Between a Rock and a Wet Place (cont.)

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Outside Magazine September 2001

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Between a Rock and a Wet Place (cont.)


	Curius gorge: A canyoneering student rappels into Cibecue Canyon.

We spend the first day in rope school. Camped under an open-air shelter by the mouth of the canyon, we tie Münters and cloves, figure eights and prusiks, and the essential canyoneering combination—the Münter-mule. Embroiled in the abstract-puzzle world of knots, carabiners, and devices, beads of sweat rolling down my face, I curse my ineptitude and wonder if I'm falling into yet another gearhead sport. My eyes wander across the creek as an Apache boy, maybe 13 years old, whimsically climbs the opposite canyon wall. Unfazed by the slurry of fist-size rocks he unleashes with every step, he moves with the easy grace of uninjured youth. Forty feet up, he turns, sits, and smiles down on his worried friends.

Even when I was 13, I was never that lithe or confident. Give me a rope.

In the morning, the class moves to the girders beneath a bridge spanning the Salt River. Rich Carlson, our instructor and the driving force behind the ACA, has us practice rigging various rappels, this time with consequences: Get it wrong and you send your partner for a ten-foot tumble into the gravel. (My partner is a six-foot-two bow hunter who outweighs me by 40 pounds, so the consequences are greater for me.) Placed in the context of an actual fall, the training takes hold and soon we're setting up canyon-ready rappels with quick hands.

Just as important as all this rope work, though, are the lessons on canyon etiquette. We learn the proper use of natural anchors and the ethics of placing bolts, how to wade in streambeds instead of on delicate shoreline plants, and how to stay safe so a search-and-rescue team won't have to save us, destroying fragile rock formations in the process. Surprisingly, flash floods, the cause of the tragic high-profile deaths of 21 canyoneers near Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1999 and 11 in Antelope Canyon, Arizona, in 1997, are low on Carlson's list of what to watch out for. "Flash floods are a real danger," he tells us one night, "but they're not as common as people think. It's not like they're a surprise. If you look at a canyon with a 100-square-mile watershed and you have a 40-percent chance of rain, it's probably not a good day to go."

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