Granary Canyon

Today was our trip down Granary Canyon with Desert Highlights. We were really happy to have managed to book this trip, because we've never had quite so much trouble making reservations for anything. We found Desert Highlights our very first day in Moab, stopped in and talked to them, but didn't book since we had not looked elsewhere yet. It turned out that all of the other guide services all went to the same few heavily traveled canyons, while Desert Highlights had a LARGE selection of relatively unknown canyons that only they used. Granary Canyon looked really cool to us, so we went back the next morning to book it, but the shop was closed. We continued stopping in every day (sometimes repeatedly) for the next few days, but it was always closed. Fortunately, we got lucky on Saturday after our rafting trip and caught them returning from a trip, so we were able to schedule for today. Yay!

We arrived at the trailhead (sort of) after a 45 minute drive. There wasn't a trail, though, we just sort of struck out across open desert for awhile until we came to the rim of a deep canyon. We continued hiking along the rim of the canyon, until we reached a passable spot and climbed down. (Nope, not rappelled. Climbed.) Throughout the day, we did 7 rappels, and a number of challenging climbs both up and down. The most interesting of these was using a technique called "chimneying". This is done in narrow areas, and involves putting your back against one wall and your feet against another in order to make your way up or down a narrow section of canyon. We were all rather taken aback when we came to a 25 foot deep crack which we all had to descend in this fashion. While chimneying for the first time is rather nerve racking, it is actually very easy, and a very safe way to move about in a canyon.

As befits any adventure trip, this particular journey managed to save the best for last. After 6 miles of hiking, climbing, and rappelling through the desert, we came to the edge of the Colorado river valley and were rewarded with the most spectacular view of the day. Of course, the road home was at the BOTTOM of the valley, hundreds of feet below. We did our longest rappel of the day (200 feet!) down the the bottom of the cliff, which was still way above the road. The rest of trip trail was a scramble down the loose rock piles that pile up at the bottom of the cliffs. By the time was got through this, we were all glad to be back on flat land and next to the shuttle vehicle to take us home.

We are going to be sore tomorrow.........