Into the belly of the earth. . .

I know this is small, but the little blue head
is Matt from our group swimming in the canyon

This is me on the last repel


When we came out of the canyon, this is the view
that greeted us

I have to tell everyone about Canyoneering this weekend in Zion National Park. It was SOOO awesome!! We did Pine Creek Canyon which has six repels and is FULL of water. We started out by running into the canyon after eating a sandwich, trial mix and dried apricots and zipping up our full body wetsuits-- which were absolutely essential seeing that the water was like 40 degrees! Brian (the guy I went with) was a park ranger in Zion over the summer, so he knew the park well. . . as a matter of fact, I felt like I was hiking with Steve Kugath. It was the most beautiful day-- it had been rainy and snowy in Provo, but by the time we got to Southern Utah it was bright blue skys and contrasting red rock, and about 75 degrees.

Every repel we did was into a pool of water. There was one part where we were swimming for quite a while through the dark in deep freezing water, with the towering slot canyon walls curving around us and a single ray of light pushing it's way down. The last repel was so interesting. I clipped in first and threw myself over the edge-- and then the whole canyon just opened up. I litterally felt like I was heading down the esophogus and into the belly of the earth (not to mention the pool I was repeling into had a mixture of who knows what that easily conjured up some mental imagery of bile and gastric juices).

We lost a belay device, but found a dead ringtailed squirrel, Brian got stung by a dead scorpian in the water and after a few hours, we were hiking our way back out to the car through the trees, red rock and desert wild flowers. Every minute was supremely superb.