Two days in Lodge Canyon, Zion - 9/6 & 9/8 2024, incl Bolt Work

I had set up a trip for Sunday, for Lodge Canyon, to look at the Direct Exit and thinking about replacing some of the many bolts I had placed in this canyon over the last 20 years with more-reliable Glue Ins. And then got a call from friends to do it on the Friday before, as they wanted to do something, not too big, before a Full Imlay on Saturday. Well… yeah, why not?

Here’s our group from Friday… well, AFTER the canyon, grabbing ice cream at the Springdale Candy Company. Good stuff!

Some miscommunication on the front end, resulting in starting the canyon in the middle of a hot summer day… it was toasty!

Fun to do this canyon with the “A Team”, and see a few downclimbing options I had not previously considered. New logs had washed into the canyon since the last time I ran through it - maybe 8 years prior? Anthony and (??) downclimbed the second part of the first rappel and declared it not too hard. So Braxton gave me a meat anchor and downclimbed after. Here I am keeping the rope out of a shallow puddle.

Second part of the first rappel.

A big chunk of wood found its way into the top of the second rappel, almost (but not quite) blocking access to the two-bolt anchor I put in a couple years ago. Anthony was the rigger on this rap.

All smiles top of R2.

That’s all the pics from Friday.

Toward the end, TreC and I checked out the anchor for the big rap down the watercourse: two ancient bolt-relics and perhaps the jammed stump we were standing on. Did not seem like something the rest of the team was psyched to do, so we jugged back up the rope and proceeded down the Normal Route - over the side, two long rappels. I was happy to find the mechanical-bolt anchors for both rappels had been replaced by glue-ins intelligently located in more effective locations. We finished the canyon and went into town for Ice Scream!

SUNDAY we got a much earlier start which was successful at beating the heat. Here is our Sunday group selfie, and clearly I need to get a new phone with a wider lens so I can take decent group selfies.

Tom, Ali, Kelly, Tim

We climbed steeply upward, then steeply downward, then briefly less steeply upward, then steeply downward again and… it helps that most of the upward was first thing, and the rest was mostly downward and a nice tour, early in the morning when shaded.

Here is a fun spot, about halfway down the approach section of Lodge Canyon.

Eventually, we arrived at the first rappel and geared up. Rapped the first part.

This is an odd rappel, and has a history of sticking ropes. I personally have gotten the rope stuck here twice. The anchor is a sling around a pinch under a boulder and drops to this ledge; and the second part goes down the slot to the right, which has a bunch of chockstones in it with pinchpoints that the rope falls into, and gets stuck. Recently we have learned to run the rope around this rib (center of picture) to keep it out of the crack, but it has been used enough to have developed a rope groove in the corner where both the rappel side and retrieval side go, and cross, and get stuck. Having had two deaths in Zion in the last couple years from people climbing stuck ropes that came unstuck, I decided it would be good to put a single, stout glue-in bolt here for the second part of the rappel, now known as Rappel #2.

You can see me here, with the glossy red head, hand drilling out a hole for the bolt. And you can see a recently washed-in log which could be slung for a natural anchor, for the short time it will be present here. I put in the glue in bolt and tagged it; and we rappelled off the ‘usual anchor’ and the rope got stuck. Thankfully my companions figured out how to get in position to pull it… and we moved onward.

Anchor for new R2.

Dead Things in Canyons - Ali saw this, I did not. It was far enough along that it did not stink anymore.

We made our way to the exit rappels. My intention was to put in some good bolts there, so the route would be usable once the stump washed out (and to avoid the awkward rappel off the stump). This view is looking down from the penultimate anchor, 100 feet to the stump at ‘the edge of the world’. The normal route in this canyon escapes to the right and does two long rappels to the ground.

Looking down.

There was a 2-bolt anchor here, Star Dryvins, Leeper Hangers (maybe), directly in the watercourse. I thought maybe this was a Royce Tanner route, but the hangers were not stamped with RT, as was his usual practice. I think you can see why we did not want to rap off these two days before.

I put in two bolts here, a mechanical bolt so we had something to rappel off of, and a glue-in bolt for a more permanent anchor. Spaced vertically with rapides so no webbing is needed to connect them. Somewhat more out of the flow than the previous set. With a brass tag stating “300 ft rap” so people would not mistake this for the Normal Route.

My intention being to come back soon-ish and replace the mechanical with another glue in using the same hole. We proceeded downward…

Kelly heading over the edge!

I ended up going last. Here is the view from about 250 feet up.

Turns out, there was another anchor in there somewhere, maybe 80 feet down from the top (measurements were not made). Two ancient bolts, the closest being a Star Dryvin. I could swing in and grab the webbing, but it would be challenging to get in balance on that small ledge without the webbing there. From here, the rappel was pretty much free to the ground.

Excellent capture by Ali !!

A better shot at showing the whole rappel. Actual length, a carefully measured 300 feet. Make sure your rope is long enough!

Then we went into town for Ice Scream!!!!!