Heaps Canyon Zion NP: Round One

Here it is. I finally got the pictures from the Heaps trip. I have been waiting for over a year to do Heaps Canyon. Now I finally got my first go at it and it won't be my last. The whole week leading up to the trip I was distracted from work, sleep, and everything else, having the unknown of what the canyon would throw at me on my mind. I had been carefully watching the weather and for the first time in my canyoneering life, I watched and prayed for rain. Here's my story, and yes it is long and detailed.

The trip finally started on Friday night after everyone got off work. We loaded up my Subaru with gear, food, people, nerves, expectations, hopes, and fears. I believe that all of these things made the drive down seem even longer, and more drawn out than normal.

We made it to the Springdale area around midnight and set out our sleeping bags under the stars in the Mosquito Cove camping area: it would be the first sleep deprived night with more to come. The night is the darkest and coldest right before dawn. I woke up at 4:15 am to the chill of the night. My summer sleeping bag had met its temperature threshold. It was just too late in the summer for my compact summer bag. I laid with closed eyes until minutes before my alarm went off. I went into the car and warmed up my nalgene of gatorade. If you haven't experienced steaming lemon-lime gatorade yet, I would highly recommend against it. It served its purpose. I was revived and now awake enough to realize that I now had sleep deprivation headache.

We collected camp and went to the backcountry desk to obtain our permit. Everything was going good: we were the only scheduled group to be in the canyon at this time. Now back into Springdale to rent our drysuits. I had no intentions of feeling the cold 40 some degree water in the potholes of the Heaps narrows. The thought of a 6 mm wetsuit didn't even cross my mind. I wanted full protection.

We headed back into the park with all of our gear, packs weighing close to 50 lbs if not more. Because we came down in only one car we had to approach the canyon from the valley floor by way of the West Rim Trail via Angel's Landing. This route would lead to a total vertical gain of about 3300 feet majority occurring in the first mile and an half of the 5.6 miles to the first rappel. It would take approximately 4 hours to get to the start of Heaps Canyon via Phantom Valley. We made great time up Angel's Landing with our energy draining packs.

Unfortunately the group dynamics weren't 100% on the same page and we took longer for lunch than I wanted to. That, added with the extra time in finding the nonexistent side trial to the first rappel, added to my concern of pushing the pace up. Others in the group didn't seem too concerned with speed. This is not the canyon to be taking our time on. After some confusion on the location of the second rappel, we managed to get to the valley floor. Here would could pick up the pace having about 2 miles before our next rappel and narrows section.

We made it to the Phantom Valley narrows at about 4:30 pm. At this point we had a discussion on the gameplan. I walked up and around to look past the narrows section proceeding us to see if there was a sneak route that would allow us to not suit up in our drysuits yet and continue down the canyon. Unfortunately it wouldn't be so. We then suited up and headed into our first pothole. This section proved to be a little tricky. Our third pothole ended up being the most difficult of the canyon. A simple pack toss allowed escape of the pothole. The tossed pack was cammed into the exit and held tight enough for one of the group members to pull himself up the lip. We went through about 7 or 8 potholes.

Let me deviate from the story to explain something of importance. I planned on doing this canyon either right at the conclusion of the rainy season or immediately following a big storm so that the potholes could have the possibility of being at their fullest. This would be a decision and gamble to follow a storm even long after the conclusion of the rainy season that paid off.

At this point we exited the series of potholes. We came to a long sandy then rocky corridor. At this point we all believed that we were at or near the "crossroads," a area where the three canyons of Gunsight, Phantom Valley and Isaac Canyon converged with Heaps. This is where we planned on camping for the night. The night was coming upon us so we decided to set up camp. We found a nice sanding spot, made a fire with deadfall wood, prepared dinner, and dried our clothes and gear. This would be my second night of deprived sleep. The first thing that kept me from sleeping was the crinkling of my emergency blanket that I laid down as a tarp. I didn't want to wake up with sand and leaves all over me. Ever turn or adjustment rattled through my ear canal. At 4:13 am I woke up because of the cold. Even though I was now dawning fleece pants, two fleece tops, and a beanie cap, my sleeping bag once again failed and had its threshold met and exceeded. I did, however, manage to fall back asleep.

I didn't hear my alarm go off. I was upset waking up an hour later at 7:00 am to find out that another member of the group heard the alarm and decided that it was too early to get moving. Once again this is not the canyon to take your time or have a late start on. After two of the group members made and ate pancakes, I was really not pleased at that since we really needed to be moving and you just don't do that in Heaps since it's very time consuming, we started day 2 of our canyon descent 2 hours late. Of course this along with my lack of sleep added to some irritation with some group members.

Getting ready for Day 2

Dawning the drysuits once again, we continued down the "sandy corridor" to the next section of narrows and subsequent potholes. Notice that the "sandy corridor" and the "crossroads" in the previous two paragraphs are in quotations. This will come into play later. We rappelled into the potholes and were met with a reminder that this is Heaps. The water was even colder than the previous series of potholes. The water had to be at 40 degrees exactly. It took my breath away as I lowered myself into it. The extreme chill hit me even through my drysuit. We continued through the narrows, dropping and rappelling into almost completely full potholes. I kept expecting to come to a keeper pothole in which I would have to drill and hook my way out of. This didn't happen. We were met with full potholes, long swims through section over 100 and sometimes 200 feet. Swimming with a pack full of water, already weighing around 50 lbs without the extra water was a challenging task.

