As we watch GDR and TD riders dealing with the snow, The Morning Report brings another good story of Snow lingering into the summer... except instead of being in Montana, we're in Southern Utah.
Zion National Park (UT)
Canyon Rescue Conducted By Rangers
On Saturday evening, park dispatch received a report that cries for help had been heard coming from Echo Canyon. Rangers Rob Wissinger and Tom Parrack responded and located a party of four canyoneers who’d become stranded hundreds of feet above the bottom of a side canyon. They’d attempted to exit from the side canyon because a 30-foot-high wall of snow blocked their safe progress down the canyon’s traditional route. After determining that there were no injuries, Parrack made a technical descent to their location and supplied the four men with overnight gear, food and water. They were raised up from their position the following morning after receiving instructions on ascent techniques. A similar technical rescue was performed in the same canyon on May 13th, when another group of canyoneers found snow blocking their route. They were also unable to go either forward or back and had to be rescued. Craig Thexton was the incident commander. [Submitted by Bonnie Schwartz, Chief Ranger]
When we were in Zion Canyon last week we hiked a trail that follows Echo Canyon on our way to the Mystery entrance (you have to hike up from the canyon floor to the rim and Echo is the path of least resistance through one section). I was feeling pretty crudy so about 2/3rds of the way up I turned around and went back, and D finished Mystery on his own and I met him back down at the Temple of Sinewava.
While hiking along, looking down into Echo Canyon - I remembered our descent of it, in the spring of '04... it's the closest we've ever come to needing a rescue. Thirty to forty foot tall snow drifts, hundreds of feet long, that were just starting to melt out, so you'd find bergschrunds at the start and finish of each snow drift, and about a foot of space between the drift and the walls next to it.
At times, we'd be walking a three foot wide crest of snow, reaching out touching the canyon walls for stability, with an 8 inch wide, forty foot deep drop on either side, if the snow gave way... it was really an experience - scary, but crazy odd and fun at the same time.
We were in wetsuits, and the air temperature was reasonably warm, so there was no chance of us getting too cold... it was just crazy to have snow there, like that.
Eventually we came to an undercut ledge we needed to climb on top of, to continue along the next snow drift - except the ledge was too high. And the undercut was much too deep to do anything crazy and risk falling down into it. We built a small step of snow, and placed a square Nalgene bottle upside down on the top of it, to extend it's height another foot. D put one foot onto our step and used his Neoprene glove covered hands, to essentially crack climb the juncture of the rock wall and the lip of the icy snow drift... with two or three moves (and two or three or four tries) he got his weight up over the edge, climbed up a bit higher, wedged himself in place and sent the rope down to me with six loops tied in it, for me to climb up.
Later, we came to the edge of a particularly large drift to find it severely undercut, with what looked like a twenty five foot drop to the canyon floor below. Being on top of a wide and gently sloping snow field didn't leave us many options for anchoring a rope and repelling down the overhang... this was the point where I really thought we might be stuck... I always thought we'd find Some way to climb up the previous spot... but if we couldn't anchor a rope, there was no way we were jumping down, especially because we couldn't be sure how undercut it was, how thin it was, or if the very edge would hold our weight... so we hadn't gone all the way out to the edge, and didn't know what the landing looked like...
after probably half an hour of pacing back and forth, playing with a few options to use a Dead-Man (comforting name, I know...), D finally found a flake in the canyon wall just the right size to wedge a knot of webbing... a ring was attached to the webbing, and we rappelled down... (the whole thing turned out to be much more undercut, and higher than we'd estimated).
The really insane part, is that, last week, there were 90 degree temperatures on that walk up, right past Echo Canyon... yet, deep down, between those narrow walls, there was still massive amounts of snow. The typical Zion Canyon profile is much different that others you'll find on the Colorado Plateau - they're at such a high elevation, they actually get significant amounts of snow, but usually this also translates into them being much more open, they get a lot more sunlight too... but not Echo, Echo really is a special one, and of all the rescue attempts I read about, the above is one of the few where I didn't immediately think "What idiots!!!"
I'm judgmental - I know.
We debated, going back and doing Echo some time late that summer, once the snow had melted, so we could see, just how ridiculous our webbing must have looked - a ten foot long stretch of webbing, hanging fifty feet above the canyon floor... must have seemed odd to anyone who did the canyon, not knowing what it looks like in the winter and spring...
we also lamented not having our camera with us that day, I think the image of D in a wetsuit, one foot on an upside down water bottle buried in a snow pile, two hands crammed in the ice/wall slot, trying to heave his body onto the ledge, would have made a killer Nalgene ad :)
ah well.
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