Three Canyon & Moonshine Wash

Nick

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Aug 9, 2007
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September 2011

Ahhhh, September. After getting my fill of the mountains, I was itching to get back to the desert and do some good old-fashioned car camping. Long nights, campfires, good food and good friends. How can you go wrong?

For this trip we decided to up the ante a bit from the usual day hiking adventures and do a bit of technical canyoneering. Our target: Three Canyon in the San Rafael Desert. It seemed pretty straight-forward and somewhat beginner-friendly. A couple of rappels followed by a nice walk down a somewhat narrow canyon followed by a steep climb out.

So we packed up all the gear and set out on Friday afternoon for the roost. As usual, my goal was to make it to someplace scenic before sunset. It amazes me how easy it is to make a weekend trip feel like a 3-day trip if you can just get down there before the sun sets. And we found some place mighty scenic. This particular spot was recommended by a friend but he hadn't actually camped here so we weren't sure if there would be a good spot. Fortunately, part of our plan involved meeting Udink down there that night and he went out and scouted it before we arrived.

Despite leaving with extra time, we still made it to camp with just enough light to appreciate the view from camp. Tim standing on the rim of Labyrinth Canyon
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Selfie
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Tim playing around back at the campfire.
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We were up late that night. The energy from being out in the desert once again was great. I think it was sometime after 2am by the time I crawled into my tent. And then four and a half hours later I was treated to this view from my sleeping bag. I so love mesh tents.
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I woke up and walked down to the rim where Tim was already shooting.
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We took our time with breakfast and packing up in the morning. We were waiting for Jake to drive down from Salt Lake to join us. After we packed up we went over to the Northwest Fork of Three Canyon to set a handline for the exit crack of the canyon. The walk to the crack offered some nice views of the slot in the upper Northwest Fork.
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After a little poking around, we located the bolt at the top of the exit crack and deployed Tim's 60 meter rope. The worst part of the crack is the final 20 feet or so but the hand-line was still VERY handy for the rest of it. I'll get into more detail about that later in this report. Here's Tim testing out the handline over the crux.
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After getting the hand-line set, we headed back towards the upper end of Three Canyon where Jake was now waiting for us. Soon after we were walking down the upper reaches of Three Canyon towards the first rappels. The canyon starts out very shallow before a little mini-slot and then the big drop into the canyon.
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Checking out the drop from the first rappel. The two rappels are back to back here or there are some bolts off to the left of where Dennis is standing that would make for a single, long rappel.
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Tim coming down the first rappel. This was the shorter of the two. I would guess 30-40 feet or so.
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Dennis coming down the second rappel. This one was more like 50 feet. That pot hole he is descending towards was full of mud and water so we maneuvered around it and down to the next tier. All of the canyons in the area had flooded the prior weekend and it was very evident once we got down into them.
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Tim made it out of the watercourse earlier than Dennis or I. As you can see, my doubled up 120 foot rope was barely enough to reach the bottom of this second tier. Under dry conditions, or if you didn't mind getting really dirty, it would have been more then enough to descend into the pothole and then down-climb the last bit.
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And thus concludes the technical aspect of Three Canyon. Unless of course you consider an exit route which utilizes a 200 foot hand-line to be technical. It's certainly no walk in the park. After the rappels, the canyon stays narrow for just a bit.
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And then it stays narrow but not at all slot-like for quite some time.
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Not sure if these are from a deer or an antelope but we followed them all the way down the canyon.
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Further down canyon we stumbled across a tiny swimming hole. You would have had a hard time fitting a few 50 gallon barrels it was so small. But we were hot and the water was cold and clear so we stopped and had a dip and ate some lunch. But wouldn't you know it, just another 15 minutes down canyon we found the swimming hole of all swimming holes. Being the responsible folks that we are, we sent Jake in to check the depth and then it was jump time!
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Jake doing a back flip.
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A surprisingly large crayfish I found in the pool.
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Tim getting some air.
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Not long before reaching our exit canyon, things started to get thick. This was just the beginning of the bushwhackery. It got really, really bad at times. The recent flooding had laid down a lot of it which made for a decent path at time but that also meant a lots of random, sneaky quicksand and pools in it too. Good times!
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Eventually we found the the Northwest Fork and started up it. It was a nice break from the bushwhacking in the main canyon. But after a few minutes of walking up the canyon, we found ourselves at a large pouroff with a big, muddy pool.
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If we had been paying attention to the beta, we would have known immediately to walk back a bit and hike up the left side of the canyon to this nice bypass over the two large dryfalls.
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Soon after that we made it to the exit crack where we had set our hand-line earlier. In the photo below, you can see the route out. Click on the photo to see a tagged version of it. If you look carefully, you can see Tim standing at the top of the crack where the rope is anchored and if you look at this really large version(6.9MB), you can see Jake free climbing the crack up the old moki steps (with his backpack on!).
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This is the section above the exit crack. Still a bit of class 4 scrambling and there is even a bolt at the top but it was no problem to find a route to walk up it.
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From the exit crack it was only a 1/4 mile or so back to the truck. We sat around and talked for a bit before saying goodbye to Dennis and heading out to our next campsite out towards Keg Knoll. We made it to camp with an hour or two before sun down so we had some time to mess around a bit. Jake had brought a single shooter Colt .45 with him but only two bullets. Tim had never in his life pulled the trigger on a gun so we decided to have him take a shot at a beer can. The views into Canyonlands and the old-school looking gun inspired Tim to transform into 'Cowboy Tim', Jake's motorcycle boots were a nice touch.
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So this is where it gets pretty incredible. As I said, Tim had NEVER shot a gun in his life. He was given one bullet and I was given the other. That's all we had. So he setup the beer can out on the edge of camp and, well... watch the video. Video shot by Jake with Tim's camera. (Best in full screen HD)
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uwRLgYk9xNU?hd=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</br></br>
[/parsehtml]Success!
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And the shenanigans continue. Jake convinced Tim to hop on the back of his dirtbike and take a ride to a spot that might have better photographic qualities in time for sunset. That pack on Tim's back had to have been at least 60 lbs with their combined camera equipment inside.
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Meanwhile, I grabbed a beer and a snack and went out on the rocks and watched the light fade over Canyonlands National Park. That's Island in The Sky off in the distance.
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Jake and Tim both made it out largely unscathed but the bike was not so lucky. The handlebars were bent pretty good and the gas tank had some nice dents in it.
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We spent the rest of the evening around the campfire and working on a big dutch oven dinner before retiring for the night. The next day we were up at 5:30am and on our way out to Colonnade Arch. I have suspected it might be a killer spot for sunrise for some time and what better chance to find out. It was very interesting walking out there in the dark. There really isn't a route so I was relying very much on the feel of the landscape to navigate in the dark. We made it to the arch just barely after the first light was forming on the horizon which made for this interesting scene. This is a 13 second exposure.
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Tim & Jake getting ready for the sun to appear on the horizon.
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We packed out a stove and had coffee and breakfast inside the arch before heading back to camp. After that we were on our way to hike Moonshine Wash. Instead of one of the usual out and back routes we decided to spot a vehicle over on the Moonshine Springs Road so we could do the hike as a point-to-point.

