I'd always heard of this canyon, located in the "Robbers Roost" section of Utah and it was one of those "I'll do it someday" canyons. Bill called at the last minute and invited me because he (wisely) likes to make sure there are at least 3 people on a trip when technical canyoneering is involved (if one is hurt, one can go for help, the other can stay with the hurt person). This trip was a quick one-nigher.
We headed down on a Thursday evening, stopping at a couple of spots along the Lower San Rafael road to take a few pictures of the sunset, then settled at our campsite in the dark, which was just a spot at the trail head right along the road. The moon was so bright that night, I had to wear a sleeping mask just to get some decent shut eye.
We were up relatively early the next morning, packed our stuff away, then headed out on the trail by 8am. We entered the upper end of the shallow slot, but the good stuff picked up not long after and it just kept getting better.
The upper end was dry and something I loved was the white sand that was blown onto the sandstone shelves as you passed through. Eventually we got to the first major obstacle; normally a down-climb, the water below was brown and murky and it was hard to see if it was safe to make the slide into the water so we rigged a quick rap and went down. The water was COLD and the exit was deep mud, which was a preparation for some other nasty stuff later in the canyon.
We made our way through the rest of the canyon and eventually came to some of the most beautiful sculpted sandstone I've ever seen. Pictures/video will never do it justice. After the beautiful section was a long down climb, then a NASTY slog through mud/water so nasty it was all you could do to keep from puking (so thankful it was only knee deep). Beyond that was a rock-fall section you pass under, then the last long rappel. From there we took a quick snack break, then made our way down the canyon a bit, and a steep exit climb back out. We did not have a shuttle vehicle, so we just made the long slog back to Bill's truck and booked it home.
This is a canyon I would be happy to do this canyon again. Very much worth it. I would recommend setting a shuttle vehicle (or a mountain bike) to shorten the time.
Sunset along the lower san rafael road
Moon rise from Three Canyon area
Hiking toward the canyon
The upper (shallow) end of High Spur; this is where we entered
White sand on the canyon shelfs
Such beautiful colors
The first rappel/down climb
Beautiful sculptures
The beginning of the nasty water. Hold your nose.
My shoes, coated with nasty-ness
The rock fall section
The last rappel area
Looking back at the last rappel
The exit
Petroglyphs on the exit out
Found this USGS marker on the way back to the truck
Upon catching some lunch and leaving the Trin Alcove Bend area of the Green River (after doing the Northwest Fork of Three Canyon), Bill and I headed over to the Moonshine wash area, which runs parallel to Three Canyon, so it wasn't too far away. We immediately headed out for the canyon upon getting to the parking spot.
Moonshine was much more beautiful than I remembered it. The canyon, especially the slot sections, is one of the most beautiful around. Even my cheap little digital camera captured some decent shots. One part I forgot about was the amount of scrambling down choke sections of the slot. If you bring children, be sure you have at least two people that are secure enough to down climb 6' to 10' and you're capable of passing the kids down to each other on multiple down climbs. I'm going to post a few of Bill's photos here because they're so amazing and of course, they feature me :-).
Click on any photo to see the larger version of it (better details)
We did the short-cut route to the beginning of the slot, rather than waste a mile or so of hiking through sand.
We decided to work our way down to the famous spring and old cement moonshine tanks that this canyon is famous for. This required us to exit up out of the canyon and do some cross-country hiking (brought to you by Bill's GPS) to the proper canyon entrance.
Going up the exit area
Walking cross country to the tank entrance
We arrive at the spring and tanks
Visiting the tanks was somewhat uneventful, but at the same time it was one of those things I'd been wanting to do for a while. I also felt privileged that I was able to see a cool part of recent history.
We ended up hiking the western rim of the canyon back. We had hoped to find an easy route to see the old sheepherders bridge from above, but we were too tired to make the effort. We'll save that one for another trip. This trip was awesome an it was cool to cover two amazing canyons in one day. I'm so thankful for my wife's support in being able to enjoy a great day hiking and for the sacrifice Bill made in extending his road driving time another 3 hours (each way) for this after being gone for an entire week. Thanks for coming along Bill.
I have been wanting to come back to this area ever since the first time we came here with Bill for his birthday a few years ago. I've never been to Three Canyon, but had read about it and it's always been somewhat of a mystery to me and I've wanted to explore it badly.
Alene and I had originally planned to do this trip together, but she had to work a lot of hours preceding this week and was feeling guilty about the time spent away from our daughter Bailey, so she encouraged me to invite my brothers. Jeff was planning on coming until the day before when he cut his hand while doing the dishes. When rappelling is involved, it's hard to do that with a cut hand. Luckily my brother in-law Bill was willing to sacrifice his time and come along with me. Keep in mind that Bill had been back from his trip to California for a total of about 1 hour.
