Fat Man's Misery

This past summer, my friends and I went on our annual trip to Zion National Park. On Day 2 of the trip, we decided to go canyoneering through a route called Fat Man's Misery. We started out with 6 people on Day 1, and ended up with just 3 people on Day 2 (The rest gave up!). This trip was a great example of what could go wrong on a canyoneering trip.

Big horn sheep guarding the route entrance.

This route is one of the more physically draining routes. The route starts and ends near Checkerboard Mesa in Zion National Park but because the technical section is outside the Park boundary, backcountry permit is not needed.

We started the hike on an easy pace, hiking up the "Checkerboard Canyon". The hike up the wash was an easy one until the steep ascent up to the top of a saddle. Then, we took a steep decent into the entry to the canyon and finally got to our first rappel. The first rappel was a fairly short one, only about 15'. Easy. After a couple more rappels, we hit a 500 ft drop rappel. (Wait, our rope was only 200 ft!) We looked around and couldn't find any anchor. Hum...it turned out we could hike around that section and we did.

First rappel of the day.

The route weaves in and out of open sections and slot sections with gorgeous views. There are many down climbs and short slot sections. Just the day before, some guy showed us how to do a "biner block" which was a very convenient way to secure a rope to an anchor and we decided to use it for the rest of the trip. On one of the 50 feet rappel, we used the "biner block" to secure the rope against the anchor. As the last person rappel down and we were getting ready to pack up the rope, the rope was caught! The carebiner was caught in between the webbings that were attached to the rock! (Are you serious?) We did everything we knew to try to untangle but all efforts were in vain. (Lesson 1: Don't try to use any new safety technique without fully researching it.)

David almost always bring at least one Ascender ( a device for upclimbing a rope) with him on every trip but not on that day because we almost never use it. (Lesson 2: Bring your Ascender with you even if the chance of using it is once in a life time. Those are called emergencies.) We are left to our own strength to retrieve the rope. Ryan up climbed 50 feet and retrieved the rope. (Amazing?)

Finally, we reached the very end of the rappel section and needed to swim across a pool. This pool was milky white with very strange smell attached to it. Due to its color, there was no way to assess how deep the pool was. Ryan was the brave soul who tested the water. It was shoulder deep. And then it was my turn. I really did not want to cross that yucky water. After much persuasion, David made me swim across that water. It was a very strange feeling to be swimming in milky smelly water. (GROSS!!)

The grotto area. We came out from behind these walls.

CLEAR WATER!

We finally reached the beautiful grotto area with clean water and beautiful view. We took a LONG break and started to follow the river down stream. The hike back up was a beast! The first section was a Class 3 scramble and we reached the ridge line. We followed the cairns along the route and soon lost our direction. There were cairns everywhere! We did the best we can and got down to a wash. As we were exploring, David excalimed " Look, these are little kids foot prints! We must be on the right track." Soon enough, we realized those foot prints were MINE and we ended up in the middle of those slot canyons! (So lost!) We hiked all the way back up to the ridge and reoriented ourselves. (Lesson 3: Bring a GPS!)

We were at the ridge and the sun was just beating on us. David was sweating profusely and showing signs of heat exhaustion. We were running out of water and food. (Lesson 4: Should refill water whenever we could and plan for the worst.) and we still had a long while to go. The hike was very steep and it felt particularly hot when we were dehydrated. Ryan and David switched their loads and we kept hiking without much conversation. I was wondering if we would make it out before darkness over came us.

As we were on our journey, we found a pile of stuff. Very suspicious. How could someone hike out of this place without shoes? We looked inside the bag and found no ID but a sleeping bag, food, some gears, etc. The bag was somewhat bleached by the sun. Was the person dead? Where would he/she be? We looked around and yelled for response. Nothing. We heard nothing. It looked to me like someone was in survival mode at some point. Wait, so were we!! We wanted to hike the stuff out with us but physically incapable of doing so. We took pictures and kept going.

Finally, we made it out of the canyon and it was more than pitch dark when we get back to camp. I was so dehydrated and my head was hurting so much, I literally crawled into the back of my car and passed out.

The next day, we reported the suspicious bag to the park ranger and found out someone was in survival mode and didn't hike the stuff out! Whew, at least the person wasn't dead!

Well, if we did anything right that day, we had the most righteous person in the group (me me me) offered a prayer before we head out! LOL!