UT: Zion Fatmans Misery West Fork Bolts/Condition update

I descended Fatmans Misery's West fork on May 22nd with three friends and it came to my attention that the canyon has become overbolted. Besides two raps, there are fairly new bolts installed, even on small down climbs. It looks like it was bolted this year or late last year. It is somewhat of a bummer considering this canyon was great for being a somewhat fun canyon to down climb and to practice simple natural rigging. I also want to report that someone has put in a yellow-whitish webbing that I worry may cause problems down the road. Due to its color nature, I actually cut it off one of the rigged rappels thinking it was sun bleached. The whitish webbing will most definitely be hard to distinguish when its ready to be replaced via bleaching, but I have faith that those that participate in this lovely canyon will inspect webbing before loading. I hope I do not regret making that assumption. I also want to warn the next party that does deal with that rappel should undue my overhand bight knot and pull some slack out of the anchor. The anchor hangs off a choke stone in a small pot hole right above an overhanging rappel into a much larger pothole. Due to the slack you WILL fall a foot or two before catching. I will fully admit that it was my fault for not checking for extra slack and the last person in my party was unfortunate enough to experience 6 inches of slack unstick from under the choke stone. Live and learn. Its pretty hard to miss considering the quick link hangs off the edge by and inch or two.

Lastly, what I believe is the most serious issue in Misery's west fork is the final rappel bolts are beginning to fail. When we descended the canyon I did not bring the tools needed to replace bolts. The final rappel which is about 40ish feet, lays below the scary balancing boulder field and has moving bolts. After we loaded the bolts we found the right bolt pulled out of the wall at least a couple 16ths of an inch. I would not consider this a total failure, but the weight needed to pull the bolt was around 190 pounds. We attempted to pull the bolt all the way out but with a lengthy attempt we failed to do so. I recommend if you plan on doing this canyon, please bring the tools and skills necessary to replace this single bolt or pull out both of the bolts without replacement. Sorry for the paragraphs, but I have found that Fatmans has becoming an increasingly popular canyon and an update did not seem like a bad idea. Have a great season!

Thanks for the info.

Some bolts were added to the canyon, at least at the 'fat man's rappel', the one with the recent rockfall and the cable, last year by friends of Kane County SAR after their body recovery at that point. I seem to remember going through there and thinking the bolts were well-placed. However, sounds like someone has added new bolts to the canyon. Probably time to replace some of the bolts with glue-ins and remove and patch others.

Tom

A note on nomenclature -

Strict nomenclature would be Misery Canyon East Fork and Misery Canyon West Fork. For several decades, the West fork has been known as Fat Man's Misery. So the preferred (by me) naming is:

Fat Man's Misery and
Misery Canyon East Fork.

Thanks.

Tom

I may be in the position soon to go out to remove and replace these bad bolts. Do you have any photos? It can help drastically in saving equipment weight knowing what kind bolts are there and what it'll take to get them out.

My apologies for such a drastically late response. It’s been a busy month. Unfortunately I don’t know what diameter the bolts where, but I can tell you that they where not glue ins. They are most likely concrete anchors. The hangers were pretty new, so if you decide to not to use glue ins, hangers are one less thing to bring.