After seven years, I finally returned to the Long and Gravel Canyons backpacking canyoneering loop! This trip has been one of the best experiences of my life both times I've been there. It contains so many of my favorite features to satisfy my sense of adventure. Physically demanding, check. Days on end in nature, check. Stunning natural features, check. Mentally stimulating route finding, check. Mentally stimulating planning, check.
Both times, I've been lucky enough to have good weather and fantastic company! The first time around, my shoe's sole began de-laminating on day one and altered the trip significantly. The second time around, our filters began failing on day three. To fix the shoe, we sewed paracord through the rubber and tied it to the shoelaces. To fix the filters, we sent an InReach message to our friend Joy who joined on day four to bring in a fresh and better filter.
This time around, we allotted another day to make sure that we could complete all of the side canyons, including one that required technical gear. It turned out to be a really good canyon! I'm calling it 6281T for now since that's how Steve Allen pointed out its location on the 1987 7.5 USGS map in his book. There is surely a better name to be picked for this fantastic canyon.
Roughly five months before go time, Travis, Aaron, Mike and I were out having dinner and drinks, catching up on life one random winter evening. We all decided that we needed an adventure to get our asses ready for. That evening, this loop popped into my mind and so it began. We started a plan. The following weekend, we loaded our packs with weights and headed to the Camelsback stairs. With around 45lbs the first time, we did six laps. The soreness over the following week was temporarily life altering! You know when you do leg day at the gym for the first time in way too long? Yeah, that's what it was. My calves burst out in revolt. Two weeks later, we did the same thing. Weeks went by and we continued this routine. Sometimes, we went for regular hikes with packs on. Bit by bit, we increased the weight in our packs and distances of our hikes. It was becoming apparent that we were ready to rock and roll this trip!
Over those five months, we kept gathering lighter and lighter gear to make the trip more enjoyable. I kept a word document of each piece of gear that was upgraded and how much it saved over the previous piece of equipment. My little gear scale was getting a real workout and I loved every bit of it. I even swapped out the frame stays in the far upgraded backpack (Hyperlite Northrim 70L). In total, I cut off roughly 16lbs from the last trip! That is an extreme improvement, especially when considering the terrain we were going over. There were three "luxury items" that I decided to bring that didn't come along last time and they were well worth it. Those were a chair that connected with my sleeping pad, a little bluetooth speaker, and, don't laugh too hard, a harmonica.
When we woke up at the trailhead on the morning of, we all very meticulously went through our gear to make sure not even one little thing was left as there really was no "one little thing." Everything was critical to our success at that point, well, minus the harmonica I suppose. We were all bare bones on gear to save every gram. Three well trained machines with the least we could possibly put on our backs to ensure we could boogie as quickly as possible and see all of the amazing things that lie before us.
Our first benchmark check was how quickly we made it to from the start down White Canyon to Long Canyon. The typical time is an hour or more. We made it in 45 minutes. This was just the beginning of stellar speeds. This crew was hungry and ready for everything this environment could throw at us! Beast mode was activated!
In Long Canyon, we found many amazing sites and obstacles. There were multiple up-climbs that tested our strength. Sometimes, we chose teamwork. Others, we wanted to prove our mettle and manhood. At the end of both days, we found stellar campsites.
Next up was the most challenging day of the trip, the day we made the transition from Long Canyon to Gravel Canyon. There are a number of things about this day that make it challenging. The first is that there is no water along the route. We each brought roughly five liters of water, which worked out well on what ended up being a nice, cool day. Before heading out on this trip, I found what ended up being a better route out of the side canyon than Steven Allen documented in his book. It was both shorter and easier, win - win! Roughly half way into our day, we got to the climb up onto the prow. The climb was more challenging than I remembered. Luckily, we had a solid climber in the group. Travis made short work of the climb and dropped Aaron and I the pull cord to help us get up. Later that day, after making it into Gravel Canyon, we quickly realized that Gravel Canyon didn't have the fresh water flow in the upper reaches like Long Canyon had. We walked and bounced over boulders in search of water and all we got was sand. We had to continue on well past the confluence canyon where had planned to meet up with Joy. Finally, after a long boulder field, we found three pools of clear water. Our filters were barely working. We sent an InReach message to Joy to grab a pump style Katadyn filter with an MSR SiltStopper pre-filter attached out of my car. She found it and brought it in to save the rest of the trip! Fresh water flowed rapidly into our water bottles once more. Thank goodness! In other news, we made the connect from camp two to camp three in seven hours! We were all quite proud of ourselves.
Day four was our second biggest day, adding in a technical side canyon to the distance we needed to cover in Gravel Canyon. What I called 6281T Canyon on the map was really awesome! I kind of expected very little traffic as the beta in Allen's book is hard to read and piece together. Upon reaching the top of the canyon, it was clear that there had been other travelers to have found this fun canyon. There is still no beta on this one on the interwebs. We ended up using a sandtrap for the first rappel and a boulder on the second. I would have preferred to have stayed in the watercourse for the second, but there was concern about sticking the sandtrap in the deep pothole along the way. All in all, it was a really fun addition! Then, we got into the meat and potatoes of upper Gravel Canyon. We made it to camp four and sat around the fire, enjoying yet another victory and satisfying day.
Days five through seven involved reaching and exploring Cowboy Canyon, fun rim walks, exploring some side canyons and having a good ol' 'trip.' Cowboy Canyon had a really fun downclimb to start things off. The whole canyon was a lot more fun that anticipated! Joy and I made the rappel into the final cavern on day six to get perfect lighting and, wow, was that worth the effort required to ascend back up as there was no good climb out on the walls below. After completing such a fantastic trip, we went into Hanksville, filled up on all the Stan's burgers we could fit, and headed to Meadow Hot Springs to soak our weary muscles.
On the technical side of things, I created and shared a KML with all of the pertinent information of how to do this trip. The most important things to know are the exit from Long Canyon, the point to climb up to the prow, the drop off of the old jeep trail towards Gravel Canyon, the rim drop in to Gravel, where we found water for camp three, how to get to the start of the fun technical side canyon (6281T), which rim to choose in a couple places in Gravel Canyon, and where to drop into Cowboy Canyon. Hopefully, you enjoy this trip as much as we did! Here is the link to the KML and a jpg of the area map.
Track of Long Gravel Loop - Hit Download On The New Tab
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