Alcatraz | Quandary | Baptist | September 2020

This year’s crew met at the Veintimilla’s (now Rafa’s bachelor pad) on a Wednesday morning to load up the cars and start the drive at about 10am. We stopped to buy approximately 200 beers, some of which we packed into the shower bucket. We reorganized some of the cargo in the parking lot as Andy’s hitch rack wasn’t having it with all the weight, but we made it work (well Andy made it work and his back paid for it later) and the rest of the drive was smooth sailing and ended at the edge of Alcatraz Canyon where we set up camp for the night. Brad fed us an excellent two-course meal though we all forgot about the sunbaked garlic bread until it was too late. The view, the sunset, the quiet, the stars…we couldn’t have orchestrated a more perfect setting.

Day 1 | September 24 | Alcatraz

As we made breakfast and packed up camp, Andy started setting up the first rappel off the 4Runner and we began our descent into yet another Redemsh’n Canyon. Shortly after the epic drop in, we encountered the second and last rap of the day and made our way deeper into the very squeezy and dark narrows. The slots were beautiful and offered plenty of spots to chimney and lose skin, but we couldn’t figure out where it was we got so stuck (more than once) or lost so much skin the first time, or how it possibly took that long. Later in the trip Brent deemed Alcatraz “boring” but I  recall having a great time despite it lacking the challenges we were expecting. Emma lost a contact somewhere, I made some nice leg bruises, but an otherwise successful mission. We lunched at the exit, still half expecting more technical spots, but it was just a relatively gradual climb—albeit a long and hot and exhausting one—back up to the rim. The canyon was completely dry which made for a hot hike, but not as hot as death marches past. Look at us, learning from our Labor Day mistakes. All around great start to our Utah adventure, unless you ask Brent.

Total time 6.25 hours | 6~ miles | Group rating 6.9 | Brad’s watch said he needed 24-hours of recovery time

After a few shower bucket beers and loading up the gear, we drove a little over two hours to the exit of Ramp Canyon, our second spectacular camp of the trip. Another ridiculous sunset in a corner of the desert all to ourselves, Andy fed us well, Juan Diego spelled “garbanzo” on the massive rock laser show screen (with a laser he most certainly acquired illegally but we were all very impressed by) and we sat in our light circle under a very bright moon. Brad’s moral of today’s adventure: Just because Brad and Emma can fit through a spot, doesn’t mean Andy won’t need help with his pack.

Day 2 | September 25 | Quandary

Up before the sun and while getting ready for the day, we couldn’t decide on whether to haul our wetsuits into Quandary when we saw three guys with very little gear emerge from Ramp, hugging in celebration of surviving the night. They told us they hadn’t started their misadventure until 2:00pm, and that the canyon was dry until the technical section. No wetsuits for the win. We shuttled in one car to the trail head and made our way up and in to Quandary, an old favorite among those of us who have done it a few times, and new to half the group, we think. No one can remember one canyon or trip from the next, which as far as I’m concerned is a good thing because every canyon feels new when you can’t remember it.

Several more rappels in this one (I was planning to keep count but didn’t), sometimes off Andy and his spider webs, sometimes off dead mans, once off a 2×4, and at least twice off pitons. Andy, Emma & Brad all nailed potshots, Emma was sacrificed into the only swimmer where we used said potshots to get out and set up an obstacle course for the rest of us. Brad one-armed it with a rope and looked very cool straight coppin’ those crispy gorp jonz. The rest of us got through without getting soaked and managed to keep relatively dry throughout the technical section, though cooling off was a welcome option.

After lunch and Brad’s lunch nap we found a few more potholes, did a lot of assisting and princess moves (some more graceful than others), a few showed off their climbing skills (some more graceful than others), we slid down the section I never remember as being so sketchy but IT IS, and reached the end of Quandary before the hour + hot hike to the start of Ramp. Emma found a portal to another dimension and I was good and tired by the time we tackled the last serious vertical up slickrock to the drop into the red slots. It was a fun scramble to the crux, which was even better this time around as the webbing for the bypass exit was knotted and placed well so we got up and out without any trouble. A bit more scrambling and big boulders before the canyon opens wide, and we found ourselves right at camp for another great meal, showers, campfire stories minus the campfire (no, you cannot kill a ram with your bear hands…unless you have days to observe and then sneak up on it), dessert treats, and the stars.

