San Rafael Swell: Day 3

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.