Neon Canyon

Neon canyon, one of the more famous Technical Slot Canyons in Utah. It's known for the final rappel into the Golden Cathedral, you may have actually seen pictures of it. The entire Neon canyon is miles long and takes a couple of days to do. Andrew and I did a small portion of it to make it a one day activity although many people do actually backpack out and spend the night even when doing the smaller portion of the canyon.

We drove down Friday night after work arriving at the trail head for Egypt Canyon around

12:00 am. When we pulled in, our car suddenly turned off and stopped working. I was going to kill someone if we were stuck there will no tools to fix anything. Luckily it was only the connection to the battery that at come loose from our off roading. We had to open the hood and press down on it to connect it any time we wanted to start the car. Do you know how many times you start a car on a road trip? A LOT!

We slept in the x that night since we were pretty much in the middle of a dirt parking lot. It fits me perfectly....poor Andrew though, I don't think he slept very well that night. We woke up at 6:00 am to get ready for our long journey. We ate some breakfast and filled up our water. Andrew's pack had a rope, harness, bolt kit, rappelling gear, two bottles of water, a wet suit, a dry bag with things in it, and some food. My bag had a 2 liter camelbak, a bottle of water, a rope, a wet suit, a dry bag, water purifier and food. Andrew's: 27lbs Laura's: 20 lbs

The entire hike totals about 10-12 miles depending on which way you go, 9-11 hrs, 1500 ft elevation gain.

On the way out to the canyon we noticed my camelbak was leaking, very very quickly. So we sucked as much water down as possible, pretty much till we got sick. I had to pee about 7 times with in the hour so we did make as much progress and we had wanted.

So the trail head is on a plateau higher than the level of the big mound you see in the picture below. We had to start there, drop down a level and hike across that for about 2 hours, then drop down to the canyon bottom, cross the escalante river, hike up the canyon we would be coming down about a mile, hike back up to the level we were on before, hike up the canyon another mile and then finally drop down into the slot.

First rappel down into the canyon.

After this we pretty much took a lot a video which takes a crazy long time to download on blogger. I'll try my best but no promises.

Pretty much the whole slot was full of water, some places you can touch and some you can't at all. We had one rappel in the canyon that actually just dropped us down into the center of a big dark pool. I went first and almost peed my pants it was so scary. The water in a slot canyon no matter how fresh, is not going to be clear and pretty. The water is murky, cold, and like i said before...SCARY! I had to remind myself that this is was I came here to do.

Andrew exiting out of our long swim. It was SO INCREDIBLY PRETTY DOWN THERE! The sunlight would come down and bounce of the the canyon wall and light up the water with a pretty orange glow.

There is a famous Keeper pothole near the very last rappel. If you don't know what a keeper pothole is, it's a pothole that can be VERY difficult to get out of. Many people with out the right equipment can easily get stuck in these bad boys. This one is particularly gnarly when it has water in it but is not full. When the pothole has no water in it you can stand on each others shoulders and push or pull each other out, when it is full you can swim across, but with only some water in it neither of these methods work. If you were to try to stand on each others shoulders the person on bottom would be totally submerged in the water while the other person can barely reach the top the the cliff.

I borrowed some pictures of the internet to show you:

Keeper Empty

Partly Full

Full

How it was for us.

I didn't even recognize it. It was the fullest I have ever seen in pictures. We obviously had no problem getting across this guy. The craziest part is that we couldn't even touch until about 2 feet from were the water ends.

The final rappel is only about 100 yards from the keeper. The holes in the ceiling of the Golden Cathedral are completely eroded potholes. You actually rappel from the hole on the right into a pool. It's a 80 rappel and one of the most spectacular I have ever done. The entire last part of the rappel is a free hanging rappel. I was the first to go through and found many people were there to watch us come down, including some photographers that promised us a copy of their pictures. Once again all I have is video of Andrew rappelling and no pictures of the actual rappelling process.

The reflection form the water made the coolest shapes and entertainment for us on the wall the the cathedral.

We got out of the canyon by about 1:00 so we decided we didn't need to rush back. We played in the mud, we got wet in the river, lots of bush waking, and just took our time. We took a different way back through something something canyon (i cant remember the name), it added about 2 miles to our hike back but the supposed benefit was that it was in a canyon, shady, water, more to see. We found that it was not as nice as we would have liked since we had to do a lot of bush whacking to get there and you were only in the canyon bottom for half a mile before you started your decent up the canyon and back to the trail head. We as well found that on the north side of the canyon on the way back as apposed to the south side of the canyon on the say in had a lot more sand rather than sandstone. It was a very very long hike back, very very very very very. By than all the thrill of the canyon has gone away and all you can think about it getting back to the car where you can sit down and don't have to get back up. We got back around 5:00 and I was about shot by then. Andrew took the rope from me on the way back so my pack was only 11 lbs and his was around 40 on the way back, he's such a nice dude.

Even though It was a very long hike and back it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!

I didn't care enough to make sure the camera was at least angled at us.

We were actually very close to Bryce canyon so instead of our original plan of doing two more slots the next day we went to Bryce. Neither of us have been there for a long time and we were both pooped from our adventure that we knew we wouldn't be able to do anymore long hikes.

We pretty much saw the entire park in an hour since we didn't do any hiking and headed on our way back home. We stopped a lot at little places we wouldn't have normally since we had so much time to kill. We even stopped at a side canyon where it was believed that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used as a hide out.

It was the most perfect getaway for a weekend.