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I’m not amused,
I mused,
So much as I am used to this

Amusement cycle.
The news:
Another thousand pages

Restlessly perused,
Or abused,
For cheap escape,

Only to cycle back
To the Abuser’s platform,
And the abused crying out.

Is it useless
Or — if I am used —
Useful

To a malevolent end?
I’m confused,
Typically ambivalent.

Should I jump off now,
Or clamp down
And ride this thing?

It’s simple math.

Size 10 feet plus four pairs of heavy socks, equals size 15 feet.

Indeed, when I wedged, my very well insulated toes into the oversized telemark boots, I felt a measure of reassuring snugness. Yeah, this could work.

I bought telemark skis and boots from a friend who is much larger than I am. The price was cheap. I figured I could eventually sell the oversize boots and buy some cheap tele boots that fit me. The problem is, not many people want to buy tele boots, nor do many people have them for sale. I had  been too cheap to buy a new pair online and too lazy to get busy trying to pawn the monster ski boots off on someone else. Now I was too bored to not to try the set up out anyway.

Powder abounds in the mountains above my Port Angeles, Washington home with access via the Hurricane Ridge Road into Olympic National Park. Traditionally, skiers start at around 4,000 to 5,000 feet, where the Pacific Northwest precipitation yields absurd quantities of snow.

But wrongheaded, obstinate me, wanted to avoid the long drive and noted that there was the Lake Angeles Trailhead at 1,850 feet, which was just below snow-line.

When I pulled into the parking lot,  my Civic struggled to push its way into a snow-filled parking space. Eventually, I got it to pull in backwards and I aimed the hood slightly downhill so gravity would be on my side when it was time to drive out of there. I’d had doubts earlier, but now I was sure there  would be enough snow to ski on.

Lake Angeles is a quiet alpine lake almost 2,500 feet above the trailhead. Darkness would set in at around a little after four p.m. This was a small window to work with, but I decided to go for it. No matter where I was, I planned to turn around at about 3 pm to avoid being utterly benighted.

The snow at the start of the trail was shallow enough so that the waxy green leaves of the salal shrubs  still poked through the surface. I glided along confidently with the help of climbing skins that went from the tip of the skis to my toes.  I’d also sprayed some kick wax beneath the skis earlier to give them more grip. The warm snow was at first  too slippery for the wax to be effective. The narrow trail, meant for hikers, didn’t leave much room to set in edges and it was tough not to slide backwards. As I climbed up higher and the temperature dropped, I felt the grip engage, and occasionally  it become too much.

When snow began to gum up beneath my boots, I lost most of my ability to glide forward with each stride, but it also meant that I could take on the steeper sections with less fear.

As for the boots, they felt pretty good. OK, so my shins were repeatedly slamming into the front, which did kind of hurt, but it got better after I raised the ascender bars beneath my heels.

Intermittently, the trees in front of me filled with frozen mist. It lent a closed-in, anxious feeling to the woods. In the open areas, it created a dreamlike tableaux, where the rows of pines marched up the mountainside to where they diminished, vanished.

The trail had small streams to cross, a narrow footbridge where I balanced on my skis above a brook. I felt hungry, having not eaten lunch yet, but refused to dig my pasta out until I reached the goal.

Finally, I reached Lake Angeles. It was frozen over obviously.

The imposing walls of Klahhane Ridge rose above. I could remember my first run along this trail back in July when I watched nematodes thrashing in the stagnant waters, and an occasional fish jumped out. Now there was silence and drifting snow.

Thousands of needle-like frost feathers grew out of the alder branches by the water. Above them, a ghost of sunlight tried in vain to penetrate the clouds. Even this short break was enough to make me shiver, to clutch my hands against between my thighs for warmth.

I slurped down the pasta that I’d brought along as fast as I could. It was now 3 p.m. and I knew I should get back.

