A good friend of mine, Chris, was about to get married. So he decided to get his bros together for the usual bachelor party tradition with the added twist of a long weekend of technical canyoneering in southeast Utah. We did 2 shorter canyons on the first day, including Fry Canyon. On the second day we descended Gravel Canyon, which was the ultimate adventure. All of these canyons are technical, involving 3rd and 4th class scrambling, wading, swimming (water over your head), and rappelling. We all brought wetsuits which were necessary to negotiate some pretty long swimming sections in very cold water with no sunlight. Even though the outside temps were in the 90s, you want a wetsuit to do some of these more technical canyons. None of the rappels we did were over 50 feet or so, but that depends on which canyon you do around here. There are some canyons which require multiple rope-length rappels to get down vertical sections.
We had a blast on this trip. The hardest part for me was a couple of sections where you had to swim through a narrow passage and you couldn't touch the bottom. The walls were too close (only 2 - 3 feet apart) to be able to do any sort of effective swimming stroke. You just ended up doing this semi-desperate dog-paddle, trying hard not to swallow to much of the disgusting soup. Sounds like fun, huh?
We had a blast on this trip. The hardest part for me was a couple of sections where you had to swim through a narrow passage and you couldn't touch the bottom. The walls were too close (only 2 - 3 feet apart) to be able to do any sort of effective swimming stroke. You just ended up doing this semi-desperate dog-paddle, trying hard not to swallow to much of the disgusting soup. Sounds like fun, huh?
Dropping in to the first swimming hole