We headed down around 6pm, which meant we would be looking for a campsite in the dark. Bill had the idea to camp at the nearby Chaffin Ranch geyser, which we had heard about but have never seen. Bill had the GPS coordinates, so it wasn't too hard to find in the dark. We set up camp and Bill did some star trails. Eventually we walked over to the geyser and just as we arrived it started to bubble up. The geyser is an old drill hole sight that tapped into a pocket of CO2. There didn't seem to be a method to the timing of it gushing, but we lucked out both at night in the morning of catching it (we also camped about 20' from it so we wouldn't miss it).
Hanging out by the campfire
Bill's star trails and an old chevy (photo Courtesy of Bill)
Night time geyser
Geyser area (the minerals in the water make the area this red color)
Me, standing at the geyser (photo courtesy of Bill)
Messing around one of the old cars (photo courtesy of Bill)
After some pictures and breakfast, we loaded up our stuff into the truck and headed directly for the trailhead for the Northwest Fork of Three Canyon.
As suggested by all the guidebooks, we first headed over to the exit point and tied a hand line in order to get past a difficult 8' tall section.
We then headed back along the canyon rim and dropped in.
The beginning of the canyon
Starts to tighten up
The first downclimb
Our second tiny obstacle (a small pothole of water)
Looking down on and prepping for the first big rappel (about 36 feet tall)
Going down
We then went down canyon a bit more to find the bigger (60+ foot) rappel. This one was a bit different because we couldn't see the bottom from where we started, so since it was my birthday, Bill said he would go first again :-). Since we couldn't see the bottom, we couldn't tell if our ropes had hit, so Bill went on a single line and evened them out at the bottom, I went down on the traditional double line.
Looking back on our 2nd rappel
We then headed down canyon and worked our way into Three Canyon
Three Canyon was pretty uneventful due to these TALL grasses that covered the entire canyon floor.
Bill was cursing the grasses and the water he kept accidentally stepping into
We got tired of trudging through these grasses, so after 1/2 a mile or so, we opted to head back and go check out moonshine wash.
A grass-less area of Three Canyon
Going up the exit route
Before heading over to Moonshine wash, we opted to drive down to the drill hole site where Three Canyon meets the Green River at the Trin Alcove bend. We ate lunch and headed out to moonshine wash (I'll do a separate post for that)
We had the great pleasure of being invited to Bill's birthday camping trip, which has been an on-going tradition for him for quite a few years. I remember my first trip with them (Alene, April, and Bill) was before Alene and I were married. Looking back, I'm sure Bill was wondering what the hell Alene was thinking marrying me. I remember packing in a ton of excessive stuff for the trip. Extra clothes, a 10'x10' canopy (you know, for shade), a 6' banquet table and many other un-necessary items. I still pack in a table (but it's only a 3' table), but other than that, I pride myself on bringing as little as possible and with every trip I get better and better about it.
Like clothing. Now I bring one pair of pants (no matter how long we're there), and one pair of shorts. I'll also have one long sleeved shirt, a short sleeved shirt, a fleece sweater of sorts, and either a jacket or a light wind breaker, depending on the weather. I bring a little extra for Caiden because dude knows how to get dirty!
Anyway, onto the trip.
We left SLC as it was beginning to rain and snow. We left on good news that we had just received an offer on our house, so it was exciting to be getting away, knowing our house is likely going to sell.
The area Bill was taking us to is called Keg Spring. It's East of the san rafael reef and just north of Horseshoe Canyon, where Alene and I were last month. This particular site was very close to the Green River (within walking distance to a canyon rim). Bill had been down to this site last Fall, so he had a chance to scope it out and knew exactly where to take us. The site was PERFECT. You had a great view of everything around you. We could see parts of Canyonlands with bill's binoculars. It was awesome.
After getting camp set up, we embarked out to hike to colonnade arch, which is a series of 5-7 arches (depending on how you look at it). I was really wanting to get out to see it because of Bill's pictures from his trip last fall. The hike in was fun and easy and getting there was cool. I felt like it was almost like we discovered something no one else had seen. It kind of sat on the edge of a cliff (not that dangerous, but your view right from the arch area was of the Green River and twomile canyon.