The trail had been hard work going up; Going down, it was punishment. The hard snowpack and narrow margins left little room for maneuvering, plenty of opportunity to pick up speed and catch a ski tip on a root. I ended up leaving my climbing skins on so that something would kill my speed. Many skiers may see the sport as an artistic pursuit, one that allows flow, balance and confidence under speed — none of that applied to the garbage slope I was going down. This was no tango I was dancing; I was in a bar fight, swinging pieces of a broken stool, always on the brink of losing my feet.

There were a few sections where I was proud of myself for staying up, plenty of others where I fell and cursed. I could see why there were no other ski tracks on the trail. Everyone else knew better, apparently.

In an attempt to get down safe, I would cruise along a short distance, and then veer off trail on the uphill side to kill momentum. I ended up skidding along large sections of the trail diagonally. Because there were no switchbacks, 80 percent of the descent involved me making a sloppy right turn. Roots and branches tended to mess with the climbing skins, so I lost a lot of time readjusting them. The further down I went, the more challenging it became because the snow got more shallow.

All the while, it was getting darker. Finally, after the skins became dislodged for the umpteenth time, I decided it was time to take the skis off. It was just as well, because that was right before the steepest section on the trail. It was maybe only another 200 yards from there to get back to the car.  I tromped the rest of the way back.

Basically, the skis had worked, though next time, I may follow the other skiers to the soft, forgiving powder at the higher elevations.

And how did my feet  do in the oversized boots? I’m happy to say that with four pairs of socks on, I managed to finish the trip without cold toes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beneath the cold moon, the silent architecture of buttes and canyon washes within South Dakota’s Badlands created a compelling landscape. The white light only emphasized the coldness of the frosty ground along with the snow that had blown in from the plains.

A yipping coyote chorus rose up from somewhere out in the sagebrush plains. Numbness set into my fingers and toes soon after I left the car.

 

I pitched tent at the same campground I had visited four years ago when I moved out to Wyoming. I slept through another freezing night, woke up in the morning, to run out furiously along the road in my parka and wind-shell, summoning all the heat I could. The moon was still in the sky but not for long. I photographed it in front of one of the buttes, imagined it was rolling down the hill.

 

There was one other tent at the campground. When I finished running, I went over and introduced myself to a guy named Shaun, who was traveling from Idaho to Iowa where he was due at a Christening ceremony.

We got to talking, and it turned out that we had a few things in common, namely that we’d both explored mountains and canyons throughout the west.

Shaun was getting ready to set out on some of the Park Service trails. I said I was planning on exploring the canyon washes off trail and he was welcome to join.

 

We started up a wash from the Saddle Pass trailhead going northwest. The canyons within the Badlands are instant wilderness. Within a couple of turns, there was no hint of the road, human life, or for that manner, much natural life — at least not the kind that is obvious at first glance. The eye goes to the arches and pinnacles up above, the sinuous curves of a dissolving landscape.

The Badlands topology is a portrait of erosion, millions of years of it. The layers of mud-like stone contain fossils of dinosaurs and ice age creatures.

Wind and rain carve the byzantine canyons and bizarre buttes.  It is a subtractive process. What gets subtracted is as important as what remains.

As I progress further and further into what might be called adulthood, I am always pressing myself to add more to myself: new skills, new life experiences, new income, new stories and new relationships. But as I meditated on the shapes of canyons and buttes, I considered that subtraction can be valuable too. Artists use blank space to emphasize what remains.

It is easier to focus on one project on an uncluttered desk. More gear in the backpack can just add weight. Those who can hush the chorus of distraction — whether in nature, in art or meditation — have the opportunity to cultivate clear thought and form a sense of self.

 

Cliff swallows build beautiful mud nests on impossible-seeming overhangs in the canyons. It is safe to say that these dwellings won’t have to worry about a visit from a fox or rattlesnake.

 

 

 

 

 

I stopped to admire some drying mud curled up like parchment  paper in this small canyon grotto.

 

 

Shaun and I found a side-canyon which involved a tricky chimney climb up the crumbly sidewalls. It took me a couple of attempts to get to the place where he took this picture.

