Lower Echo Canyon, Zion National Park, UT

Evergreen Dean came out with a couple of friends to run a lap on Imlay. I thought a warmup day was in order to assess skills, spread the The Imperial Style of canyon ropework and teamwork, and also work them pretty hard to see how they would react - in modern parlance, a "Stress Test". There are many canyons we could have done, but Lower Echo seemed like a good choice, and... At a recent Springdale gathering, one of the guns of the local climbing community, lubricated by some quantity of malt beverage, had talked about Echo Canyon, and a 5.6ish exit out the nose of the ridge from the very bottom. (5.6 for a 5.12 climber means ???) I have a long-term, likely-futile project to re-open Lower Echo Canyon (in a practical way) to canyoneering, and establishing a route up the ridge would be one way to do it. So we went looking for this ridge route...

But first, a little botanizing. But… I brought the wrong lens, and the light was very subdued, and… and…
But there was a nice clump of this aster right next to the bus stop, and I had seen this lovely glaucous plant in abundance in the Park, and which (please email me if you can provide insight) seems to be:
Glaucous aster – Eurybia glauca :: Aster family Asteraceae

... though it seems to have many, many names. Ruth calls it Aster glaucodes pulcher. Over at SW Colorado Wildflowers, Al and Betty Schneider have an interesting discussion of the issues. Who knew there were issues??? Anyway, learned a new color name today: glaucous = green with a bluish cast, aka teal green.

So we dropped off the trail onto the peninsula/ridge south of the canyon, worked our way out to the end, and…

Uh, yeah. No way. From where we were, at the end of the 2nd class portion, it looked like 5th class shrubbery down 600 feet to the canyon floor. Not promising, not worth exploring.

Back up and along to the 'saddle' on the ridge. I had set a jug-out rope here with Scott Holley many years ago, and we had an awful time getting out, but it being July 4th weekend and about 110 degrees may have tainted the experience. This time, we set a 200 foot rope and rapped in to make sure the rope reached the canyon floor. Unfortunately, that involves rapping down this slab, then over the edge a bit in order to see the bottom of the canyon. Yes, if carefully positioned, a 200' rope reaches the bottom of the canyon, and the rope bag tangles in some logs, so it will stay.

Of course, the penalty to be paid is in jugging back up. The slab being easy, the short vertical section below a little less so – but avoiding the overhanging part at the bottom is a good idea.

I did not take many pictures, as the light was rather gloomy. In addition to Evergreen Dean Brooks, there was also Chris Landers and Frank Phillips from Colorado, and Tracy (Dstrbd on Bogley) from Hurricane.

Lower Echo is a really fun canyon, usually wet, dank, undergroundish, with many raps from bolts and natural anchors. Kind of like Imlay, without the keepers, and with no convenient exit. Here we have what passes for a keeper pothole, easily passed with a little partner assist.

We did about 8 raps down to where the rope was hanging, the bottom tangled in some logs above a short drop into a big room. We went a little further than this... but soon realized the day was waning, and jugging the ropes would take a while. We had a late lunch, then headed back up, not having reached the bottom.

STRAIGHT down from the anchor above, our 200-foot rope would not have reached the ground (which could be VERY embarassing), but slightly upcanyon, as I said, I got it into some logs atop this short drop. So we set a rope for jugging on that short drop. Most participants had not really jugged much before, and the 60 feet of freehanging jugging was a challenge.

Dean is setting up to jug the lower short pitch, a warmup for the big jug above. Frank is jugging the main drop – this photo taken about 10 seconds before he realized that wearing the pack was a major PITA, and dangling it would work much better. Subsequent juggers were able to use one of the lower ropes to haul up their pack, once they reached the lip. Chris is holding onto the end of the upper rope so it does not get away from us.

And finally, Dean looking like he is having a good time on the lower jug.
Then we had a rest day, then we did Imlay. All good!