Leprechaun Canyon Slot

A couple days after Christmas, Greg (my boss), Glen (Greg's friend), Tyler (Shawnee's brother), Lance (Tyler's friend) and I (Brady) went down and did a slot canyon. We left work a little early Friday and headed down to the Green River, UT.
We got to the Leprechaun Canyon trailhead at about 8:30 in the morning and prepared ourselves for the adventure. After hiking around to the left and middle forks of the canyon, we reached the right fork and started our descent. Coming down was narrow (some spots only 15 inches wide), and we expected it to be cold, seeing as it's December 28th. However, regardless of the layers we were wearing, the weather turned out to be quite dazzling... blue skies, no wind, and to be honest, the sun was relentless while we were in her view. The gloves came off quick and I debated seriously about taking more layers off.

Squeezing through the slot

I managed to drench my foot in a pothole about a quarter of the way through, but the rest of the water we encountered was nicely frozen; indeed in some places it was frozen uphill!! That was cool. We even saw "dinosaur tracks"!

After a short rappel the right fork join up with the middle fork. We decided to head up the middle fork through a section called "Belfast Boulevard".

Greg and Lance heading up Belfast Blvd

We had been through some rather tight places, but had read that this one was darker and even narrower than the rest. And it was true! Tyler led the way and kept us moving onward and upward. We had to squeeze above and below rocks which had wedged themselves in the narrow. There was even a stretch of about 30 feet where we were literally leaning back on the rock at a 45 degree angle just to pass!

The 45 degree section

Tyler squeezing down in

Finally after what seemed like miles, we hit the area where the left and middle forks come together (a distance of maybe 400 feet from the last junction), and decided to head back... down a nearly impassable labyrinth.
We made it back through Belfast Blvd and headed the rest of the way down canyon. We all arrived safely to our cars and believe it or not, I was uninjured. It was a blast. I think we should all go do a slot together sometime.
All the pictures and videos are on my Picasa Web Album.

Zero Gravity

So Danny, Greg (mine and Andy's boss) and I spent Friday & Saturday down in the San Rafael Swell doing a slot canyon. We did the slot called Zero Gravity. It was a blast! We drove down on Friday afternoon after work and camped near the slot. We woke up early on Saturday and broke camp and headed out. We knew we would get wet, but this slot was pretty full of water which is a good thing. We all got wet, no avoiding that. We did some semi-extreme stuff too. We swam under a bridge from one pothole to another. We also jumped into a pool that was easily 12 feet deep or more (I didn't take many pictures, but there is a pic of the spot we jumped in at here. Third set of pictures on the left). All in all it was just plain fun. Here are a few pics. The videos and the rest of the pictures are on my Picasa page here.

Danny & Greg standing on the bridge we swam under

Danny on top of the bridge we swam under

Brady standing in the pothole

Danny & Greg at the end of a swim