Scrambling in the canyons and on the buttes is definitely sketchy due to the crumbliness. I rarely placed a foot or handhold that I felt 100 percent sure of.

Can you spot the prickly pear cactus in this photo? This is one challenge of running off trail that I’ve encountered in western states. I’ve stabbed my feet plenty of times while running through innocent-seeming grass.

 

I love the contrast between the corrugated-weirdness of the canyons and the flat expanse of planes. Shaun and I found some bighorn sheep horns lying in the field here.

 

A jack rabbit passes through.

 

 

 

Shaun and I climbed up one of the buttes to get this view looking down toward the fossil exhibit trail. We didn’t quite make it to the top due to the crumbly substrate and the steep pitches. The top layer of the buttes is called the Sharps Formation, which is appropriate given the knife-like aretes and spires that mark the Badlands skyline.

 

 

We down climbed through a canyon, which required some of the same same chimneying and stemming moves I’d used canyoneering in Utah. Then Shaun dropped his balaclava into a crevasse and had to get skinny in order to rescue it.

We later tried to use a topographic map to feed into another canyon system, but found the terrain to be completely disorienting and difficult. We crawled through mud tunnels gopher-like in the canyons, risked walking over a couple archways. Finally we took a steep drainage down to the road, about a mile away from where we’d parked.

A bighorn sheep checks us out from one of the buttes.

I had a backcountry permit allowing me camp in a secluded part of the park overnight. The snow was falling as I drove out the next day and I got a parting shot of this group of bighorns.

I dipped the spoon in deep for a dollop of chocolate ice cream, brought it to my lips, and slurped it off the cold metal.

Damn. It had been too long.

A year had gone by since August 2013 when I stopped eating dairy and eggs, transitioning from mere vegetarian to full-on vegan.

Veganism: a life of plant-based everything, fortified by the occasional ration of vitamin B12. In this existence, most restaurant menus are lists of food I cannot eat. When I finally make an order, I might have to ask the chef to hold the cheese or creamy mayo sauce. To dine with new acquaintances is to step into a barrage of questions like, “Why would you want to stop eating bacon?” and “Do you feel sorry for the plants you eat?”

But hey, even we austere, pleasure-hating vegetable eaters need the occasional moment of release.

The ice cream is a marvelous substance, a halfway point between frozen crystals and syrup. It enters cold, and then melts down to sweet treacle, triggering the pleasure receptors usually reserved for carnal knowledge. Carnal, carne, meat.

I should mention that the stuff I was eating was also made with coconut cream, not dairy. It was completely vegan.

Maybe you thought this was going to be some weepy blog post about how I gave up my vegan diet, about how I just missed animal products too much and had to give in?

Sorry, assholes. I’m in this for the long haul.

 

But why? Why would I cut away these fundamentals like cheese or eggs from my diet? Why deny myself?

The simplest way I can answer this question is that I am trying to take and need less from this world. Some day I want to believe I give as much as I take, but for the past years I’ve felt like I’ve taken more than I can justify. Until I start paying back the debt that I owe, the best that I can do is cut my spending.

Veganism costs less for the planet than eating animal products because animals have to eat 10 pounds of food in order to yield one pound of meat, dairy or eggs. In other words, meat takes roughly 10 times the amount of energy to produce as other food.

I’m not making that up. Check any biology textbook. Google the Trophic Pyramid.

I’ve driven through the corn and soybean monoculture that defines the American Midwest, mile upon mile of desolate brown fields in May, soon to grow up and get their rations of pesticide and fertilizer. Some of that land goes to the corn on the cob I buy at checkout, some to soy burgers for vegans; most of it goes into the feeding trough of fattened livestock.

I’ve seen western landscapes torn up and eroded beneath the hooves of grazing livestock, their shit running into every creek. Meanwhile, the headlines buzz about ranchers shooting wolves and other native species so that they can protect the bottom line. I spent months tending chickens at a farm in New Mexico, feeding them enormous sacks of corn and wheat so they could yield a fraction of that nutritional value in eggs. None of these experiences have given me warm, fuzzy feeling about the livestock industry.