Due to mechanical issues, we started hiking before the 4WD section to the start trailhead and ended up crossing some terrain that doesn't see a lot of traffic. I found this nice little slab of rock with dinosaur prints on it just laying in the wash bottom.
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Moonshine was a muddy, wet mess. Before we even made it to the first down-climb, we were knee deep in water.
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The mud was slippery, at times so much that we had to kick in our feet down to the sand to keep from falling.
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Jake managed to stem over pretty much all of the water and mud.
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The deepest pool was the last before the sheep bridge. This one went over my belly button and I'm 6'4" tall.
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The famous sheep bridge over Moonshine Wash
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Tim shooting the sheep bridge
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After the slot opened up a bit we ran into the first pool that Jake couldn't climb his way over. But he didn't give up easily.
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A bend in the canyon below the slot on the way to the West Fork of Moonshine.
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Instead of using the usually exit route we decided we would attempt to ascent the West Fork of Moonshine. There is a 40-foot dryfall there that I've read can be climbed. We figured we'd send Jake up and have him throw a handline down. No problem! But when we got there, we found that the dryfall was currently a waterfall. And to top that off, there was a pool about 100 feet long and full swimming depth at the end.
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We went for a swim in the pool, of course. It was disgustingly cold water, painfully cold. But still worth a quick dip. Afterwards, Jake climbed up a nearby crack to scout things out. Can't believe some of the crap that guy climbs up!
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So back we went up the Main Fork to the usual exit route. We crossed the bench in short time and were soon looking for a route down into the West Fork. We spotted the old Moonshine vats from the rim.
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This is the route we took down into the canyon, just downstream from the vats. I think there are much better routes upstream from the vats but not sure. I wouldn't recommend this way to most people though.
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The moonshine vats. There was a really nice, cold, clean stream flowing right next to them.
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We took a break at the vats and polished off the bourbon we'd been sipping on over the weekend to pay tribute. Just above the vats, we found a side canyon that Udink had recommended for our exit. Once again, lots of mud and water but fortunately, it was all avoidable.
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The last couple of miles was all overland back to the truck. Much of it on slickrock and the last mile or so on sand. We reached the other truck about four and a half hours after we started the trip.
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It was a great little outing to kickoff the fall season of car camping in the desert. The backpacking season has been wonderful but I was definitely ready to have a cooler and some good food around for a change.