Total time 10 hours | 8.5 miles | Group rating 8.1

Day 3 | September 25 | Knotted Rope Baptist

At camp the night before we got into a very animated discussion in which we decided on our last canyon, thanks to several rounds of scattered voting and Brent who talked himself and the rest of us, more than once, into doing Baptist. We determined that Knotted Rope is fun because there’s usually pothole after pothole filled with water and that without water, it would be a hot, exposed disappointing end to the adventure. So we packed up and drove past the wild horses and the sand dunes into the juniper forest along the rim, mere steps from the trailhead, and dropped in.

We made very quick work of the obstacles and opted to downclimb all of the rappels except for the one you’d die on without a rope. Lots of teamwork from the dream team up to this point. Emma double checked Andy’s biner block and we all successfully lowered the 75 feet to our lunch spot, happy as happy gets.

It’s a fun scramble up from here to the exit ramp at the end of our last pretty slot. We saw a few groups at the crossroads in this one and then a solo guy on the hike out who had my ATC but I didn’t realize it was mine until I got home. Oops. We chose the high route along the rim, which still meant some more down then up then down then up, before reaching the car, celebrating our good fortune with beers, and settling on tent spots, some with better tree cover/wind block than others.

Total time 5 hours | 6~ miles | Group rating 7.8

Just when we thought our camp spots couldn’t get any better, we were treated to the best sunset yet and the most e x p a n s i v e views, which we tried to get even better views of on a post-canyon jaunt, before ending up back in our light circle for the How Do You Identify In Space & Time Lightshow, complete with lasers and glow sticks and pastries and so much laughter I didn’t want it to end but then I got sleepy. The group didn’t stay up much longer, having finished the beers and a bottle or so of whiskey and the contraband we bullied Juan Diego into sharing whether he planned on it or not.

We woke to the winds, and a strange circle of strings with no lights. There’s a den out there somewhere full of tiny unilluminated bulbs and disappointed critters. Guess we shouldn’t have left those out after we saw a mouse trying to get to our baked goods during the light show. We packed up and headed out, presumably with enough time for Emma to catch her flight, stopped for a second time at Chomps for sandwiches in Glenwood Springs (Brad’s dream come true), and fought traffic the rest of the way. We parted ways without a proper goodbye and I miss you all even more because of it. We all made it home, even Emma, and immediately started planning our next trip, which may or may not be Poe Redemsh’n and may or not include paddle boards and kayaks thanks to the test runs Brad and Emma have already put effort into. What a team. Real Tour de Force.

Other things of note this year:

Getting poked in the brains for Covid tests pre-Utah; Emma winning all of the lava games; pannus jokes; masked kisses; Brent handing Emma a beer instead of a La Croix (jk); Cristina forgetting to bring graham crackers but remembering to tell you all what a weirdo Graham was; Brad quietly suffering through stomach pains while cooking dinner (I did not know this!); Andy’s meager cilantro supply (it’s really the thought and home-growness that counts here); Juan Diego not disappointing with substitute goodies; missing our canyon camp masters but glad we got to move camps and not spend three hours packing up the last day; not eating or showering at Arby’s even though it got a very nice remodel and you can stay in the showers as long as you want as long as you aren’t sleeping; driving through a scorched Glenwood canyon in the worst fire season on record; ALL OF THIS DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC.

Useful things of note:

We took the big blue and 4-5? skinny green jugs of water, four coolers, four ice blocks and stopped for dry ice in Fruita. All of this plus some coordinated meal planning and crafty cooler packing meant we still had ice for the drive home, the perfect amount of water (one jug leftover, which would’ve been for showers had we showered), and the perfect number of beers even though the guys would’ve polished off any number of beers just to prove we had the perfect number of beers.