I’ve heard arguments about how meat, eggs, etc. can all be more sustainable. Maybe innovations like methane digesters and responsible grazing practices can bring down the environmental costs of these products. On the other hand, most meat doesn’t come this way. I don’t want to spend my time picking and choosing which hamburger caused slightly less pollution when I know that I can make a stronger statements by cutting hamburgers out of my diet right away. Rather than wait for the agriculture conglomerates to build a sustainable utopia of responsibly harvested meat, I’d prefer to cut their products out of my diet.

And hunting? I’m not foolish enough to declare that all hunting is wrong. Nor can I deny that many hunters develop a connection to nature by studying their game (not all the guys I saw cruising along the New Mexico roads with guns waiting so they could shoot things from the convenience of their pick up trucks.) As a personal decision, however, I still don’t like the idea of pulling a trigger on a living being unless it was absolutely necessary for my survival. The same argument goes for eating animals in general. If I don’t need to kill animals to live, why should I do it?

 

Am I compromising my health doing this? This sickly, malnourished vegan pulled off a 2:38 PR marathon this year. I built it on the most demanding running regiment that I’d subjected myself to.

I have regular bowel movements, feel good most days and get the food I need to continue to fuel a physically demanding kayak-guiding job.

 

Even if I’ve got my good health, others might ask whether I am depriving my soul of some excellent fare.

Actually, the more months that I stay vegan, the less I miss the old diet. Bacon strips and provolone slices don’t dance the Macarena in my head at night. I don’t clutch myself in the throes of hamburger withdrawal or gnash my teeth over the pizza I’m not eating.

There are inconveniences, mostly when it comes to visiting others’ places or sometimes going to a restaurant (most of the time, I can make it work out alright.)

I find such inconveniences necessary, even reassuring. They give my convictions meaning. I’d rather not be pampered all the time. Life can’t always be coconut ice cream and that’s OK. Too many Americans worship convenience and self-indulgence, spurred on by relentless advertising. They see the slow-mo close-up of cheese melting over ground beef in a TGI Fridays commercial while some unseen fat guy narrates: “Here it is. You want it. It’s your right to have it. This is what makes you free.”

I prefer the freedom to know that I don’t need something, rather than to always have it, and become dependent.

The question “why would you do that?” as it pertains to veganism, is really “why would you commit the heresy of depriving yourself of a pleasure?” I am arrogant enough to believe my convictions are worth more than the fact that something tastes good.

Whether or not I’ve made a sacrifice this past year, most of the time, I don’t imagine that I’m depriving myself.

I’ve doubled down on my stir-fries, relish every morning that I wake up with peanut butter oatmeal. I know that I still have some bad eating habits, and there are other decisions that I could make about food (and a lot of other things) in order to improve my impact on the environment. I’ve heard plenty of arguments that go something like, “You care enough to be vegan, BUT…” which actually teach me something about responsible food.

 

In fairness to the doubters, I also once thought that a vegan diet would be prohibitively demanding. As someone who once loved all things cheesy and (even further back) a good burger, I can understand why others would think that there is no way no how that they could cut animal products out of their diets.

I discovered how simple and satisfying the vegan diet could be by starting to eat like a vegan. For the skeptics, the best I can say is, ‘try it.’ You might find that it’s easier than you think.

 

 

The Subaru banged over the washboard road, headlights sweeping over plains of scrub and yucca. 35 degrees on the car thermometer. A green hint of dawn growing in the eastern sky. The stars began to fade. It would be another day of heat and dust.

Our path was not upon that desert plain, but beneath, in the recesses of Bluejohn Canyon. There we would pass through shadow and icy pool, squirm along narrow passages in the sandstone. Blue John gets its name from one of the many outlaws that hid out in central Utah’s Robber’s Roost during the frontier days. It’s also the place where a young adventurer named Aron Ralston famously dislodged a boulder onto his arm back in 2003, amputating his arm with a pocketknife in order to escape.

