A New Hobby!

Dear Blogging World.  I didn't forget you.  It's just that I knew that if I ever were to come back to you it would mean a lot of pictures and  lot of time, and posts from a long time ago that should have been blogged about WAY before now.  But now I'm feeling guilty enough, and it's a quiet Sunday evening, so I suppose that I am going to venture into your world even if this post is a year and a half over due!


Two summers ago I called Nicole, my "growing up" best friend, and told her that I was going to be in Utah for a few weeks and that I wanted to go on an adventure that she had told me about.  Canyoneering.  I had never heard of it prior to Nicole, and it sounded intriguing.  A lot of rappelling down canyons in Zion National Park.  Who wouldn't want to do it, right!?


Luckily, Nicole and her husband Tristan LOVE canyoneering and will drop just about everything in order to go.  So when I thought I would be putting them out a weekend and they would be indulging me, turns out they were more than excited to make the drive over from Colorado for a weekend in Heaven!!


Tristan and Nicole decided that Mystery Canyon would be a good canyon to start a beginner on.  Usually when you do Mystery you have two cars in order to shuttle back and forth from the bottom to the top.  But we only had one car, so we hiked up to the top of Zion in order to drop down into the canyon.  The hike up was beautiful!

We even saw Zion's version of Stone Henge up on one of the cliffs!

No, I'm not taller than Nicole, I'm just up on a rock...

After getting up to the top of the canyon and hiking down some slippery shale of death! we finally made it into Mystery and it was time for the rappelling to begin!  The next pictures are not in the order of the hike, but you'll get the idea of how amazing the back country of Zion is!

The next 6 pictures are of the second to last rappel.  It was a little freaky to get out to because you had to hook onto a rope, walk about 50 feet along a cliff wall, and then tie into the actual rappel.  But once you are set, it is breathtaking!  The rappel is pretty long, and then you drop into a FREEZING pool of water at the end.  It was a really hot day, and we had run out of water (stupid, I know) because we weren't really planning for the beginning hiking part.  Because of all that, when I dropped into the water my body immediately tensed up, and with the rope swirling around my legs (and not being able to touch the bottom), I started panicking a little bit.  It was the first time that I've ever thought to myself that I wasn't going to be able to swim to the side and pull myself out.  Luckily Tristan reached out and pulled me to the side before I really started to show panic and embarrass myself!

Another part of canyoneering is the down climbing, when you don't really need a rope to rappel, but you still have to figure out a way to get down.  Let's just say that tall people have a bit of an advantage!

The last rappel of Mystery Canyon is into the Narrows!  It was so funny to see the people stop and stare up at us.  A lot of them took out their own cameras and were taking pictures of us.

Coming down the last rappel into the Narrows.  It was pretty fun coming down a waterfall, even if it was just a little one!

The next day we were going to do another canyon, but we were all pretty beat from Mystery (or else Nicole and Tristan just said they were tired to make me feel better!).  We decided to go to a water hole and do some jumping.  We also found a natural water slide.  It wasn't big, but it was still fun!

Everyone should look this awesome when jumping off rocks! ;)

Thanks for an amazing trip Nicole and Tristan!  I've been to Zion National Park many times, but I have never experienced the back country.  Thanks for a great time, and here's to many to come!! (P.S. my next post is going to be about this year's adventure...).