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April 24, 2016

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Neon Canyon Crew

Our team (left to right: Don, Randy, John, and myself) posing at the bottom of the Golden Cathedral within Neon Canyon after descending through the upper portal of the ceiling. This is another trip from the bucket list files also completed during a visit to the Escalante region of Southern Utah two weeks ago.

This particular technical canyoneering trip is one that myself and my friends have been talking about for a while since first hiking into Neon Canyon and up to the Golden Cathedral from the bottom in the fall of 2008. After seeing images of others that have rappelled through the ceiling of the Golden Cathedral, we studied the route and the requirements. Guide books such as Steve Allen’s or Michael Kelsey’s, along with Tom’s Canyoneering web site each have differing descriptions for this hike. The route requires about 9 -10 miles of hiking, 4-5 rappels, wet suits, at least 80 feet of rope with an equal length of pull cord, and at least 40 feet of webbing in case the current anchors are deficient. You can do it as either a 2 day trip, setting up camp along the Escalante near the mouth of Neon Canyon, and staging the technical portion from your base camp. Or alternatively, and what we decided on, is to just do it in one longer day, thus saving the effort of hauling in both overnight camping gear, food, wetsuits, and the technical canyoneering equipment.

It is about an hours drive via 4wd to reach the trailhead (some deeper sand on a few climbs in the last mile) from the town of Escalante, staying at the Pioneer Lodge the previous night after returning from our trip through Coyote Gulch. To ensure we completed before dark, and not knowing what issues we would run into, we decided on an early start. Getting up at 5am and making a simple breakfast in the motel room, having organized and packed our gear the night before, we were on the trail by 7:30am.

The route starts from the Egypt Trailhead, reaching the mouth of Neon Canyon in about 4 miles if you follow the route down Fence Canyon. This is the route we took last time, having a more established trail, and requires crossing the Escalante River in about 4 places. To save time on this trip we took the more direct route of hiking across the more open terrain, making a beeline for a large sandstone dome situated on the right side of the mouth to Neon Canyon, then descending down three separate tables along the way. This beeline route is about a mile shorter and only involves crossing the Escalante once in knee deep water. Once inside at the first big opening inside Neon, there is a trail that takes you up the left side with a few switchbacks, enabling you to get up on the rim. From there we hiked to the east another ½ ~ ¾ of a mile looking for potential entry points.

I had waypointed an entry point on my GPS from one of the guide books that I thought was for the more classical approaches. But after descending down to rim’s edge of this waypoint (N 37° 36.969', W 111° 09.728') and finding some webbing with a rapide around a small boulder, we concluded based on the steepness of the slot at this spot that we had found the “sport entrance” instead. Although a descent here would most likely save time, guessing it would take you directly to the staging area for the final rappel through the Golden Cathedral. But it would also likely bypass some of the other interesting aspects for the upper section of Neon Canyon. Also, we could not see the bottom, and with our 100' rope, it was unclear if it would be long enough, not familiar with this specific rappel. For these reasons, we decided to continue further up canyon on the rim for another ¼ mile, until finding another more open anchor point for getting into the slot (coordinates: N 37° 37.088', W 111° 09.750') .

While proceeding and before pulling the rope at this first rappel and all the others that followed, we looked carefully for an exit route or escape plan in case we got stymied further on. This is because the second from the last rappel consists of entering into a “keeper pothole” filled with water. It is notorious for potentially blocking canyoneers that can’t exit the far side after dropping into it. The guide books report that depending on the conditions and amount of water, which it may require the dreaded underwater shoulder stand in order to escape. And in some situations it has been reported that folks have had to retreat after unable to go forward due to the far wall being too high to reach in order pull yourself out. For this reason, we tried to strategize an exit strategy as we moved forward to deal with this worst case scenario.

After dropping in for the first rappel (about 45’) and scouting the area, I noticed a possible exit via an up-climb a more gradual sloped section of the canyon wall on the north side about 200 feet further east. It looked like there were enough edges to get a grip, and if that was not enough it looked possible to reach an even better grip to a ledge by standing on someone’s shoulders. With this in mind, we pulled the rope from the first anchor and headed down canyon, reaching the mouth of a tighter slot in the floor a little further down canyon.

This next slot was narrow, but not as steep and about 25’ in depth, dropping into knee deep water at the time. It looked like it may be possible to down-climb with the possible use of a chimney technique. But given there was already a reasonable anchor in place, we decided to just run our rope through it and rappel, saving the hassle of getting more grit and wear-and-tear on our wetsuits from the sandstone walls.

At the bottom of this second rappel the canyon becomes quite dark, narrow, and wet for most of the way. In places swimming was required, but overall the water was not as deep as earlier reported, enabling standing up in most places. Apparently the previous rainstorms a few days before was not enough to cause much water accumulation. This ended up being fortunate for us, not having to be immersed in water for as long.

After one more rappel similar in length and difficulty to the second, the top of the keeper pool was reached next for the fourth rappel. After checking the existing anchors we found them adequate to use. Surveying the pool we noted the water was about a foot below the far rim. Not knowing how deep the water was we wondered how difficult it would be to haul ourselves out. Being the tallest, I volunteered to go first. If necessary we would have a second person drop into the pool, with one standing on the shoulders of the other to reach the rim. The good news was that after rappeling into the water, it ended up being only waist deep. Apparently the pothole currently has a considerable amount of sand in it, enabling an easy passage. Strangely I was feeling a bit let down, leaving the dramatic tales to be told for another trip.

The final 80' rappel through Neon Canyon was a bit tight at the top, with a couple of different chockstones that others had rigged various pieces of webbing to. It took a bit of time to disentagle this rigging to determine if and which would be safe to use. We concluded one doubled up set of webbing looked sufficiently safe. Given the free rappel nature, we decided to bunny strap our packs to our harness and lead with them hanging below our feet. Randy went first, with Don second after first throwing the pull-cord over the edge to the bottom. But the pull cord got tangled, so Don ended up untangling the rest of it while suspended about half way through the Cathedral dome. John followed, and then myself hitting the waist deep water at the bottom last.

After taking a break back near the mouth of the canyon for a late lunch and some photography, we packed up our wetsuits and climbing gear, re-crossed the Escalante, and hiked back to the car by 4:30 pm. The result was a trip that went according to plan taking 9 hours to complete, stops and all.

Camera equipment wise, I decided on a minimal hand carry setup, using a Canon G7X with a 1" CX sensor stashed in a small pelican box at the top of my pack when in the wet canyons. In addition, I utilized a smaller waterproof Panasonic TS-4 point-and-shoot that I mounted on the shoulder strap of my pack while traveling through the wet areas. The downside is that I was unable to photograph the descent through the Golden Cathedral due to the water and having to bunny strap my pack below me, and thus having no easy means for photography while on rappel.

For information and photographs of other Utah canyon explorations myself and friends have taken, please see my compendium on Slot Canyons of the Colorado Plateau.

At the trailhead	Heading out	Aggregate	Dead tree
Entrance to Neon Canyon	Ascending to the rim	Roadrunner and Coyote country	View of the Neon slot from above
Neon Canyon from above	Don on the 1st rappel	John on the 1st rappel	Donning the wetsuits before the 2nd rappel
In the next slot after the 2nd rappel	Slot passage	Don waiting for gear to be lowered on the 3rd rappel	The infamous keeper pool
Randy and John preparing for their descent into the keeper	Next stop: The Golden Cathedral	Approach at the top of the Golden Cathedral	Golden Cathedral from below
Red and green	Neon Canyon colors	Leaning cottonwood	The hike back

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