How To Canyoneer: A Guide For People Who Prefer Writing Poems About Birds

Before last month, I had been canyoneering precisely once. I wrote extensively about that experience here in an essay for High Desert Journal (RIP) but the quick and dirty of it is this: There is quite possibly nothing else in the world that pins your body, skin to skin, with the earth and her unwavering desire for extremes like canyoneering. There is nothing that has made me feel closer to death.

There is a way in which this is beautiful — the body pressed, held by the earth as you slide through something not dissimilar to a birth canal. Your shoulders and hips wedge as you inch your way between the walls which threaten to either press you flat, trapping your body forever between the stone, or conversely, drop you down a great chasm that opens with such speed and force you have to wish, at least a little, that you were more liquid than solid. 

I ache so badly to be the kind of person unphased by daring risk, who moves so fluidly in her body that obstacles seem to morph around her. I am instead a person exceptionally phased by daring risk and who moves less like a fluid body and more like a sack of gravel hefted from one location to the next. Still, I find myself constantly embarking on new outdoor sports, looking down steep snowy slopes on skis I barely know how to use and chasing friends over boulder-strewn mountainsides that bikes can supposedly go down. I’d love to say that this is because I’m determined to get outside of my comfort zone and devote myself to challenging my assumptions about what I’m capable of, but really I’m just a stubborn old goat who doesn’t like being told they can’t do something, or won’t like something. 

Even though I’ve continued to grow more and more frightened of heights and tight, inescapable spaces since my last canyoneering trip in 2015, when my friend Chris asked my partner J and me if we’d go canyoneering in Robber’s Roost with him for his birthday, the allure of my own stubbornness prevented me from saying “no.” Before I could second guess my decision, J was packing a bag with ropes, harnesses, carabiners and belay devices all while I chose not to ask too many questions so I wouldn’t know what to fear. 

I had read of Robber’s Roost in many books and knew some of its lore as the hideout for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch gang, but otherwise, I was relatively unfamiliar with the area. What I’d gleaned from various essays was that the place was rippled into a contorting maze of folds and ridges like a deep, stone brain, the grandeur descriptions forming a sort of myth in my noggin like an oyster rolling a grain of sand around until it becomes a pearl. With no developed facilities, no cell phone service, no marked trails, and deep slickrock canyons that could easily swallow a person whole, my little stubborn goat brain could not turn down an opportunity to finally crack open that mysterious oyster and take a gander at the pearl inside. 

However, because I am fundamentally incapable of “doing less,” I added an extra layer of difficulty to this trip, having already committed to ride the entire Kokopelli Trail ending just three days before needing to meet Chris in Robber’s Roost. By the time the canyoneering portion of this 10-day “vacation” rolled around, I had already ridden 135 miles through difficult desert terrain, my ass wounds barely beginning to heal, my hips and quads already groaning in protest. 

J and I left Moab on a chilly Thursday morning, warm breakfast burritos tucked into the cup holders, Dolly Parton playing through the speakers. A little over an hour later, we passed heaps of melons stacked in wooden stands nestled in the asphalt parking lots of every gas station in Green River. I eyed the beige melons wondering if they’d make it back to Colorado while J put gas in the Jeep, enough, hopefully, to keep us fueled through the miles of dirt roads to nowhere still ahead of us. 

This was another complicating factor of our trip. Because we’d already planned to vacation in Utah the week prior (and ride bikes until our butt cheeks bled) we brought our camper along to provide some comfort on this intense vacation. The camper is tough, but I’d forgotten to remind Chris that we’d have her with us and didn’t confirm that we could in fact get her to where we were going.

By the time we turned off the highway and crossed the cattle grate into the vast expanse of barely managed BLM land, it was clear the road was most definitely not suited for a camper. But we were in too deep. I didn’t have the heart to cancel on Chris and given the choice between rattling our camper down to its bones or disappointing a friend, well, I’d put the camper in harm’s way any day. I am weak. 

It took us more than an hour to get across 16 miles of deeply washboarded road, but  we made it to the first stop, mostly intact. We ate a quick lunch standing in the wind, then walked out into the desert toward the North Fork of Robber’s Roost Canyon. My memory flitted back to my last trip through Keyhole Canyon in Zion National Park, remembering the blind commitment to heart-dropping risk that once you began, you had to finish.

Even reminded of that memory, I felt surprisingly confident coming into the first rappel. I slipped on my harness and received yet another lesson on how to fold the ropes and tie the knots and lock the devices — a knowledge of spatial reasoning my brain seems absolutely incapable of hanging onto. No matter how many times I’m taught, I always forget, or think I’m doing it correctly only to be told I’ve somehow reversed the rope, or flipped the belay device which only adds to the internal chaos of these situations. I know that if there was an emergency and I become our group’s sole responsibility for getting help, I would simply hold the ropes and clips in my palms, silently slide off my harness, and lay down in the damp sand to die. 

