One of Erin’s advisors is, amongst other thing, an avid canyoneer, and has written a fair bit of guide stuff on various canyoneering and other “adventure” hikes.
We had the opportunity to go out on a trip with some compatriots of his to Bee Canyon, which, while not the most amazing hike, had some fun spots. This trip was 2.3 miles total, all descending, with 3 rappels, and a car shuttle. I also ended up, some time later, with a terrible case of poison oak. Awesome!
Down the wall
go that way
We met up with people at a rideshare location, and drove up towards the hike. We were three cars, and we left one of them at the end point, and continued on in the other two up the road a bit more to where the trail starts. The first image is a view down into the canyon that we were going to be descending, with a bit of view of just how windy the road beyond it is.
I guess it’s done once you’ve shot it that many times
Now, when I say “trail”, you shouldn’t go thinking that there was actually, well, a trail of any particular sort. This was much more of a downhill bushwhack, but being in a canyon, it was fairly easy not to get lost. Down the slope we went! I was pretty glad I had brought my gaiters with me, since the amount of dirt and crap that would have otherwise found their way into my boots would have made me pretty unhappy.
And that’s just the dirt and flora, and in no way mentions all the amazing trash that was to be seen on this initial part of the slope. I have to guess that lots and lots of people come there to throw stuff down, because the variety was pretty fun. Giant toner remnants, dead monitors, traffic cone…And this is only the stuff I managed to snap pictures of. And then, of course, we found the best part of all. For some definitions of best.
good place for it
It was, indeed, a truck. As a matter of fact, as I determined for sure later when I called the Sheriff’s Dep’t, it was a stolen truck, that had been dropped into neutral and shoved down the canyon. They seemed very confused on the phone when I tried to describe where I was when we found it. (Although I had my GPS on me at the time, I was kind of dumb and didn’t think to grab a waypoint of its location). “Yeah, we drove to this part of the road, and just sort of walked down the hill…” “So, you’re saying we can’t drive down to it?” “No, I don’t think you could drive down there…” And I got several calls back later and had to repeat the same things many times to several different people. Ah well. I wonder if they’ve gotten it out yet.
So, this was my first “canyoneering” trip which means it was the first time I ever really rappelled. That said, it wasn’t crazy serious rappelling, but it was fun regardless. I didn’t get to set anything up, but going down backwards over a slope is unusual enough for the first time out, I think. I also got to see some trail maintenance in action, which was fun for me, because most of the time when I go out hiking/camping, it’s in areas where you are discouraged from messing around with the plants in any way. But this was a fine case to trim back some plants a bit.
My first time!
Not only was it my first time, it was also my second and third time. On one of these we did a guided descent, where you start out on a normal rappel (all of these are doubled rope) but instead of both ends just dangling beneath you (with someone on vague belay), one of the ends is tied off somewhere else (in this case, to a tree). The point being that sometimes you might want to avoid a giant pool at the bottom of a rappel, or something else you just don’t want to tangle with (the first person down, of course, gets the fun of dealing). Anyway, once you get off the rappel part, it turns into a sort of zipline descent, which is pretty awesome.
as the picture says, whee!
The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful. At the bottom of the canyon we exited into a broad ravine, and had to generally walk along this to get back to where we had parked. However, there was no real trail here, and we had to walk through All The Poison Oak. I was pretty glad I was wearing my gaiters (though I apparently didn’t clean my stuff off well enough, because I got a pretty raging case a few weeks later, but oh well). It was a nice walk along a quasi-streambed, rock hopping, skirting random bits of private property, and then a steep scramble back up to where the car was.
Generally fun, even if not the single most exciting canyon we could have done. It was cool to get the experience in.
