The Fiery Furnace was definitely an interesting and confusing place. I felt very validated in my contention that we not attempt to hike in this area alone without a map, but Lynn insisted that it wasn't so bad and that we should still try to do Lomatium later in the afternoon. Brad was the swing vote, and agreed that it was a bad idea without a map or route information, and voted to head over to Zero Gravity in the afternoon.
By the time the tour ended, we were starving and wound up stopping at the Eklectic Cafe for lunch. The staff was very friendly and the food delicious (all organic), although the portions were small and the prices rather high. We were all still hungry afterwards, and wound up getting various desserts to fill up. From Moab, it was another 1.5 hours to the Zero Gravity trail head, so we hit the road. The "Good dirt road" leading the trailhead parking lot was not nearly as good as I expected, and there were definitely a few moments that I feared getting stuck in some deep sand, but we made it through. We wound up stopping about a mile short of the actual trail head because the road did become impassible, but we had expected that from the information we had gotten beforehand, so this was not a problem.
I don't think that Lynn was very excited to do this canyon, since he had voted against it and expected it to be too quick and easy. He estimated that it would only take us about and hour and a half to do the entire loop, despite the guidebook indicating that it would take approx 3-4 hours. After hiking to the trail head, we recorded the time to check (OK, make fun of) Lynn's time estimate. It was another 1.2 miles to get to the actual canyon entrance, which was not too long but no fun in the heat. Finally, we reached the down scramble into the canyon and visited the small arches (Tinky and Winky) at the canyon bottom that mark the start of the route.
Almost immediately after we began heading down canyon it became a true slot (only a couple of feet wide) with a large drop to be down climbed. I began to second guess the decision to enter the canyon due to the lateness of the day (4:30pm) and the gray skies. The biggest danger in a slot canyon is flash flooding, which can occur due to rain many miles away. We had checked the radar on the way in, and saw some small scattered showers around, but nothing very heavy. Lynn was not at all concerned and was raring to go, and we decided to continue on.
Of all the canyons that we did on this trip, I feel there can be no doubt that this was the most unique and challenging. Due to his early prediction of this being an incredibly easy canyon, Lynn continues to insist that it was not bad, but I am pretty sure it's just because he doesn't want to admit he was wrong. This canyon required 
EXTENSIVE use of chimneying high off the canyon floor, downclimbing, swimming and wading, and some upclimbing. Once section in particular Lynn went into first, exclaimed "Oh shit!", and told us to hold off on coming down ourselves. He quickly found a way to climb out of the 9 foot deep hole that he was in, but it was tense for a couple of moments.
The final obstacle was the one I had read about and was most worried about. As one point, the canyon becomes very narrow and drops out from below you, with a chokestone wedged in the canyon serving as a landmark for this obstacle. There are three options here. One is to climb above the stone, chimneying past it and leaving you nearly 30 feet above the canyon floor. You must then continue out until you reach a section where the canyon gets just wide enough to drop through using a rope tied to the stone to swing back into the canyon with. The second option is to get as close to the stone as possible, and make your way under it. At this point, and canyon is just barely wide enough for a skinny person turned sideways to make carefully their way down and
squeeze through underneath. The 3rd option is to mess up and attempt to make your way down before getting right up against the stone. Those who come down t0o early are likely to wind up getting wedged in a narrow spot with the feet dangling 10 feet above the canyon floor. Thankfully, we all made it through without incident, although it was awkward and scary. Once you reach the floor of the canyon, still wedged into a tiny space, a long downclimb to a pool below presents itself. It is not particularly difficult, but makes extensive use of wedging your butt against the wall and walking down the other wall with your feet, as it is very steep and exposed. Though we all survived the climb, my pants really did not. Sandstone is a very coarse, gritty type of rock, and very tough on any fabric scraping across it. Brad also messed up his pants, but did not develop the large hole that mine did, much to Lynn's amusement. ("Hey Mike, your ass cheek is hanging out of your pants! Haha!")
Back at the trail head, a check of the clock revealed our total round trip time to be just under 3 hours. Lynn continued to insist that we could have done it quicker, though the only stop we made the entire time was about 15 minutes to check out the arches at the top of the canyon. You have to admire his ability to stick to his guns, no matter what happens! Once again we tackled the dirt road back to the pavement, and the Prius made it through. (Prius Power!) The last adventure of the day was stopping at an Arbys on the way back for a bathroom break and to grab some food. I call it an adventure since I spent the whole time trying (and failing) to keep the hole in my pants covered, much to the amusement of one of the other patrons who got a good laugh out of the whole thing.
Back in Moab, I started packing up while Lynn and Brad drove downtown to hunt for souvenirs. We plan on getting up at 5:00am to drop Brad off at the airport and get started on the 18 hour drive back to Austin, so I was happy to get all packed up and into bed as early as possible.
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