Still trying to catch up on blogging... Back to Fall Break!
This was the hike I was most excited about on Fall Break. Two nontechnical canyons to explore in the Swell. Right next door to Little Wild Horse and Bell, but just difficult enough to keep the riff raff out (according to the description).
I hiked up Ding, and a few of the climbs were a little challenging for me. This made it hard to enjoy because I knew this was the easier of the two, so I might be in for some trouble in Dang. My nervousness got the better of me at one point- when I couldn't climb a chokestone, I started climbing the ledges on the right and went way too high and got cliffed out. I had to stop, have a snack, calm down, climb down, and try again. Anxiety is the worst thing that can happen when you're hiking, especially alone. It's like your good judgment flies out the window and you start acting out of panic rather than common sense.
With the first canyon behind me, I rushed around the Ding Dang Dome to the head of the next canyon. I just wanted to get this over with. What a terrible attitude! But this day was partly about conquering something by myself, and I couldn't relax and enjoy it until I got past the 10 foot downclimb I'd read about.
To my delight, I reached this chokestone almost immediately. There was a bolt in the rock, which told me that someone had rappelled this in the past. I happily pulled out my brand new webbing, set up a handline, and shimmied down. Unfortunately, my webbing got stuck in a crack, and I couldn't get it out. I didn't have a knife, so I couldn't cut off the part that was left. I felt so ridiculous leaving behind all that webbing. Whoever got to that drop after me must have thought, "What kind of crackhead needed 30 feet of webbing to get down a 10 foot climb and then left it here??"
I briefly thought about the fact that I'd just climbed down something I couldn't get back up. And if I got to another difficult downclimb, I had no webbing to assist me. "Well, that ship has sailed," I thought, and continued happily down canyon, believing the worst was behind me. When the Watermelon Crawl came up on my iPod, I stopped in the middle of the canyon and sang and danced. It was a beautiful canyon, and I was so happy to be there. I couldn't get any good pictures because the sun was so bright.
Well, it turns out that I hadn't actually gotten to the difficult downclimbs yet. There were many chokestone in this canyon, and several of them created drops around ten feet. This doesn't sound like much, but it's intimidating when you're by yourself and have no rope. And you actually could hurt yourself if you fell.
I didn't give myself time to think about it. I told myself, "I REFUSE to have an epic in Dang Canyon." I just started climbing every time I got to a drop. It was frustrating because my legs just weren't long enough to reach some of the footholds. I resigned myself to a sprained ankle and hoped I'd be able to limp back to my car.
But I conquered every downclimb safely with no injury. I was amazed at how much friction helped me. I did get to one wide open climb, but there was a handline in place, and I didn't even need it. After stemming over one small pool, I was out. I felt so good about myself!
Later, I went back and read some beta on the internet. (I'd only used Kelsey's book as a guide.) All the websites said this is a fun, easy canyon as long as you have 2-3 people to help on some of the downclimbs. It may have been a little stupid to do this one on my own, but it really boosted my confidence in my downclimbing abilities.
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