Poe | Second Attempt | May 2021

Poe 2.0 | Redemsh’n | May 2021

It was the worst of times, but it was better than the last worst time. Poe nearly killed us Labor Day weekend 2019 (well mostly Cristina, somewhat Andy, Brent was fine, Brad only died quietly on the inside, Emma hardly broke a sweat), so this time we asked John Doug Twenty Mile to join in on the misery. What good friends we are.

May 27th – On the road in two cars at 10:30. We learned from the last attempt that the worst possible time to begin a desert hike is the afternoon and decided to take our time getting to camp with stops for Chomps (Brad loves Chomps maybe more than he loves mud), beer and dry ice in Fruita, gas in Green River and a fancy new Mexican-for-Utah restaurant in Hanksville. Made it to camp in the “parking lot” of the trailhead where JD surprised us all with LASERS, the legit make-a-plane-crash kind. We were all very excited but knowing what was ahead of us meant only a beer or two for the beer drinkers and we were all in our tents before it was dark enough to put on a light show.

May 28th – Hit the trail by 7:30. Flashbacks of the last hike had me worried for a repeat but we breezed past the point of Andy’s first heat exhaustion moment without so much as a shade break. The youngins took the lead per usual (no surprise as they both slept the entire drive down to conserve energy and so as not to disturb Andy while he was driving) and reached every false summit before I’d even descended the last one but we made good time and only really slowed down at the actual summit/beginning of the interminable boulder field which was just as gnarly as I’d remembered but at least this time wasn’t in the dark and I didn’t break my shin on lava rock. The best part about being the slowest is sometimes the leader goes the wrong way and everyone behind them has to backtrack which means I had to backtrack the least when Emma ignored all waypoints and chose the path of most resistance. Not that resistance slows her down one bit: we found her already at camp when we all strolled in at about 12:30. And then we filtered water for eight hours in hot but not as hot as 2019 sun. The end.

May 29th – We might’ve still been filtering water as we began our hike to Poe at 6:00, just after first light. I wouldn’t call it an easy one, but it was certainly easier without the added camp gear, and with the weather cooperating and everyone excited to do the damn thing, our 8:30 drop-in arrived quickly and without setbacks.

The views were quite something and at points we could even see Lake Powell and as we anchored to an old tree for Rap 1 we were given a glimpse of the enormity of Poe but had no idea just how BIG this canyon truly was until we were deep in the belly of the beast, somewhere about 8 to 12 raps in.

We weren’t off to a great start after forgetting to tie a knot at the end of the rope on Rap 2 then forgetting to untie the knot of the end of the rope on Rap 3, but thankfully Emma is good at climbing ropes and was able to dislodge it. From there each Raps 4 thru 9ish went smoothly. We broke out the shiny new sand trap and used it successfully several times when the trusty meat anchor wasn’t an option a were pretty proud of how quickly we seemed to be conquering the problems until we got a rope VERY stuck and nearly abandoned it before one last whip/twist/yank/pray move gave it back. No one risked running the Mouse in a Bucket but it didn’t hold us up and it wasn’t long after that that we reached the dreaded Pit of Despair. After Emma dropped in, Andy and Brent took turns launching potshot after potshot some 50-plus feet across the pit and over the bench from a precariously high chimney. We all cheered as Andy nailed the last one Emma needed to climb up and out of the pit as though she climbs out of giant pits daily. No big deal. We all cheered again when she reached the top and set up to belay the rest of us. It took us two hours to escape the Pit and we thought we’d breeze through the rest at this point. We should really know better by now. 

Our predictions for an early-ish return to camp started to dwindle as we slowly made our way through one tough-problem-solving rappel after another. As we started to set up the last two-stage problem, an hour or so before sunset, we could see the bottom of the canyon – below another 150ish foot rappel. 

After finally getting through the technical section of the canyon we were greeted with an annoyingly dense canyon floor that was more jungle-y than desert-y where we had to bushwhack and wade through beaver country, in the dark, for nearly an hour, before we scrambled to the rim of the exit canyon and back on track towards camp. 

At this point Emma left us all in an angry/sick dash to camp while we did our best to route find our way back in the dark. Sixteen hours after leaving camp, we finally returned to filter more water for the hike out. 

4:00am found us quickly the next morning as we all packed up for our 5.5 mile hike back to the car to beat the sun. While in a daze to get things together and ready for the hike we saw a headlamp bounce into camp attached to a bright-eyed and bushy tailed hiker exclaiming he was about to go into Poe and do the canyon by himself. Not much else was exchanged as he went on his way and we headed off in the opposite direction talking about how crazy he was and that we hoped he didn’t die. Andy later found him through the magic of the internet and exchanged stories of our Poe adventures. What took our team of 6 veteran canyoneers to complete in 16ish hours took him about 10 hours less to do alone. We’ve all since talked about how amazing this man is and how we would all die doing what he attempted.

After a mostly uneventful but strenuous hike for some, we made it back to the car and celebrated with baby wipes and beers (or lacroix). A couple hours later we were filling our bellies at Duke’s in Hanksville with a much better outlook on life than our 2019 post Poe Duke’s breakfast.

Until next time, Utah.