couple of feet or so. It was also quite a bit lower than last time, so the potholes were not as deep
After Eric and I had carefully made our way through the first pothole Dave unexpectedly took a flying leap in rather dramatic fashion, much to my concern since the water really was not all that deep. Thankfully it was deep enough, though and we continued onward to the second pothole located just a couple minutes hike down canyon.
The second pothole is immediately before the first 65 foot rappel of the canyon. After I had gone across and anchored myself, Eric descended into the pothole and treaded water while Dave slid the drybag down to him to ferry across. He apparently forgot to secure 
everything in his pack prior to entering the water, however. While he was ferrying the drybag across the pothole we began to see all of his granola bars start to float and spread out across the surface of the water. I'd like to say that Dave and I didn't laugh, but that would be a lie.... Once Eric (and all his snacks) had exited the water, Dave make his now customary flying leap to claim the title of best dramatic entrance of the day. Actually, in order to try to get a good mid air photo he climbed back up and jumped several times, but it turned out the best image was from his very first jump. Since we have all rappelled plenty before, the short rappel was uneventful, although we did wish that we had brought along some rappelling gloves so that we would have been able to descend more quickly. Once we reached the bottom we were done with the wet section of the canyon, so we all traded in our water shoes for our hiking books which had been kept dry in the drybag. We also took advantage of stopping to have some snacks and rest up a bit before hiking down to the narrow section of the canyon and the 115 foot final rappel.
At this point, the canyon gets narrow and is best traversed by hanging ones backpack from the front of a climbing harness, and then placing your back against one wall and feet against another and shuffling sideways to get through. After utilizing this technique to make my way to the anchor bolts and setting up the rappel, I was amused to find that Eric did not share my opinion of the usefulness of this technique, and instead insisted on attempting to walk on the bottom of the extremely narrow section. It was quite a role reversal for Dave to be the one taking the easy road, and Eric going the hard way. (Although to be fair the easy way actually looks much cooler in photos, so perhaps it did make sense....) As I was hooking into the rope to begin my descent Eric though to ask my how long my rope was. I told him it was 60 meters, and which point we realized that a 60 meter rope was not actually long enough for a 115 foot rappel. I was pretty sure that I had used a 60 meter rope when I came down this canyon in 2011, but could not remember for sure. For safety, I tied knots in the end of the rope so that it would be impossible to slide off the end. I decided to go down a little ways and see if I could see the bottom, since I could always ascend back up the rope if it was too short. I had to go down a fair ways before I could see the bottom, and it looked like the rope was about 10 feet too short. I
considered climbing back up at this point and using my webbing to extend the anchor points, but
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| The rope left at the bottom |
One of this hidden hazards of Dragonfly Canyon is poison ivy, and I remembered that a good sized patch of it existed at the base of this rappel. Since my last visit, this patch has grown quite a bit and if now very large. It would be easy to run through it it we were not looking out for it, but we easily avoided all of it. Once we all descended (again cursing the lack of rappelling gloves) we stopped to take off and stow all of our climbing gear since there were no more technical sections in this canyon. This particular spot in the canyon is a very scenic grotto, so we stopped here for awhile to rest and admire the scenery before beginning the hike to the exit.
From the bottom of the final rappel to the junction with Courthouse Wash, the floor of the canyon becomes deep beach-like sand. This is not a section of the canyon that I am very fond of since hiking through sand gets tiring very quickly. We had planned on exploring Courthouse Wash a bit to extend our adventure, but had decided that if the ground remained so sandy we would just head straight for the exit.
When we arrived at the junction with Courthouse wash, the ground immediately changed to a much harder packed dirt, so we did decided to go down canyon a bit to explore rather than up canyon to return directly to the car. Since we would be coming back the same way and hadn't seen anybody in this canyon the entire day, we left of packs and most of our gear at the junction only taking along our valuables. It is amazing just how much easier hiking is once a heavy pack is removed.....
Pretty shortly into the hike, I ran across the OTHER hidden hazard of this canyon - quicksand. The first time I visited Courthouse Wash I also ran into this but was much less prepared. On that occasion, I had to cross the small creek bed and jumped across to an apparently solid bank immediately sinking one of my legs up to the knee, and leaving my boot wet and uncomfortable for the rest of the hike. This time I was more prepared, although still almost caught off guard. I was not actually near the creek when I felt the ground wobble and my boot start to break through the surface, but I reacted quickly enough to jump to solid ground. We were all a bit surprised, and watched in fascination as the water that had risen around my boot print quickly seeped back into the ground and it immediately took on the appearance of solid ground again. We played around a bit stepping on the ground to see how it wobbled and water seeped up from underneath before continuing on with a more careful eye on where we stepped.
After just a few more minutes of hiking we came to a spot where crossing the creek would be necessary to continue, but thought it likely that the bank on either side of the creek was likely to be more quicksand and that jumping across was not a good idea, so we decided to use this as our turn around point. Before we did, however, I wanted to check out the fascinatingly weird behavior of the quicksand. Since I did not want a repeat of the wet boots and socks, I took them off to experiment a bit. After a few tentative steps the ground began to wobble, but mostly seemed to hold my weight. As soon as I shifted my weight a bit, however, it immediately gave way and turned out to be (much to Eric's amusement) deeper than I had expected. I was easily able to climb out and clean up in the creek. Getting back out was a bit tricky as the water was surrounded by more quicksand, but by balancing carefully I was able to get out of the water without breaking through the crust. It was time to head out, we we returned to the junction and picked up our packs. Unlike last time where it was very difficult to find the trail up the canyon, this time it seemed well traveled and easy to spot. It also did not require us to continually cross-cross the creek, which made for much easier going than I remembered from last time. As we approached the vicinity of the takeout, we came across one last large pool of water. Since the final part of our hike would be across open desert, Dave decided to soak his cotton shirt in the water to keep him cool for the hike out. The sandy bank to the
water was very steep, so I became convinced that it would probably give way and Dave would wind up swimming. Since that would have been a hilarious video I got the camcorder ready for his attempt and foolishly narrated my belief to the camera, which has the unintended result of making him rethink his strategy. His engineering mind took over before he made the attempt and he found a long stick he was able to tie his shirt to in order to soak it, much to my disappointment. Finished the right spot on the trail to cross the creek in order to exit the canyon proved to be a bit challenging, but we located after a few minutes of searching. Well, Eric and I did. Dave reverted to his usual technique of selecting the hardest route and climbed out of the canyon in a different and more difficult location. One we all met back up at the canyon rim it was time for the final (but thankfully relatively short) hike across open desert back to the car.
Since it was not too late yet, we wanted to drive to Double Arch since it it one of the more spectacular formations in the park and is basically right next to the road. It turned out Eric had run of of water, however, we we had to head back to the visitors center instead to replenish. We did wind up driving back into the park to visit the arch afterwards however. We were all glad we did since it turned out that Dave had never been to this section of the park despite visiting Arches on several occasions. It was somewhat surreal to be back in such a crowded section of the park surrounded by tourists after spending an entire day in the canyons without ever seeing another single person.
By now we were all hungry and tired so it was time for dinner. We decided to check out Milts Stop & Eat, which turned out to be more crowded than expected and had no room to eat inside and a 20 minute wait for takeout. Since we were already there and had no other plans, we decided to wait. The plan was to take the food to go, but since our orders all came up at different times we wound up eating on their outside patio. The food was good as were the shakes, although they were very overpriced.
By the time we returned to the house we were tired so decided to take a nap with a possibility of returning to Wall St. for climbing this evening. We never did work up the energy to go back out of the house again, so wound up spending the night napping, reading some of the books in the house, and relaxing in general.
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