Not in our plans. We wanted to descend the same way Ralston went, headed north within the east fork of Bluejohn. But where Ralston continued down canyon with the intention of joining with the larger Horseshoe Canyon, we would split off early onto the main fork and ascend back to where we started. By cutting off this last section of canyon (and hopefully not any arms) we would have about fewer miles to cover than Ralston had planned, nor the miles of mountain biking that he shuttled before he even got to the canyon.

The sun came up to find Andrew, Jon and I still grinding along the dirt track. Though we had about 20 miles to cover, the rough roads in Robber’s Roost made sure we wouldn’t cover the distance in less than an hour. That same merry sun shining down on us now was bound to climb higher, and then sink to leave the world dark again. Hopefully we’d have made it through the canyon by then.

We passed a curious sign that read something to this effect: “These are not your cows! They are not wild animals! Leave them alone!”

I tried to imagine the provocation: some prankster canyoneers taking a break from their adventures to tip cattle? Neo-hunter-gatherers lashing bovines to the Thule rack on the way back to clans in Boulder or Taos?

We parked at the Granary Springs trailhead. An ominous ranch shed guarded the dusty lot. Someone had stenciled the Motel 6 logo onto the corrugated metal siding.

 

A couple hundred feet down the trail we came across a herd of beefs (not our cows!) grazing near a galvanized water tub, sun glinting off their dusky hides.

“Should we be careful around them?” Jon asked.

“Nah, they should be fine,” I said, grabbing a dirt clod to fling at the beasts.

“Fuck off!”

I didn’t expect anyone to take it personally, but the one that swung around, front hooves in the air seemed less than amused. The couple thousand pounds of bulk and trampling hooves made a strong case that perhaps I, not he, should be the one to take a hike.

I apologized. I guess that sign was meant for punks like me.

 

We walked north along an arroyo with cattle droppings and hoof prints all over the place. It didn’t seem likely that the biological soil present in Arches and other pristine parts of the Southwest could have survived under the trampling here.

Our course bent northeast toward a notch in a ridge, affording us a view of the snowy flanks of the La Sal rising in the distance. The next mile descended into a flatland, populated with desert scrub and mined with innumerable prickly pear cacti hiding in the grass.

I stepped carefully in my water shoes. No hiking boots today — not when plans called for wading, possibly swimming icy pools at the canyon bottom. I did wear thick socks on the inside to prevent blistering and for extra insulation.

The sock/water-shoe combo is just one example of how I’m a leader, not a follower when it comes to fashion. Take the boxers I wore outside of my wind pants. Not only were they glamorous, the plaid cotton underwear also covered the gaping hole I’d ripped in the seat on the way through Chambers Canyon last year. They would lend extra padding against the rough canyon walls — at least that’s what I hoped.

Other clothes included my fleece layer, windbreaker and space blanket for staying warm; cookies; first aid stuff; and the camera around my neck. Add the climbing shoes and harness for good measure. Oh, and let’s not forget the gallon of water sloshing inside an Arizona Iced Tea jug.

All this stuff came out to a good-sized bowling ball in my bag, a bowling ball that I would get to lug up and down the slots.

But why should I complain? Andrew and Jon traded off the burden of my enormous dry bag, stuffed with 200-odd feet of Andrew’s climbing rope, their climbing gear, clothes water, Gatorade and food. I still hadn’t fixed one of the straps that I’d busted biking through the northwest, leaving them to improvise a way to secure the weight onto their backs.

We hoped that our loads weren’t too cumbersome for the narrow canyon ahead of us, but that we would also have enough to make it through fed, secure, watered and warm.

As far as introductions go, Bluejohn was unimpressive. Desert runoff had carved a gentle V-shape into the sandstone, about 50-feet deep and at a gradual angle. I only had to put my hands down once on the descent, and only because there was some loose scree.

