Sun 8/14 : Dragonfly Canyon

By the time that Lynn and I woke up this morning, everybody else in the house had already gotten up and gone. (We were tired from yesterday, Ok?) Lynn texted them and found out that they were at the grocery store, so we headed out and met them there to stock up the kicthen in the house. After we unloaded the groceries, me made a quick stop at the gear shop so the others could pick up a hat, sunglass strap, etc, and headed for the canyon.


After a east downclimb into the canyon bottom, it was on to the first pothole. It went a bit faster than yesterday, as this time there was no question of trying to avoid it. Everybody did extremely well, and we were quickly through. George even took a flying leap into the pothole rather than attempting the climb down to it. By the time we reached the 2nd pothole, Lynn decided that downclimbing was for wimps as well, and did the same.


Finally, the first rappel. With the exception of George and Joanna, the rest of us had all rappeled before. Once he was half way down the wall, George got the hang of it and was doing great. The most impressive of all, however, had to be Joanna. Not only had she never rappeled before, but apparently has a strong fear of heights. For this reason, we decided to lower her down with Lynn controlling her descent from above. She did remarkably well, all things considered, and never freaked out. One of the best quotes of the trip came when she reached the bottom and was asked "How was it, what did you think?" and said "It was Great!". I then asked "Did you like it?" to which she immediately replied "No!" with a great big smile on her face.

While the trip was largely without mishap of any kind, the one exception actually happened on the very first rappel. I had descended first in order to provide a safety (firemans belay) to the remaining people. While I was waiting at the bottom with George and Joanna, I looked up just in time to see something small falling down the cliff and landing in the deep murky pool below with an audible PLOP! The something in question happened to be the ATC (device needed to rappel) that Vince was attaching to his harness. (Sorry Matt, your old faithful ATC is gone, but has already been replaced with a shiny, brand new one.)

By the time we chimneyed through the narrow section of the canyon at the top of the next big (118 foot) rappel, everybody was comfortable with the rappel and had a an even better time on the 2nd rappel. Everybody was over the fear, and was able to enjoy it more.

The hike out of the canyon went a bit easier than yesterday, as we knew the proper route out and did not have to backtrack at all. We also had a shuttle vehicle parked near where we emerged on the road, so that saved about a mile of hiking back to the car.

Back at the house, we all took a shower and had an excellent Fettucine Alfredo prepared by Vince and Joanna. Afterwards, we wandered around downtown for a bit, and rounded out the evening with a game of "The Settlers of Cataan". The game lasted a bit longer than usual, and only ended when we declared Joanna the winner because she was so far ahead, and we wanted to get to bed.