Buck Canyon - SevenUp - Little Bull: High-stemming in the Roost

Back in late November, Josh Allen and I put together an X-fest of sorts after bailing on X-fest down in Escalante due to weather a few weeks earlier. Escalante has definitely got the highest concentration of good X-canyons around, but there is still plenty of action to be had in the Hanksville area between the Roost and Ticaboo Mesa. The canyons would mostly be repeats for me, but new to almost everyone else. SevenUp would be our warm-up on the first day, and the only new canyon for me. The day we ended up doing around SevenUp ended up being really interesting and had more action than expected.

Very cold weather and the level of the Dirty Devil River pushed me to look for an alternative approach to SevenUp Canyon. It looked like I could use Buck Canyon to access SevenUp and make a nice loop of it. On an earlier trip out to White Roost, I discovered a faster-driving route to this part of the Roost using the Blackburn Draw Road near the Hanksville Airport. A few turns need to be taken to avoid damaged parts of the road, but using this route we were able to get to Buck Canyon very quickly from the highway.

(A rough drawing of the shortcut we used to access the Buck Canyon/White Roost Area)

We started down the West Fork of Buck Canyon and descended the only rappel. This led to a deep and scenic section of narrows with a few downclimbs. The narrows were short-lived and led to more open terrain that we followed all the way down to the mouth of SevenUp canyon. We hiked up the north rim of SevenUp and downclimbed in at a very steep spot. The canyon started off with a few narrow sections that forced us up and back down to the ground multiple times. The first half of the canyon kept us mostly within 20 feet of the ground. The floor really started to drop out in the last half of the canyon.




Pretty quickly, the canyon forced us 50+ feet off of the ground into what I would consider true X-rated terrain. The movement wasn’t as straightforward as I expected for an X-. There weren’t any silos, but the last section had straight walls down a long hallway that weren’t quite right galumphing, forcing some awkward movement. There may be a lower route through this section and a few members of the ground did downclimb mid-way through the high route. It reminded me of a lot of the movement in Upper Mumbai Canyon, which has lots of awkward movement that isn’t particularly hard if you take it slow. A big downclimb to the ground followed the high section and cow tracks in the sand signaled the end of the canyon.


(PC: Josh Allen)

SevenUp was a very short canyon, with it only taking us 30 minutes to get from top to bottom. Overall I think that it is a good canyon to do for someone trying to work their way into doing X-canyons, though I think that they would want to do a less intimidating stemming canyon like Upper Stair first. A fall from the final hallway section could definitely kill you, so it gets an X-rating in my book. That being said, it could be easier to go low earlier on, and going high isn’t too bad at six feet tall. We continued down Buck Canyon a short distance to the confluence with the East Fork of Buck Canyon and started hiking up it. There were two really cool arches to check out early on in the fork and it was overall very scenic.

(PC: Josh Allen)

Hiking up the East Fork of Buck Canyon, we found a shorter exit at the top of the first dry fall that you have to bypass on the right. From the top of the dry fall, we were able to scramble out the west side all the way to the rim and then hike directly overland back to the car. This definitely saved some time for us and we were able to make it back to the car with a total time of 3 hours and 45 minutes. With our remaining time, we decided to drive further down the road to Little Bull Canyon to get in a some more high off the deck action.

(Josh and I took this unnecessary climber's exit while the rest of the group walked around for easier terrain)

I’ve done Little Bull Canyon a handful of times, and the first drop provides one of the best elevator downclimbs out there. The first drop of Little Bull is usually rappelled, but I discovered a downclimbing option on an earlier trip that’s a lot of fun. We all stemmed out past the rappel anchor until we were above the second rappel anchor more than 50 feet below us. From there we did an exposed but secure elevator-style downclimb to the ground. Accessing the second rappel anchor is really tough because of how tight it is. You basically need to do a cartwheel to reach down to the anchor and set the rappel. I want to eventually downclimb this second rappel as well, but it has some tough moves with high consequences. Below this rappel, the canyon goes pitch dark and it's one of my favorite sections in any canyon in Utah. Little Bull is a short canyon and only took us 1.5 hours from car to car. It's a really worthwhile canyon to do if you are already in the area doing stuff.

(Starting into the big downclimb)



(Tight start on the second rappel)
It ended up being a great warm-up day for the other canyons we had planned for the next two days. Sandthrax was planned for the following day, but unfortunately, I got booked to guide a canyon and had to miss out. I caught back up with the group on the third day and did Glaucoma Canyon with them down in Ticaboo Mesa. It was the fourth time for me doing the canyon and it was great as always, but it was interesting hearing the perspective of the rest of the group who were doing it for the first time. They all seemed to agree that Sandthrax was spookier, and Glaucoma was more physically demanding. The canyon was recently flooded and the normal anchor spot to set the exit line was full of water. I was glad to have a 300-foot rope with us so we could set a sandtrap anchor further above for an exit line out of the canyon. In the end, we had a great crew every single day and it was awesome to get out with people who could hold their own in X-terrain.

(PC: Josh Allen. The crux downclimb of Glaucoma from above)

(The difficult dismount from the downclimb)

(Entering a silo)