The three of us began an easy hike down the sandy canyon bottom. There was mud here and there, a couple of puddles. The first couple of these were easy enough to walk around, but as the canyon narrowed, we found ourselves hopping from rock to rock or bracing our feet and butts against the walls so that we could scoot over with dry feet. At one point we simply walked above the center slot until we got back to the dry sands.

We weren’t going to get many more options like that in the miles ahead. Indeed, it is the nature of these canyons to limit the explorers’ options, sequester then between walls so that they can only move up, down, forward. The option of turning back became less and less the move we down-climbed, evaporated at our first rappel.

The canyon bottom became a series of brownish pools. The walls became far enough apart that we could no longer climb above the water. We began a foot-numbing trod from one pool to the next, sinking knee to thigh deep. Only a couple of hours of sun could have reached down here each day, leaving the water incredibly cold.

I thought of the canyon guide, which said to expect deep wading or swimming in the canyon ahead. A couple hundred yards of this stuff above waist-level would be definite hypothermia risk.

Meanwhile, the walls on either side of us were at least 100 feet above our heads now — straight up, smooth, unclimbable. The sun retreated behind the red rock. Our world shrank into a tall, narrow slit, defined by curves of water-carved stone. We would need to be as adaptable as the water that rushed through — widening ourselves to fill the vacant spaces and climbing higher where the canyon narrowed.

Another passage of thigh-deep water took us to a 25-foot drop above a shadowed pool. How deep? Impossible to tell in this light. A bolt in the left-hand wall offered a place to secure a rope.

We took a quick food-break on the narrow ledge, watching a chunk of cow turd float listless in the water. I volunteered to make the first descent. Andrew worked the rope through the bolt and lowered it down to the water. I put my harness on, fit the rope into my belay device and stepped into the edge. I eased myself down gradually, preparing to unclip myself quickly when I reached the water.

“It would really suck to drown here,” I said.

“I hear drowning’s not such a bad way to go,” Jon said.

“Really? I hear it’s about the most painful way to die imaginable,” I said.

The wall went inward right above the water, causing me to swing around to the left. I eased myself part way into the water then unclipped myself. The pool was only about waist-deep, but that was deep enough to freeze my ass.

I lurched along the slippery rocks on the bottom with my jaw clenched in a rictus of cold. There was about 20 feet to go before I reached the end of the pool. I got out and watched shivering as Andrew and Jon prepared to descend. They would have to stay in the water longer in order to retrieve the rope. I got to move further down the canyon to a patch of sunlight.

 

We regrouped dripping wet, with Andrew bitching that he was soaked in shitwater. We all were.

There was more to come.

We sloshed our way through knee-deep puddles until we came to another ledge. A side canyon came in here, leaving a long pool of water stretched along the path before us.

First we needed to get down there. This drop was only about 12-feet, but there was no bolt in place for rope. We would have to be our own anchors. Jon and I braced ourselves against what purchase we could find up top and held the rope for Andrew as he climbed down. Then I held the rope for Jon. Since there was no one left to hold the rope for me, I slid a short ways on my backside, then got a foot down on Andrew’s shoulder where he was braced between the canyon walls.

I thought of Ralston going down the canyon solo wondering what he did when he got here. A natural anchor? Did he figure out a way to downclimb, or did he ease himself down as far as possible and then jump for it?

 

The channel of water at the canyon bottom was muddy brown — impossible to judge depth again. The water stretched out for 50 feet in front of us and disappeared around a corner. The walls were narrow enough that we could boogie above the first section, but alas, they widened out again. A huge boulder wedged between the canyon walls prevented anyone from continuing the route above the water. Either we were going back, or we were going in. Except we couldn’t go back. The two ledges we’d rappelled down had nixed that option.

Andrew clambered in first. It was a little over waist-deep. Jon and I stayed up on the walls, listening to a stream of splashes, shouts and profanity fading down the canyon. Something out of my sight provoked an especially strong oath. I wondered what the obstacle was.

I’d be the next to find out.

I climbed down to the water and immediate misery. Jaw clenched, I started the frozen march through the pool. With every step, I gifted a little bit more of my heat to the murky waters. I snorted and swore. Soon I was just making a series of grinding, chortling noises.

