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UT: Escalante Don't Do It! (Escalante Utah March 30 2019)

Discussion in 'Trip Reports' started by ratagonia, Jun 13, 2019.

  1. ratagonia

    ratagonia

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    Location:
    Mount Carmel, Utah
    (by Rachel Ross)
    Less for the thrill and more for the fun, the Xcalante canyons have been calling me all winter. I watched the film “Gorging” and sweated through a portion of a man shuffling, sweating, scraping, and screaming through DDI. I don’t know what personality type looks at that and thinks “Huh.. I wanna do that..” but here I am.. With a particular weakness for trials of strength. And I love stemming. And a good downclimb or two. Silos and stretching? I wouldn’t use the word “love”..

    The A-team was set: TreC and her sidekick Luke bluugnome, Mark Burnham, the Johnest of Deiners, and Ms. Cassy Brown and myself. What also inspired me from “Gorging” was the presence of a video camera. I loaded up my sony with a single lens and hoped I would be comfortable enough to use it..

    It was still winter in the ‘sclante, so a ripe start time of 0830 wasn’t to be countered. The sleepy hollow drainage met us with freezing water and thick foliage, but trudging up the maze of slickrock domes had us throwing off fleece quite quickly. Every single time I look at a canyon from the rim, I get a pit of doubt in my stomach.It’s so narrow. Oh it’s down there. I can’t even see. Gosh it’s deep. On the approach you get to look right up DDI. That didn’t help either. We traversed more domes to the drop-in: a thin tree looking down at the belly of the beast. Luke and John were to check out a side fork of the canyon and meet us at the confluence, leaving the four of us to fend for our lives in the upper portion.

    RM207821-2.

    RM207981-2.

    RM208014.

    FULL STORY AT THE LATEST RAVE
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2019
  2. Angus

    Angus Angus Wiessner

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    Location:
    Colorado
    DDI is a Great Canyon not for the faint of heart done it four times already never gets old!
    Serious Endurance Canyon nice work.
    great photos*

    This canyon has it all you rap into a stem. Stem for about three hours then rap into one or two Cold Swims with no wetsuit! Then a down climb and a final rap that is no gimme into a poison ivy swamp then a long hike out.
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2019
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  3. NM Ben

    NM Ben

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    Location:
    Albuquerque
    Great report. Fantastic photos - Really great.

    Which camera/lens? I'm guessing A7 of some form?
  4. Kuenn

    Kuenn

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    Great article, nice writing.
    "Welp. 10 feet vs. 60 feet is just time in the air."
    Awesome!
    Ram likes this.
  5. Tom Collins

    Tom Collins

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    Location:
    Woodland Hills, UT
    Makes a great quote, but realistically a 10'-20' fall is quite survivable. The height at which you have a 50/50 chance is 48' although I'm sure that depends on a quick response time from rescue crews which is unlikely in a place like DDI. Still 10-20' is unlikely to be fatal while 60' almost certainly is.

    That aside I loved the article and the pics were amazing
    Ram likes this.
  6. ratagonia

    ratagonia

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    Location:
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    hmmm, even WHEN you are 60 feet up, I remember only a few places you could fall more than 10-20 feet!

    T
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  7. Kuenn

    Kuenn

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    Y’all are killing the moment...:(

    So... one of the elements of creative writing is writing something that makes the reader want to continue reading. I don’t think it was meant literally, it was ‘creative bait’. A literary hors d’oeuvre that not only makes you smile it lures you in to keep reading. So I did.

    Now she could’ve said something like falling 10 feet is not as dangerous as falling 60 feet. :yawn: Or if you fall 10 feet six times is it equivalent to falling 60 feet once? :disagree:

    Keep righting Rachel! (Creative writing or phonetically handicapped?)
  8. Bootboy

    Bootboy Atwood Gear

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    Location:
    Utah
    Quite a bit of pin-balling on the way down.
  9. Teeeeva

    Teeeeva

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    Location:
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    Killin' me smalls.

    And yes I toted in my Sony a7r3.. carefully.. :cool:
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  10. Bill

    Bill ...

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    Location:
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    That's a fancy camera you have there.
    Teeeeva likes this.
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