We found another thing for the C to stand for, canyoneering. The Mooseknuckler Canyoneering Alliance got out this past Saturday and did a lot of waiting. We had planned on getting through Behunin, hopefully without any issues.
Behunin starts off of the West Rim meaning you climb up the Angel’s Landing trail to Scout Outlook and then continue to climb as you head up the West Rim. After a bit on the Rim trail you hang a left on what Super D described as a poo trail. And then you descend.
That pretty much sums it up. Once you start going down there isn’t much else to do but keep going down, a long way down.
On the other side of that ledge is where the descending starts to get epic. The first drop is 90 feet and puts you on another ledge. Then you rappel 150 feet to another ledge which puts you into another 150 foot descent. All of this is finalized by 120 foot rappel to the canyon “floor.” I use floor here almost in jest. Yes it is as low as you can go at this point but there are still 5 more rappels before you are really done. And then you still have to hike down the Emerald Pool trail to get to the real canyon floor.
The first four rappels total out at 510 feet of descent. This means that where you see Super D standing in the above picture it is 510 feet before you can really move without a rope.
Everything went pretty smoothly until we came to these drops. When we arrived at the first rap, there was a group ahead of us. We waited at least 30 minutes before they had all gone down and pulled their ropes and moved on so we could drop without landing on top of them. I would estimate that we waited around 2-3 hours on these first four rappels for this group. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the canyon there wasn’t much space to pass…
When we hit the “floor” they had already moved on so we just continued on our merry way without any more waiting until the third to last rappel of the daynight. We then waited close to 1.5 hours as they tried and tried to set up a guided rappel to skip swimming. Once 7 pm hit, we knew we had to get moving. We basically absorbed them into our group and leapfrogged our way down the last three descents. Even with the rushed effort, Rebecca and Darrin made the last 165 foot drop in the dark.
Super D, Roller Coaster Kim and I were the first to hit the ground. Super D stayed to make sure that no one died on the descent and Kim and I busted ass to try and make the last shuttle. We made it back to the Grotto at 9:09, 21 minutes shy of a full 12 hours in the canyon. We caught the shuttle and made it to the cars.
The rest of the group hit the Grotto closer to 10:30 making their trip closer to 13 hours. I went around all of the signs saying shuttles only and picked up Super D, Rebecca and Darin.
Needless to say we were all a little trashed and extremely tired.
P. L. and R.