Our general route for the section was a large horseshoe. Our drop-off and pick-up points were about 10 miles away from each other, so we did a large loop. The first half was through smaller canyons while the second was through Dark Canyon, which is at about the same depth as the Grand Canyon. A big part of NOLS philosophy is turning over independence to students. The general expectation is that once you've been taught a skill, it's your responsibility to safely and properly use it. This was a substantial part of our trip. Most of the trip was a build up for a culminating challenge, of sorts. We had an independent student group expedition (or ISGE, NOLS loves acronyms) for the last 6 days of the Canyons. This meant two student groups of 6 traveling by themselves and not seeing anyone and essentially proving their skills. We were tested quite a bit by our instructors before we were allowed to venture off by ourselves. They would routinely surprise us with fake emergency situations that we had to respond to properly. The ISGE was terrific. I was voted by my peers to lead one of the two student groups, and it went wonderfully. It was a great time to travel in a more personal community instead of the massive 14 person group we'd been living in.
We had one memorable 48 hours in gravel canyon, during the first half of the section, when our net gain of mileage for the whole time was about 50 feet. It started off with a late night in which we finally found an acceptable campsite as the sun was setting...that was on top of a 50 foot cliff. We could walk up to it, but the possibility of falling with heavy packs on our backs was too great, so had to pull them up by rope. It was a 2 hour process to get all 14 people and our gear up to the mesa top (along the way, a pack's strap broke when it was almost 40 feet in the air, causing it to plummet to the ground only 5 feet from a student and instructor who were attaching the packs to the ropes...yikes). The next morning we had to do the reverse process to get down to the canyon floor and continue moving. Once we got back down, we hiked for about 10 minutes until we reached another pour off. But this one didn't have a dry landing...it ended in about 9 feet of muddy water. In order to get down, everyone had to rappel over a ledge and then give themselves a lot of slack right above the water so they could thrash about and attempt to swim to shallower ground. The more challenging part was lowering packs so they didn't get soaked. We set up a long pulley system where, if we pulled fast enough, we could get the packs down dry. It was about 4 in the afternoon by the time we had everyone down on the ground, perhaps 1/4 mile down the canyon from were we started. We hiked around the corner for less then 5 minutes and ran smack into a slot canyon. Slot canyons are wild, they're incredibly thin, sometimes much less then a shoulders length wide. Plus this particular slot canyon dropped down another 10 feet. I took my pack off and dropped into the slot to scout it out. It quickly became filled with water that was over my head. And our packs would never had fit down into it. So we turned around. One of my instructors ascended the rope that we had luckily left up and built a rope ladder. Then as the canyon became pitch black, we each swam out to the ladder and climbed up the wall. We finally got back to the base of our previous campsite at 11:00.
I'm in love with the challenges and beauty of the desert canyons. I had some of the most fun I've experience while down in the canyons. I can't wait until I can return...