A mass of logs had wedged between the canyon walls a couple feet above the water’s surface. I pushed myself past as best I could, wanting to get out of the water as soon as possible.

Andrew was standing on dry land at the other end, laughing at me. I was laughing too, then swearing more.

I surged out of the water and immediately started putting on layers from the dry-bag. My jaw was clenched tight enough to hurt, mind starting to go reptilian from heat loss.

We were lucky enough to have some sun patches nearby, where we warmed ourselves as best as possible before moving on.

 

The canyon opened up. Soon our path was a wide-sandy bed in full sun. I was aware of the warmth outside me, but it would be a while before any of it reached the chill in my core.

Even the canyon walls, which I’d assumed to be impregnable, seemed to have a few slopes that might have been gentle enough for us to escape. We were still committed though. It was encouraging to take lunch on a warm slab of rock. The next couple miles were easy going on the sandy bed, with plenty of room for us to enjoy the tall red-rock formations hundreds of feet overhead. This part may have been easy, but not many people would make it down here to enjoy it.

An intersection brought us to the main fork of the canyon and our path out.

The first mile was the same pedestrian hike over sand, the walls slowly moving closer. Whiptail lizards darted here and there, racing over vertical canyon walls with incredible agility.

 

“Whoa! Hey! Check it out!”

Jon pointed to a two-foot rattler right next to my footprints, buzzing like a cicada. It hadn’t been too likely to bit me though, not with its head stretched around a whiptail lizard it had caught. The snake slithered under a rock where it watched us from the shadow, tail still buzzing, still trying to finish the lizard in its jaws.

No, we weren’t in a great place for a snakebite victim.

 

Soon we were scrambling on the walls again, shimming over pools. The canyon floor suddenly rose into a steep climb up a 10-foot ledge where a chockstone the size of an ATV blocked the path. Jon went first, chimneying off the canyon walls until he was a few feet off the ground and the scrambling the rest of the way up the ledge. Andrew and I waited as he grunted and clawed his way beneath the boulder.

“I don’t think you guys can make that,” Jon told us. Since he was the skinniest in the group, I weighed those words. The alternative to squirming under would be an attempt to climb over the boulder. The large drop off made this idea less than appealing.

I started chimneying further back than what Jon had started from, intending to go up the walls diagonally to the top of the ledge. The walls had other ideas, however. I found I could keep myself up better, by going up high where the canyon narrowed. Soon, I was on level with the top of the chockstone, 15 feet above the ground, suspending myself with friction.

“I think I might try to over this thing,” I said.

Doing so required me to twist and use some fancy footwork, cheap water shoes smeared against the rock. While I wriggled, inch by inch to the chockstone, I found the walls getting wider again, too wide for me to support myself. But the chockstone was right there. All I had to do was put my foot on it, trust that it would stay in place as it had doubtless stayed in place through the millennia, that this was not my unlucky day. Ralston had trusted a stone like this one and had it come crashing down on him.

Downclimbing at this point would have taken colossal energy though. I had already exhausted myself getting this high. What if I tried to go under the boulder and found out Jon was right and it was too tight for me to get through?

I put a hesitant foot on the rock, bracing as much weight as I could on the walls. Nothing moved. I put more weight down, then moved to the stable ground on the other side, quick as possible.

Andrew took a lower route than I, but he too went over the rock.

 

The walls narrowed and the floor went up. We chimneyed a couple dozen feet and kept working our way south. The canyon took a 90-degree turn, presenting us with abrupt 12-foot climb up a sandstone face. A much larger drop waited on the left side. I went first, finding a decent handhold on my right and a good place to kick out my legs on the wall behind. I froze briefly on the wall, felt someone grab onto my feet.

“No. I got this,” I said like I actually believed it.

I curled my fingers over a tiny ridge of rounded sandstone at the top of the ledge, used it to pull myself the rest of the way.

The other two passed the bags to me, then readied themselves for their own climbs.