In these dark moments, I try to remind myself that I am capable of so many other feats, like writing poems or riding my bike and even perhaps experiencing the world with profound emotional receptivity. And doesn’t that count for something? But I know ultimately that writing a deliciously moving poem will not be the technical skill needed to exit a particularly difficult canyon and so I become impossibly annoyed by my own deficiencies and consistently remind the group that they most definitely should not put their lives in my hands. I am but a mere bunion, difficult to get rid of yet consistently dragged along and managed.

Still, I take the first rappel with emotional grace even if my lowering is a series of choppy stops and starts. Overall I feel capable and with one rappel done, all the fear of ropes and knots and body position mostly melts away. I’m even enjoying myself, almost feeling that body fluidity. That is until the exit which involves a long stretch of vertical chimneying and stemming (picture how you would use your back and feet to climb up a chimney - or just look at these photos) then an exposed bouldering move on a slippery sand covered rock face that slopes over a 20 foot drop straight down. It is a no-fall zone and I’ve been falling all day. I am momentarily brought to tears, a bodily response entirely outside of my control. These are tears of panic, of which my body is reaching for its final reserves saying, “Bitch, if you won’t listen to me, I’m going to make myself known.” 

But I make it out, unscathed minus a deeply bruised elbow. And when Chris says this exit is likely much harder than anything we’ll have to do in tomorrow’s canyon, I say yes to the next canyon because I am terrified of being left out and because I am stupid.

The next morning, J and I tow the camper across the desert another 1.5 hours across extremely rugged dirt roads to get to our next campsite. When we finally arrive and open the camper door, it becomes apparent that we’ve effectively shaken loose every internal bolt and screw that could be undone. The solar batteries are strewn across the floor, dislodged from what we thought was a secure shelf, the inverter has toppled from its screwed in plate, the stove has disassembled itself, and the counters have separated from the walls. But the water tanks seem tight and the gas lines are unharmed, so we leave most of the mess for later, packing our canyoneering bags once again. But the truth is the camper is an expensive if lovable beast and as we walked away from her half dilapidated on the mesa, I was overwhelmed by the anxious thoughts of the thousands of dollars of damage that might be waiting for us, knowing we still had to tow the damn thing out the next day. I was rattled and questioning if I needed to pause and reassess my options before we’d even stepped foot into the canyon.

However, I am far more afraid of appearing anxious than I am of actually being anxious and so I told the nagging thoughts, “Not today!” and via the power of self will and anti-anxiety medication, managed to shove those thoughts deep down for later when I could have a proper meltdown. 

And so I found myself wedging my body into the first section of Not Mind Bender, carefully packing down every anxious thought deep into my bowels where they could impact and rot at a later time. However, very real, very logical fears were beginning to arise as we pressed ourselves into an extremely long and narrow stretch of slots that required extensive chimneying, stemming, wedging, scraping, bumping, and bruising. If I wanted to turn back, this was my chance to make that call. But I packed that feeling down with all the other garbage feelings and followed slowly behind the group as my heart threatened to beat its way straight through my sternum. 

As we lifted higher and higher off the ground and the canyon narrowed so tightly that the length of my thigh no longer fit across the gap, I felt the tears begin again as my body tried to find any way to get me to stop whatever the fuck it was I’d chosen to put it through this time. I froze in panic, my legs not working, somehow petrified of both falling and getting stuck simultaneously. 

“Hang on!” I called after the group, each person before me easily maneuvering their hips and shoulders and thighs through the slot barely wide enough for a chest deeply inhaling. “I’m okay. I’m just totally freaking out.” My voice wavered.

Chris crawled back in between the walls to reach me with an agility that made me want to punch him, or god, or whoever had decided some people got the ability to easily wiggle their bodies through the world and others received the ability to write poems about birds. 

“Look at me,” he said, forcing me to lift up my wet eyes. “You’ve got this. My shoulders are wider than yours and if I can maneuver through this without getting stuck, so can you.” 

At that moment, I wondered if there was anything a person could say to another person struggling physically that wouldn’t make them want to melt into a pool of their own inadequacy.

I continued to softly cry but forced my body to move against the sandstone walls, wedging knees, then legs, then hips, then shoulders, inching one little segment at a time. At times, my feet dangled like flaccid tentacles, the canyon growing so narrow I had to hang vertically with my arms pinned to my sides against the canyon walls suspended like a limp doll. This, Chris informed me, was called a shoulder jam and was a common canyoneering maneuver and also that I was doing great. I made a mental note that this was not something I ever wanted my body to be praised for ever again.

We moved like this for what I assumed was several hours, but was likely more like a breezy 45 minutes. Time was no longer comprehensible to my cortisol-filled brain. 

Finally, the canyon opened and stayed open like the most glorious V and we were once again strapping ourselves into harnesses for the rappels. Despite the feeling of falling through space and the questionable webbing we anchored into, jumping down expansive chasms with nothing but the sheer faith that my gear would hold scared me far less than cajoling myself through what I lovingly referred to as the “ass crack of the earth.” I could have rappelled and rappelled and rappeled all day, drinking in the sweet feeling of being able to move my arms freely. 

