I actually slept better than I've slept in a LONG time. I woke up a few times out of habit from Bailey waking up, but man, it felt great. I noticed during the night the breeze was picking up and by morning it was really blowing hard. We made our breakfast (which took a long time to burn since the wind was really blowing our burner around), packed up our stuff and did some more rappelling before leaving our campsite.
Here are more rappels from this day. This section of the cliff was much more vertical and easier to do since you didn't have to navigate your feet over a crack.
My first attempt of this section
Jeff's rappel
Billy's rappel
Caiden's last rappel of the day as I gathered the longer rope
After breaking down our ropes, it was getting really dusty/windy, but I wanted to show my brothers more of the swell, so we drove up North Temple wash close to Temple mountain to show them some old miners cabins and and old abandoned chevy.
Inside the miners cabin
The old Chevy
On our way back out of the wash, you can see how bad the dust storm is (this is looking East, through the reef)
We decided to do a little target practice too
On our way out the dust was REALLY bad east of the reef. This is looking eastward from the mouth of North Temple wash
This is looking North at the reef
From the temple mtn road, this is looking south toward goblin valley
A group of cows huddled together. I'm sure they were thinking the cow gods were not looking on them fondly that day
It really was a fun trip. I'm bummed we didn't do Crack Canyon, but you never know with clouds and dust, what kind of weather you're going to get, so we high-tailed it out of there. I wish I lived closer to the swell and we could get there easier.
So, after a horrible nights sleep (well, mine wasn't as bad, plus whenever I was sleeping I was snoring so loud it would wake up my brothers in their tent 40' away from us), we got up and found it to be pretty cold. That gave us motivation to scale the reef behind our campsite to see if there was a viable anchor on top to tie off my climbing rope to do some rappelling later in the day after our hikes.
Alene stayed in the tent to stay warm with Bailey. Jeff, Billy, Caiden, and I headed up to the top of the reef to inspect. We found a GREAT group of LARGE rocks to anchor off of. We worked our day back down the reef, made breakfast, then dinged around teaching Billy how to rappel off a smaller wall (about 15'-20' tall). Caiden did really well again.
We then headed out for our two hikes. We first stopped by Goblin Valley state park. That place gets more and more packed with visitors every year. It didn't help that we were there on a Saturday.
I'm not going to list all of the pictures we took, but here is a link to them (along with past times we've gone). The first 13 of them were from this trip.
After Goblin Valley, we headed on over to Little Wild Horse canyon, which is probably the most famous slot canyon to visit for the "average" person. The hike was great, but I'll say this: NEVER GO TO THIS CANYON ON A SATURDAY. We used to be able to go here on a saturday and maybe run into a dozen people, if we were lucky. This day we easily passed over 100 people in the canyon. LOT'S of Boy Scouts too.
Again, I won't post all of these pictures (I took most of my pictures here), so I'll post the link to the photos and a few of my favorites. Again, the first 40 pictures in this set were from this trip, the others beyond that were from previous trips
Alene and Bailey made it through a pretty tight squeeze
Footage of walking through a slot
Posing at the large choke stone in the slot
Inside the ribs of the beast
We stopped a couple of miles in to each lunch, then turned around and went back out.
Me and Alene
Bailey was so happy to be leaving
We got back to the campsite and by then Alene and I had to decide if we could go through another night with Bailey. We decided it was best that Alene go to Green River, get a hotel and hopefully she and Bailey can get a good nights sleep. I was sad to see her go because I know Alene wanted to be here. However, it was probably best (I'll explain why on Day 3).
For the rest of the day we ended up anchoring my 90m rope to a couple of large rocks that were big enough for me, Russ, and Jeff to hang from the rope, so we figured we would be safe. We're not experts, but it was fun rappelling this large cliff behind us. It wasn't 100% vertical in all places, but still fun to do.
Here are is the link to our rappelling and some of the pictures and video clips:
Alene waiting her turn while Bailey hams it up for the camera
Russ' first attempt
Jeff's first attempt
Billy's first attempt
Alene's attempt (she bolted after this for Green River)
My first attempt. This section was easier compared to what we did the next day (a little more vertical)
Caiden did a few rappel's later that night too
Later that night we just ate dinner and chilled around the fire until it was time to doze off. Jeff and I attempted to take some night time pictures. Jeff's were much better.
My shot of the moon (too shaky, even on a tripod, but I think it has to do with the focus)
Jeff's shot of the moon through his telescope
Jeff's tent with the stars behind it (I'm posting the large version to show the details)
