North Fork of the Iron Wash - the narrows

North Fork of the Iron Wash - the narrows

This was probably the highlight of the trip - a technical canyon with a difficult obstacle at the end. It's a sketchy dirt road through Iron wash to get there. Leo drove really well. Bit of a hike to get to the dry rockfall where you rappel in. You pass the oil derrick:

Walk down the wash for a really long time until you arrive at the top of this sweet, gorgeous cliff face and rappel in:

It's quite scenic:

This was my favorite part. I love these holes. They made great handholds to get around this pool despite the vertical wall.

Leo using the holes to skirt another pool:

Paul likes to span:

There was a handline to help you down this very slippery slope. Paul and I ended up sliding anyway. You can make it around some of this without getting wet but have to get wet eventually to reach the other end of this big pool:

This brought us to the final obstacle which I don't have pictures of. We needed a headlamp because lighting is bad. You have to chimney up a sloped rock to a little ledge and go sideways a bit. Then up to a higher ledge which is a like a tiny cave. This is what it looks like from there:

Michael Kelsey's book says "it's an easy stroll to the log" but in reality, it's sloped and 40 ft up, and we were using all fours to move around. We finally make it to the log which is wedged into the canyon. We sit there for at least an hour, trying to figure out how to rappel down. There is no anchor or webbing or bolt or biner. There is a rope there. The log is too wide to wrap our hands around to get both ends of the rope. You need both ends of a rope to rappel down, or you need to make some kind of block and anchor or something! Eventually, Leo puts a couple biners on the end of our rope and Paul tries to throw them around the log and Leo uses the other rope there to "catch" them. After 20 minutes, it works and we now have a way to put webbing around the log and create an anchor. We set up a couple pieces of webbing and a biner and set up an anchor and leave it there for the next folks. We did a crappy job equalizing it but by this time, we'd been up there FOREVER, and skies were filling with dark clouds.

Here's Leo rappelling down from the log:

The keeper pothole was pretty sketchy. That's the other way through. It had a handline into the pothole but nothing out. There was a bolt and a biner that were high that could have helped on the climbout if there was webbing attached. It would be very difficult to climb out of the pothole because the water level was low and the bolt/biner were too high. Maybe if someone stood on top of someone else's shoulders?

We tried to follow the instructions to get out but it was a long walk and the canyon walls are high. We were looking for a slickrock ramp out that had bushes in the crack. Paul and Leo were convinced they'd found it. To get on this 60 degree ramp was dicey and it was raining. I was convinced they were wrong but at this point it was windy, cold, raining and I'd rather climb out something difficult than keep looking for an exit. It was like climbing a ladder. You just looked at the rock ahead of you, stayed on all fours and didn't look down. We eventually made it out that way and Leo found cairns showing that it was a real route out. Took a while to get back to the car. 

6.2 miles over 6 hours 40 minutes.