Llewellyn Gulch Entry

[o2bav8]

I'll be down the Hole-in-the-Rock road sometime in October...
Llewellyn Gulch looks like fun, but some of the entry photos look a little more challenging than I'd like to tackle by myself. I've seen that the exit point of the canyon is near Powell, could I use that as an entrance point instead & work my way up the canyon? Worst case I'll bring a handline... But I always try & hike as light as possible (day hike only)

 

[Nick]

I've only done the route described in Canyoneering 3 so I can't comment on any of the other possible routes.

I went down the South Fork here:

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And hiked out the south side onto the bench here:

View Larger Map
Getting into the canyon the way we exited would be easy. It's not cairned or anything but it's never much worse than class 3 scrambling. Perhaps one little spot where you hop onto a ledge that is easy class 4.

I would not recommend exploring up the slot. It will be pretty tough and you probably won't even make it to the best slot sections. The bigger obstacles are in the upper slot, but there are still a ton of minor obstacles all throughout it that would be harder to go up than down. A lot of them were huge boulder jams that I found more difficult than a regular slot dryfall because the canyon was too wide to just downclimb them.

As for going down, some of the obstacles look big and intimidating at first but if you have a long handline and break them down bit by bit, they're actually pretty easy. Definitely good to have a some canyon descending experience though and at least one person who feels really confident to be the last down on some spots. It's a great little canyon.

If you haven't already, check out my Llewellyn TR:
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/threads/llewellyn-gulch-escalante.1954/

 

[o2bav8]

Thanks for the advice.... I really appreciate it.