Eight canyon I've done. Rob Dean is my teammate on this one. We were suppose to meet up with Shane H to either do Mystery or Pine Creek but couldn't get a hold of him. We saw his truck in the parking lot at the visitor center in ZION. After a bit of time going by we decided to skip waiting and pulled a permit to do Behunin. By the time we got to Grotto Trailhead it was around 1pm. This was not ideal on a long hike up and a farely technical canyon. But, we were excited as it was going to be our maiden voyage for us to guide a canyon without Shane. Our wits, skills, and ultimately our lives were in our hands. We couldn't have been more exited. I had purchased a 65m Bluewater Canyonline 9mm rope and a 60M Sterling Canyonlux 8mm rope. We felt that with all the extra gear and our ropes we should be fine. My pack was around 35lbs. It felt extremely heavy to West Rim trailhead.
Rob and I had learned from our last Behunin trip that we could save time by keep moving forward. We did too. We saved a lot of time. By the third rappel we found ourselves again at the blind rappel and remembered that we needed to rig for rescue by doing the M.M.O releasable anchor. Rob went first and yelled up to me that we were 30ft short and so I laced the rope through my belay device and began releasing the anchor. I was able to lower Rob down quite easily with just the Munter. Eventually we found ourselves at the pothole and witnessed a couple of climbers turned canyoneers struggling to organize there rope and get down the rappels. So we offered to assist them down the rest of the way. Thank goodness we did because I'd gotten wet in the pothole and had to get my wet clothes off and put on dry ones from my dry bag.
I showed them how to rig the second to last rappel and then I rigged the last rappel. I was the first one to start down the last rappel. Forgetting to hang my heavy pack I found myself tipping backwards. I hooked my non-belay arm on the rappel extension webbing and barely made it down the 185ft rappel without any mishaps. Eventually everyone made it down and the two climbers took off. Rob and I stuffed the ropes and climbed down the rocks to the bus stop. We got back to the parking lot and found Shane Holst sitting there with two friends of his that he ran into. They had done Mystery Canyon and gotten their rope stuck on the chockstone. Shane was impressed with our maiden voyage and stayed at the campground with us that night. We all got hot showers and warm food.
Behunin is a part of me now.