Check out Udink's photos and trip report from this trip on his blog.
 
Great TR!!! Awesome photos!!! Did ya fry up the crawdad?

What tent do you have? I keep flip-flopping on what I want.
 
Nice TR. Summit and I did a lot of the same trip, except we went down the North Fork of Three Canyon and once in Three, we hit that bad section of reeds and didn't last long going up canyon. That pool you found in there looked awesome.

Moonshine obviously wasn't as bad for us and we were too much of pussies (or just smart) to swim up that pool at the Moonshine fork. We went up and over. I remember the walk back over the slickrock above the rim being long and by then we were tired because we had done Three Canyon that morning, then that whole section at Moonshine.

Great trip. I Moonshine is one of my favorite slots.
 
Great TR!!! Awesome photos!!! Did ya fry up the crawdad?

If we'd been closer to camp, I think we might have. That little bastard spit into my mouth! I was pretending to eat it for a little video clip that Tim was taking and it seriously launched something right into my mouth. I have since received a rather graphic nickname that I won't share here. :rolleyes:

What tent do you have? I keep flip-flopping on what I want.

That's my dedicated car-camping tent, it's a Marmot Titan 3 that I picked up on Sierra Trading Post. Not the lightest 3-man backpacking tent but really good for car camping. I looooove mesh body tents! It's like sleeping under the stars but with bug and frost protection. For backpacking I have a Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2, Big Agnes Emerald Mountain SL3, Big Agnes Seedhouse 2 and an MSR Missing Link which is now called the MSR Fast Stash.
 
Nice TR. Summit and I did a lot of the same trip, except we went down the North Fork of Three Canyon and once in Three, we hit that bad section of reeds and didn't last long going up canyon. That pool you found in there looked awesome.

Moonshine obviously wasn't as bad for us and we were too much of pussies (or just smart) to swim up that pool at the Moonshine fork. We went up and over. I remember the walk back over the slickrock above the rim being long and by then we were tired because we had done Three Canyon that morning, then that whole section at Moonshine.

Great trip. I Moonshine is one of my favorite slots.

Yeah, Bill showed me his photos of the reeds. They weren't bad at all until we got within about a 1/4-1/2 mile of the exit canyon and then it was insane. There had been a good flood just days before and there was a nice path of them laid down from it, otherwise it would have been even more difficult.
 
I looooove mesh body tents! It's like sleeping under the stars but with bug and frost protection.

I totally agree. There is nothing better than laying in your tent and watch the stars up from there :twothumbs:
That's the reason I love my two mesh body tents so much.
Too bad my winter tent has nothing like that.
 
If we'd been closer to camp, I think we might have. That little bastard spit into my mouth! I was pretending to eat it for a little video clip that Tim was taking and it seriously launched something right into my mouth. I have since received a rather graphic nickname that I won't share here. :rolleyes:
Too funny!! I hope he caught it in the video!

That's my dedicated car-camping tent, it's a Marmot Titan 3 that I picked up on Sierra Trading Post. Not the lightest 3-man backpacking tent but really good for car camping. I looooove mesh body tents! It's like sleeping under the stars but with bug and frost protection. For backpacking I have a Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2, Big Agnes Emerald Mountain SL3, Big Agnes Seedhouse 2 and an MSR Missing Link which is now called the MSR Fast Stash.
I think you need another tent! Do you like the side entry or the top entry tents better?
 
I totally agree. There is nothing better than laying in your tent and watch the stars up from there :twothumbs:
That's the reason I love my two mesh body tents so much.
Too bad my winter tent has nothing like that.
Because of you and ibenick, I'm going to have to try this. I just love the photos taken from inside the tent! It's a bed with a great view!!!
 
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