Nineth canyon ever done. Rob Dean was my teammate on this one. We had talked to Shane H and got some good meta-data from Road Trip Ryan before embarking on this hard to get permitted canyon. Shane had done this canyon the previous day and his knees weren't feeling well so he offered to drop us off and meet us at the Visitor's Center in Zion. Once we started our hike from the Easterly entrance finding the route was quite easy using the app. I was not prepared for the steep downclimb. It was a long down hike and quite steep.
After about 20 minutes of downclimbing I heard voices from upcanyon. It appears we had company. By the time we approached the first Rap, the guide for the group behind us had caught up to us. So down we went and they were nipping on our heels. It seemed that no matter how fast we rigged and rapped they were always right behind us. I was getting a bit annoyed. I'd never decended a canyon this fast and was preocuppied with the group behind us that I was unable to enjoy the beauty like I was hoping to. Eventually we pulled away and had lunch. it was nice to find solitude in this remote canyon.
We approached the rappel where there is a chockstone and made certain to not get our rope stuck like Shane did the day before. By this time the group behind us was putting on wetsuits where we simply had on our neo-socks and canyoneering boots. The wetsuits weren't needed. After that big rappel we approached a down climb and found ourselves looking into the narrows. I gazed down and saw a lot of people wading up river with walking sticks. I rigged the last rappel and went down. Rob made it down and we pulled the ropes down and stuffed them while standing in the river. Thankfully we had on our boots because the kept our feet warm enough. Others without them were freezing and having a hard time walking. By the time we made it to the Sinawa bus stop we called Shane and said we were done. We had done it an hour or two faster than he'd expected us to do it. Thanks ZAC group for that. Overall, it was good. I didn't see the appeal that others do. But it was fun.