The Real Sandy Corridor

After a good section of this we emerged from the narrows to be in a prominent tall sandy corridor that had Gunsight Canyon leading in from the North on our left with Isaac Canyon soon following in from the South on our right. We now had the realization that we had come to a sucker "sandy corridor" and "crossroads" the previous night. The canyon description had fit those two areas quite well. But we were now at the real crossroads. That meant that the last two hours were not part of the second series of narrows and were actually planned to have happened the previous day. At this point the next thought in my mind was, "S#!t, we're now not only 2 hours behind schedule but 4 freaking hours behind schedule!" I really felt pressured to up the pace because I did not want to do the final rappel sequence in the dark.

In our next section, the true Heaps narrows, there was one wading section in particular, that was completely cut off from the sunlight, and was filled with a ton of rotting wood and dead animals. The appearance of it was very similar to the trash room in Star Wars Episode V. Think to when Luke and Han Solo rescue Princess Lea, escape by jumping down a vent, and landing in a trash room. The smell was horrendous. I made the mistake of hitting the top of the water with my hands, releasing a toxic waft of retched stink. The last part of these potholes was actually a really long swim. During the swim I noticed that every 15 feet or so I would come to a pothole lip that was about a foot under water. As I exited the swim I noticed that the last pothole, which had water only 5 inches from the top, had a series of drill holes and hook marks. We had now gotten through the narrows without experiencing any truly "Heaps" hard keeper potholes.

View after exiting the Heaps Narrows

The potholes were so full that it took most of the technical aspects out of the canyon. Honestly I felt a little jaded. I wanted the challenge, I wanted to be tested, and have to battle against Heaps. I looked around and saw that the water level was about 1 foot lower than the water stains on the pothole walls. The potholes were almost at the fullest it could be. However I appreciated the circumstances because it allowed the other members of group to move through a long section in a faster than expected time.

Getting to the 2nd of 3 last rappels
A few more rappels and some walking brought us to the start of the last rappel sequence. We first had to climb up this 5.3, 5.4 30 foot sandy chimney double crack climb. This easy section allowed us to see into the Zion Valley. It was about 3:30 pm. This is the first we'd seen of the Zion Valley in about 26 hours. It was a site that brought much joy, excitement, and fear. I was really concerned about doing the rappel sequence without any trouble. I down climbed to the first rappel station and went 65 feet to the next anchor. I set up the next rappel while locked off while still on rappel. I couldn't remember the next rappel length and I couldn't see the next anchors.

At this point I am hanging about 470 feet above the Emerald Pools. The sight was amazing. There was a group at the upper Emerald Pool watching and taking pictures as I descended. I rappelled about 70 feet and still couldn't see the rap anchors for the final 300 feet. My nerves and dehydration were getting to me. I rappelled another 30 feet slowly, looking left, right, and below me, scanning the cliffs to find the anchors without passing by them. At one point I locked off on my figure 8, fearing that I might have passed by the anchors, and jumped out away from the cliff to try and see into a cove inset into the cliff 50 feet below me. As I did this, the large group of Japanese tourists gathered at the pool, screamed and started talking with a tone of distress. Honestly this make me laugh a bit. I was also jubilant because I had seen the final anchor when I jumped away from the cliff. At this point I decided to have some fun with the tourists. So to further scare them, I undid the lock-off, and did a jump drop, purposely looking as if I were out of control. There was loud chatter that ensued. I didn't want to really scare them so I laughed loud enough for them to hear me and waved to them. Haha, always a prankster.

I made it to the last anchor and safetied into one of the bolts. At this point the rest of the group followed me down. Now there happened to be for of us crammed onto a small cliff that could 3 uncomfortably, hanging precariously 300 feet about the canyon floor. Everyone went down hesitantly at first but got into their comfort zone once they were free hanging under us. After all had gone, I carefully rigged up the pull rope. I then descended down. I felt great, hanging 300 feet above the floor, viewing the beautiful surroundings, feeling that I have accomplished a goal I set out to do over a year ago. I touched down at 5:30 pm.

The trip was a success. Unfortunately pulling the rope wasn't. The pull cord that I used was supposed to be static. This wasn't the case as the line stretched every time that we pulled on it and couldn't overcome the weight of the rappel line and the friction at the anchor. We set up 3-to-1 pulleys in two different locations to try and pull the rope. All this did was stretch the pull cord even more. We had over 900 pounds of pressure pulling and the line still would come free. After 90 minutes we decided that we needed to leave and weren't going to get it out tonight. This was almost a hard decision because I was right about to ascend the 300 feet to figure out the problem and rerig the pull rope.

After sitting on the Zion shuttle and cleaning up our gear, we headed out to get some grub, and temporarily avoided the long drive home. I drove the whole way back to my place reaching my parking stall at 3:30 am. The trip had ended. I had learned some good lessons and unfortunately had to relearn some lessons that I should have not had to deal with if I had made some better decisions.