Pine Creek/Zion National Park

All my previous trips to Zion National Park have been to get out on hiking trails or adventure hikes like the Subway and Orderville that require rope assists more than actual rappelling. The trip to Pine Creek has 5 rappels, the longest of which is 100 feet. That is why I invited my friend, Chris Reveley who is an expert rock climber. I obtained the permit for 5 people. The three others were Dick Weber, Pete Griffen, and Pete Jensen. Other than Chris none of us had any recent rock climbing experience. I read all about the routes, knew where the rappels were, knew where the anchors were located and knew the length of the rappels.

Pine Creek can be bone dry or it can be filled with water. With all the recent rain, we expected water. We went by the outfitter and rented dry suits, shoes, helmets and the other equipment we would need and got as much information about the route as we could. We drove to the trailhead and began to gear up. A dry suit is different from a wet suit in that it keeps water out (that is the theory anyway). It does that by having tight rubber gaskets that go over your hands and feet to form a watertight seal. It is the same thing for the head hole but it has a drawstring. Getting these suits on was a challenge in and of itself. Once we were geared up, the hike began.

We headed down a sandy hill to the wash below. After 15 minutes of hiking we came to our first obstacle, “Intimidator Pool”. This was a pothole full of water with slippery sides. The guidebook says if you have trouble here, turn around as it only gets harder. We got by the pool trying to make it look like we were not having trouble. The actual trouble was the dry suit. It made me feel like the Michelin Man and restricted my movement. We arrived at the first rappel to find a back up of several people. They said they had 12 in their group and offered to let us “play through”. We accepted. Their rope was already in place so we rappelled off of it. I went first. This was a 60-foot drop in two stages. I got down to the pool and stayed on the rope to go the rest of the way. When I tried to put some slack in the rope as it came up from below I saw that the rope was caught in a crack. This gave me a rigid line above and below me. I was on the edge of the pool and if I slipped into the pool I would have two ropes pulling me in opposite directions. Chris yelled down that I would just have to figure it out. I was able to flip the rope out of the crack and give myself enough slack to run some rope though my ATC (that was my rappelling device. It stands for Air Traffic Controller. Cute huh?). I made it down into a deep pool and pulled the rope through my ATC so the next person could come down. I met Amy who was part of the first group. She set up the next rappel for us while the rest of our group got down. This was a short rappel but again, into a deep pool. These were called “swimmers” for obvious reasons. We were now ahead of the large group. Most of the members of this group were wearing only shorts and tee shirts. They would be hurting by the end of the day as the water was cold, there was very little sunlight and they would be standing around a lot. I was glad we had our suits.

The next rappel was The Cathedral, a double arched chamber that dropped 60 feet. I was the group photographer so I went first. What a trip! It was magnificent. As I lowered myself down the rope I was awestruck by the beauty inside this rock chamber. My waterproof camera has only automatic exposure settings so I could not adjust it for the low light conditions but I did get some fair pictures. I tried to get pictures of all the guys coming down but it was difficult to get my cold hands to work the right buttons on the camera. When the entire group got down we just looked up and marveled at where we had come from. The next section was a scramble over huge boulders and a few pools some of which were swimmers. Soon we were out of the cavern and into daylight. We missed the fourth rappel. We went left instead of right and ending up scrambling down a route that they should call the Mackin Bypass. Next was the 5th and final rappel. Chris had to reach out to set it up and that was a little scary to watch. This rap was 100 feet and it was free, that is, you do not have anywhere to put your feet but you hang on the rope all the way down. I went down and then watched the others follow. It was pretty amazing. We hiked down to a beautiful grotto and had a little bite to eat before heading down the canyon. The hike out was a lot of bouldering and scrambling. There was no right path only multiple options. We came upon the trail leading to the long uphill climb out of the canyon. It was now warming up a bit so one of the best parts of the day was getting out of those dry suits. This was one hell of a day for us all.