Our final drop was an 80-foot free hanging rappel meaning once we stepped over the edge, the wall concaved so suddenly, we’d be floating in the air, nowhere to place our feet. I followed Chris’ guidance to get myself over the edge and once I slid my feet off the wall, I sat there in the expanse of the massive canyon like a fish floating in open ocean with no concept of falling in the buoyancy of water. I lowered myself with ease, feeling courageous once again, drinking in the ginormous curving canyon walls — a place so inaccessible to so many. This is why I couldn’t say no to this trip. I was alive and (mostly) unharmed, wasn’t I? 

I landed softly in the damp sand next to a blue pool of spring water that looked like a great, gleaming eye from above. Growing along the walls was some of the densest, most plush moss I’ve ever had the pleasure of pressing my hands into. I was so giddy I even began to laugh thinking to myself, “Yeah, I’d totally do this again.”

But as we made our way down the nearly dry riverbed and the night sky crept up the canyon walls, I realized looking up at the towering stone above me that we had to somehow get out of this canyon, back up to the rim where our cars were parked. Chris had mentioned a short bouldering problem at the exit that they could harness me into and help me up if didn’t feel confident free climbing it. I tried not to think of this as we walked and walked and walked gaining no vertical ground, getting no closer to the rim. After a few mistaken turns, we finally arrived at a steep sandy mound that ended in a slick near-vertical rock wall pockmarked with shallow, fist-sized depressions. It ran up maybe 35 feet before leveling off into a much less steep shelf that we could scramble the last few miles out of. Dangling down the steep rock face was a tattered rope.

“Oh great!” Chris said. “There wasn’t even a rope last time. This will be easy.” He grabbed the rope, gave it one good tug for safety (because who the hell knew what it was anchored to above?) and ran up the wall with bounce and ease while I scraped my hands and knees over the cliff face, crawling on all fours, heart racing at the steep angle of the rock face that I was already having trouble gripping. Another friend went, bopped up the wall without too much difficulty and then it was my turn. I turned to J, tears again in my eyes.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said. My body was exhausted and I laid over the rock like a beached whale, too afraid to stand for fear of falling. 

“You’re going to have to,” he said. And it was true. There was no other way out. And also, fuck you.

“Chris!” J yelled up the wall, “I’m going to tie Anja in and you’re going to help pull her up while she climbs.” J tied the figure eight knot onto my harness and I heard Chris scrambling above to anchor himself. J backed away to give me space and I sincerely mean the cliché when I say my blood turned to ice. I felt my body go cold and rigid. I looked up the vertical wall in terror.

“I can’t do this! I can’t do this!” I shouted. I had managed to stand and was now lying upright against the wall sobbing, my hands above my head searching for handholds. The panic was mounting. Chris tightened up on the rope, pulling me skyward. My feet immediately slipped off the wall and my hands couldn’t find anything to grab onto. I scraped my chest and face down the cliffside trying to find somewhere for my feet to catch. I hung there like a dead weight, sniffling.

“You have to do this,” J said again. And so I grabbed the rope with both hands, planted my feet flat against the wall in a rappel position and began to climb. My flimsy trail running shoes bent and flopped against the stone, failing to grip even the most substantial ledge. I mentally cursed everyone else in our group claiming the rock was pleasently sticky while wearing sturdy, technical approach shoes who had not once suffered the stomach-dropping sensation of their foot giving way to the sand-covered rock. I also verbally cussed out J and Amy who stood at the bottom cheering me on. 

I’ve since watched a few other videos and read a few trip reports about this exit and I am not the only one who found it extremely challenging. But I may have been the only person who legitimately thought this is where they were going to die. It didn’t help that I was distinctly aware that I was just a few canyons over from where professional climber Aaron Ralston got pinned beneath a rock and had to cut his own arm off to get free.

Despite my extreme doubts, I did finally clear the ledge, deeply annoyed that it was in fact possible to do. Chris looked sheepish as he helped me untie the rope from my harness and I took in the awful sucking breaths of someone who’s been crying uncontrollably. “Not so bad, right?” He grinned.

“I’m going to need at least 48 hours before I’ll find this funny,” I said.

The next morning, J and I opted to head home early, knowing we’d need hours to get the camper out safely to the highway from the dirt road. I don’t think I allowed myself to breathe fully until we got to Fruita where we stopped for lunch and I gulped down a cocktail so fast my head swam. 

“I think I’m good on canyoneering,” J said, which surprised me considering he hadn’t struggled in the same way I had at all.

“Yeah,” I said, setting down my empty glass. “But if someone invited me to go again, I probably would.” 

J rubbed his temples. “There’s something wrong with you.” 

“I know,” I said, and laughed, already finding it a little bit funny. 

P.S. — The camper was fine! We (i.e. Jacob) screwed everything back together.