Jon had more trouble with the handholds. I got ready to grab him from above if necessary. This meant kneeling in a shallow pool (thankfully, the water was warmer than in the first canyon) with my knees against the rock to get a decent brace. Jon froze with the top of the ledge at about shoulder height.

“Grab my hand,” I said.

“I’d just swing you over the edge,” he said. Maybe he was right.

He went down for a second attempt. I fixed myself deeper in the pool to get prepared.

And by prepare, I mean that I got my camera out, ready to shoot that dramatic moment when he got to the ledge.

Jon seemed a bit surprised to see my camera lens in from him instead of my outstretched hand.

“Hey. I need some help here.”

I put the camera down and grabbed him. Guess I’m not New York Post material yet.

Andrew was next. He too hesitated near the top, was probably going to make it, but Jon had already grabbed him. I snatched a pant leg and we flipped him out on the ledge.

 

We moved on to an even longer climb, to another ledge beneath a boulder. This time, we had to carry the bags with us. I threw the dry bag in front of me, letting it wedge in the canyon in front of me. The walls widened again, so I climbed on without the bags and Andrew climbed above them, passing them to me by hooking them with his foot. The three of us gathered beneath the enormous rock, trying to figure out what to do next.

The walls above the boulder were too wide to chimney over it. I decided to try getting past on the left side, even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after I got halfway up.  I scooted between boulder and canyon wall, then reached over the top to a beautiful handhold.

The final climb was a 20-foot ledge. I went last this time, watching Andrew and Jon clamber up a corner between the walls. I scrambled after them, climbing out from the dark, back into the world of cowshit, blue sky, dust, sunshine on my face.

 

After we left Arches National Park, Andrew, Jon and I headed down to Robber’s Roost, to see if we couldn’t wedge our way through some of the area’s narrow slot canyons.

The isolated Roost, with its secretive passages through the bed rock, made an  ideal hideaway for outlaws, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The land above is sagebrush scrub , cattle and mesas with views of the snowy  Ragged Mountain and The Horn to the south  and La Sal Mountains  in the east. Things start to get interesting near the Dirty Devil River, which has carved a miles-wide gash into the ground. Between the canyon walls, lies a deserted moonscape of sun-bleached stone and shattered rock. Runoff from the rains has carved slots into this stone, narrow, deep.

Andrew and I were making our second visit to Chamber’s Canyon. To read about our trip last year go here: In The Master’s Chambers.

It would be an adventure in its own right, as well as something of a tune up for the longer Bluejohn Canyon that we would do the next day.

I definitely wasn’t expecting Chambers to be a breeze just because I’ve done it before. For one thing, we found more water on the canyon bottom this time. That meant not only that we would take a few freezing dips in pools, it also meant we’d have to take on the trickiest canyoneering sections in wet shoes.

At one point, we took on a narrow section where we would have almost certainly gotten stuck if we’d tried walking through along the canyon floor. Instead, we had to chimney climb one or more times our height to get to a spot wide enough that we could pass horizontally. This wouldn’t have been so hard if the walls weren’t so damn close together. It took all my effort to generate the pressure to hold my body weight up between the walls. Wet shoes were no help.

I flailed and struggled with the smooth-walls, taking what tiny handholds I could. Even raising myself half an inch took colossal effort. My muscles were sick of holding up my body weight, begged me to let up and ease myself into the narrow trap between the walls below. I felt my grip weaken, the drops of panic seeping into my blood, exhaustion . I fought back with rage: wild shouts of profanity against the canyon, my own weakness, whatever inertia that kept me hanging there.

I refused to accept that I’d lose this battle against gravity. With painful, tearing progress, I started to drag myself horizontally between the walls. The rough edges felt like a belt sander against my skin, tearing knees, elbows hands and ass as I fought my way through.

After about a hundred feet, the walls widened out by an alcove. I didn’t know if I was supposed to climb above. I knew there would be no way I could do it. I made my way across and down, let my feet sink into the soft sand.