Canyoneering – what an exhilarating, slightly terrifying way to experience the canyons that make up so much of Utah’s beauty! When we are given a raving review of a place or activity, we usually take it. This is what happened when we decided to go canyoneering near Zion National Park in southern Utah. We’d met a guy on our hike on Hermit Trail at the Grand Canyon (see here for a recap!) and got to chatting with him, and he could not speak more highly of his experience canyoneering in Water Canyon in southern Utah. So we put it on the list and we are so glad that we did.
Beautiful hike in Water Canyon
We booked full day expeditions with Zion Mountain School for canyoneering, which neither Ryan or I have ever done before. We’d both gone indoor rock climbing less than a handful of times, so we had little to no experience with this sort of activity. But we are always up for a new adventure!
We met up with our guide Steffan just outside of Zion National Park in Springdale, at the Zion Mountain School headquarters, got our gear, signed our liability waivers and chatted about where we’d go for the canyoneering. The full day expeditions are about 7-9 hours, a couple hours of moderate hiking to get up into the canyon, and several rappels of different lengths, and of course driving time to get to and from the canyons. We jumped into Steffan’s land cruiser and headed out of Springdale towards Water Canyon, not too far from the shop and the Park. We headed out on some bumpy dirt roads, climbing up onto a plateau and past Smithsonian Butte. We drove through Colorado City, passing through the reclusive community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the fundamentalist wing of the Mormon Church run by Warren Jeffs (then his brother when he went to jail. Now who, since the brother is in jail too?!).
Beautiful hiking to get deeper into the canyon so that we could begin rappelling.
As we drove past the boarded up windows and partially finished but fully occupied homes, the few kids we saw in white button down shirts and black pants (for the boys) and the women and girls in rough homespun drab colored dresses reaching from throat to fingertips and toes, their hair braided in loose french braids, I wished we could have stayed and observed longer. After reading Under the Banner of Heaven several years ago, and following the legal sagas of the Jeffs brothers, I am intrigued by these people. Alas, we were on our way for some adventuring, not people watching, so on we went. Thankfully our guide Steffan was chock-full of knowledge about just about anything and everything that we asked him, including the FLDS church and Colorado City, so I was able to pick his brain for more information about the area.
Studying the knot tying process
So back to canyoneering – we pulled into the little dirt parking lot, loaded up our gear and headed up Water Canyon, hiking at a moderate pace and moderate climb up into the canyon where we’d then start canyoneering. Steffan told us all about the geology of the area – which is still astounding to me. He also told us that there are plenty of people that he guides out there who actually don’t want to chat about the geology of the area at all – how can that be?! The geology is what is so special about this place! But some people just want to do a hike, look at pretty things, take photos to show folks back home, and move on. I, on the other hand, am like a sponge and I want to know EVERYTHING. So we chatted about how the Colorado Plateau rose out of the Earth’s crust by 2,000-7,000 feet, over a huge land area that covers Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and then waters of various kinds (streams, ice, glaciers, rains, floods) carved into the plateau creating all of the amazing canyons, buttes, hoodoos and other rock formations that we had been and would continue to drool over for our entire time in southern Utah. He chatted with us about the Grand Staircase that we’d already been seeing in the landscapes of the area and near Escalante, and how the water has shaped everything in this desert – what a strange phenomenon.
Science is THE best, no? He explained the desert varnish to us, which is what you sometimes see on the sides of the mountains and canyons in the desert – it’s actually a layer of iron on the outside of the rock, where water has interacted with chemicals in the sand and dirt, rusted (which gives all the rocks and sandstone its red coloring) and created a thin layer of iron clinging to the sides of the rocks.
Cool example of desert varnish on the cliffs overhanging
some primitive dwellings we saw in southern Utah!
Moqui marbles are little balls of iron created by the same water reactions and they get embedded in the sandstone, then as the sandstone is eroded away by wind, water and ice, the moqui marbles fall out of the softer stone, leaving the circular indentions that you often see in the sandstone walls of a canyon. So fascinating – I already mentioned that I was a geologist-wannabe when I was 8, so Utah is really feeding that part of my soul.
Some indentations from moqui marbles!
Back to the canyoneering! We hiked up through the canyons and started our first rappel! Armed with helmets, harnesses and jackets (it was a little chilly out of the sun, but what a gorgeous day it turned out to be – 70 and sunny, a rarity in Zion in spring), we were excited to get started. Steffan tied up all the ropes, explained to us the knots and carabiners, the different ropes and how we’d be easing our way down the sides of the canyons, and we were off! We took our turns loading up and disappearing over the side of the cliff. Our first rappel was about 75 feet down I think, and a little terrifying but mostly thrilling, like belaying down the rock wall at the end of a climb at a rock gym, except without a soft mat at the bottom to catch you if something goes wrong.
We rappelled down the rock wall, bounding our way slowly to the bottom, and then Steffan came whipping down making it look so easy and not scary at all (come on dude, at least make it look a little bit tough so we don’t feel like weenies). The next rappel was a shorter one that we needed to put on our wetsuits for – this is called Water Canyon after all. We’d told Steffan that we were okay with getting a little wet, and this short rappel through a water canyon was the dunk that we were waiting for. At the end of the rappel, you basically fall off the end of the rope into a shall pool of canyon water and swim a few strokes to the rock shore. No matter that we knew it was going to be cold, I was not prepared for the shock of freezing water that awaited me at the end of the rope – but ready or not I jumped in and doggy paddled in the least graceful, most shrieking way that I knew how, until I was out of that frigid water. And then we decided no more water dunks for the rest of the canyoneering – it was just too freezing and that canyon water is not you’d want to take a dip in. You may be envisioning some sort of crystal clear glacier-fed stream, perhaps an azure pool of lovely water that you see sometimes in the mountains. This, however, is brown water with lots of sticks and other goodies from the forests floating around, certainly laden with amoebas, possibly with some sort of flesh eating bacteria (just kidding, so far all of our flesh is still here). So we opted for the dry rappelling for the rest of the day.
We did a few more rappels after that, dangling our way down the canyons hanging from huge ponderosa pines growing seemingly out of the side of the rocks, or from other huge stones and crevices.
Our last rappel was an awesome SWAT-style rappel down a crack in the canyon where we could just dangle our way down the canyon, without anywhere to put our feet – straight out of a movie when they send the SWAT team in from the helicopters. I’m quite sure we didn’t look that cool, but there was nobody else around to rebut that presumption.
A moment of serious concentration!
Overall it was an awesome day – we loved canyoneering (and are fearful that if we’d stayed in Utah for any longer than we did, we would have picked up yet another hobby and invested in even more gear than we already have!). It is an incredibly fun, challenging way to see the beautiful canyons and experience the landscape in a new way. It’s also a great way to access lots of places that we would be able to reach by our usual method of hiking. Zion Mountain School was an awesome outfitter and our host Steffan was really wonderful – so knowledgeable about canyoneering, the geology and the culture of the area – he clearly has a passion for the outdoors and for teaching others, and we felt safe every step of the way. We will certainly be canyoneering again, and we’d recommend it to anyone who is physically up for the challenge and for the adventure.
Silliness after canyoneering.
BY Jackie
LOCATION Water Canyon, Utah