Here are pictures of Colonnade Arch. Click HERE to see all the pictures from this hike:
Looking at the Green River in the background, from inside one of the arches
This was a weird formation that was circled with other rocks. Bill had seen a faded picture of it at the trailhead last Fall and wondered what it was. It's still speculation, but some have said it's some sort of lichen formed and eventually turned to stone, or just a tougher part of the rock that caused the concretion
After that hike we went back to camp and just chilled the rest of the night.
The next day (Saturday), we got up, did the breakfast thing and prepared for being away from camp for the day. Bill was taking us to Moonshine Wash and after that, planned on exploring the area via our vehicles.
Moonshine wash lived up to the hype. That place was AWESOME. The narrows there were so cool. Unfortunately, we had to cut our trip short and we never made it to where we wanted to, which was an old 9' long sheep bridge (click HERE for Bill's picture he took last fall) which runs across the top of the canyon. It's totally old and not passable anymore, but it still stands, which is cool. Bill and April were having problems you would expect when having to haul a 1 year old on your back and a distracted 4 year old. Bill keeps telling me, "I can't WAIT for you to deal with this". Anyway, we decided to go ahead of them, thinking they would eventually catch up. As we made way down canyon, there were some serious drop-offs that I had doubts we would be able to get back up. I believe we went down about 5 of them, when realized nobody was catching up behind us. We had no idea how far we had to go to get to the famous sheep bridge, so we waited a bit, yelled for April and Bill, but heard nothing in return. We decided to make our way back to them and had to climb back up all those drop offs. I was impressed that we were able to get out and pull Caiden out as well.
We made our way back out and saw an older couple hiking the canyon. They said they saw our group on the rim of the canyon, working their way back. I immediately scrambled out of the canyon and looked around to see nobody. I looked back down to where we had been and I got pissed because in the distance I could see the sheep bridge and knew we weren't that far away from it when we turned around. Oh well. This is definitely a place I will be coming back to. Not only do I want to see the sheep bridge myself, I want to work my way up the side canyon for which Moonshine Wash is famous for. Up this canyon is a set of man-made cement bins made for making moonshine back in the prohibition era. There is apparently a natural spring in this area too.
We made our way back up to the trailhead just as Bill and the posse were getting ready to take off. They figured we would find our way back and they were going to leave us a note to meet them back at camp.
Here are some pictures form Moonshine Wash. Click HERE for the complete set:
We were in good hands with our sniper out in front of us
The narrows begin...
Trying to find my way up a dry fall
Since we were able to catch up with Bill and the posse, we were able to follow them around to a couple of off-road trails that lead to the Green River. The first one was called Bull Bottom, which is a spot where a switchback trail was carved out against the canyon wall to bring cattle from the canyon rim, down to the river bottom for grazing (and I'm sure a little Green River water). The trail was so skinny, which begged the question: "I wonder how many cows fell off the trail to the canyon floor?" Clint had been reading about the Green River a lot and felt a connection to it so he decided to head up canyon a bit and take a naked dip to complete his closeness. None of us thought he would do it, but he did.
Here are a few pictures of Bull Bottom:
After visiting Bull Bottom, Bill drove us up to the Wolverton Canyon over-look, which was an amazing view of the Green River. Click HERE for the set of the rest of these pictures:
On Sunday we ended up packing up and just heading out to Goblin Valley to hike around. Caiden loves that place. This time we hiked the N/NE area and worked our way south. We got a little scared because we scrambled so far back there and to the southern area and came to a halt because of a DEEEEP cave-type thing that had to have dropped about 40'. It was freaky because we had to turn around and go back and find our way out. It may seem impossible, but we got a little lost back there.
Here are some pictures from the trip. Click HERE for a link to our set.
It doesn't look like much, but this was really scary and dropped off on each side about 30'.
Ride 'em cowboy!
This is my favorite picture of Caiden. He's actually smiling and showing his teeth :-)
The REALLY deep and scary hole. I'm seriously surprised someone hasn't fallen in there. It just kind of shows up as you're hiking.
We had a great time in the area and I can't wait to go back and check out more of Moonshine and also, to go through Three Canyon, which runs parallel with Moonshine, just to the East.
We're taking a hiatus for the next month because of moving and Alene traveling for work for most of this month. We have a trip planned to Canyonlands, Needles district in early May, so that should be fun.
I've got to end with a few video clips of something else we did on the trip: Shoot guns. I've never owned a gun and until recently, I've REALLY wanted to get one for many reasons. First, for home protection, but second for outdoor protection. I shot Bill's Springfield XD9mm and Clint's XD .45 Cal. I also shot Clints new SKS rifle, which was fun. Alene also took a few shots with both the 9mm and the .45. I think I've almost got her convinced that it's OK to get one.
