Utah - The Beginning.

An article type thing I wrote for the start of my Utah adventures, the camping in Logan Canyon.

Pictures to follow.


First of all, Mum. Don’t read this! You whinged last time you read one of my caving posts! Here’s the warning!

I arrived in Utah on the 4th of September into Salt Lake City International after an 8.5 hour journey start-finish (stupid 3hr layover in Charlotte-Douglas). The first leg to Charlotte from Huntsville was fine but when we got there a feeder band from Isaac decided to drop some hell on the airport in the form of lightning ground strikes so we were delayed by almost an hour. I don’t mind it when I’m already in the air! I saw a spectacular lightning storm from above on the way from Charlotte to Salt Lake over the Colorado area.

When I arrived in Salt Lake, Peter picked me up. He somehow knew who I was despite never meeting him, apparently I “looked English”... fair enough! Once a Lancashire caver through Burnley Pothole Club, Peter moved to Utah many years back for work reasons. He has experience in many overseas expeditions including Veronya and multiple Mexican trips. His moving to the USA was supposedly his “retiring” from caving. That worked... his new life here in the U.S. contains much caving, mainly in the Tony Grove area of Northern Utah. These are the caves I came here to see! Utah caving at it’s finest with an experienced local guide effectively!

Since my flight had arrived in late evening we went straight back to Peter’s lady friend’s house in a quiet area of Salt Lake (It’s all quiet really). It was a beautiful house, the guest room was massive! We stayed up for a little and discussed our plans for my stay before going to bed. Needless to say I fell straight asleep.
The next day the main aim was to acclimatise me since caving at 9000ft after coming from sea level would just be stupid. Within an hour or so of breakfast we were hiking up a 12,000ft peak called Devil’s Castle in the Wasatch Range near the mountain-shrouded city, the only exception to this is the Great Salt Lake to the NW, a vast expanse of beautiful but nasty water containing two massive mountainous islands.

During the hike the altitude change started to become apparent near the 11,000ft level, up to then I’d been pacing as best I could however short, fast breathing took over and the pace had to be slowed. The view from the top was incredible though! It was totally barren, although not really “remote” for the area. Once I’d caught my breath, it was back down into the Cottonwood Canyons.

After this it was straight to the SRT practice, I had the choice of using a Petzl Rack or a Microrack, I chose the Microrack as the better of three evils! At least it had a hyperbar. We went over to a 100ft bluff and bopped it a few times to get a feel for the newly adjusted (borrowed) kit, the only bits that were mine were the ascenders, I’d borrowed Peter’s Petzl Fractio since my Superavanti  seemed it might prove uncomfortable with time on rope.

As soon as the SRT crap was sorted, we went over to the city’s Momentum climbing gym, the “Best in the West”. It was pretty big and had clear grade indications on most climbs which were great for a non-US (and shit) climber such as me. We started off on 5.9’s and ended on attempting 5.11’s however I worked my arms to the point where even a non-overhung 5.9 got me pumped. Home and bed for rest it was!

The next day we went to Tooele, a small town just south of the Salt Lake to grab our camping supplies (tents, freeze dried food, stoves etc) and spare vertical gear for the four days of camping/caving ahead for the Regional Meet. A good few hours later we were headed back to SLC getting ready for some outdoor climbing but it ended with rain and indoor gymming again, no working hard that night, Tony Grove tomorrow!
In the morning it was an early start to get going to Tony Grove in the Bear River range to get some caving in before the meet, Main Drain was the cave in choice to get me accustomed to it for a bigger future visit. Main Drain is Utah’s deepest cave, situated at about 9000ft ASL, an hour’s hike up from Tony Grove Lake at around 8000ft ASL. It’s an alpine vertical dolostone cave, not limestone, containing large quantities of snow and ice in its 230ft deep entrance shaft. From there, the temperature remains exceedingly cold throughout, never straying far from 0 Celsius. It contains several pits, most over 200ft, some over 300ft (with rebelays to avoid rope rub) and tight (ish) meandering canyons that catches on everything you wear (i.e. SRT gear). It opens up into the successive pits rather suddenly too. The lower reaches of the cave (mainly below Kilo Pit) are generally wet, with pools of waist/chest deep cold water and waterfalls from above. The upper regions are drier, still can be wet, some of the pits have waterfalls but they can be more or less avoided. The cave bottoms out at -1,247ft below the entrance in an unexplored terminal sump.

The cave is a very harsh environment and quite a serious undertaking, with Pete describing other caves such as “the Berger” as “Mickey Mouse” caves, even saying he’s soloed Veronya – something he says he’ll never do in Main Drain. It sounded strange to me, never having been in either of the three caves at the time, however I’d underestimated Main Drain either way. Factors such as the remote location, the lack of a real Cave Rescue team in Utah and the knowledge that those who do rescue generally won’t go into Main Drain contributed to its danger (and mystery – I guess).
We hiked the steep few miles to the entrance shaft, known as Deception Pit, on the side of Naomi Peak. It had a very cold breath, ice cold, a dark square hole that just seemed endless! Pete and I got ready in our gear and then (after rigging the first entrance rope) Pete descended. It wasn’t long before the words “rope free” echoed up from the darkness and I rigged up the Microrack. By the time I got to the second (permanently rigged) rope I was already in awe, to get there I’d had to descend past a 60ft high snow cone sat on a huge ledge above the remaining 150ft or so of the pit. I crossed the rebelay and began my descent, or so I hoped.
From this point on the rack became a nightmare, the rope was ice cold and glazed in frozen mud crystals, many of which had already been removed by Peter. The rope was extremely stiff, making the descent jumpy and slow, even with fully spread bars – I couldn’t drop a bar, micro racks aren’t designed for it. Instead I resorted to feeding it, a dangerous solution but I wasn’t heading back THAT quickly. I took a short while to get to the bottom (on top of another, bigger snow cone). From here it was down the cone in to some ice filled passage, frozen waterfalls covered the walls and floor and a large ice pillar extending from floor to ceiling. “Ryan’s Ice Climb” was the way on, a 30-40ft vertical roped ascent that led to the top of Leaky Faucet Pit. It was from here I began to notice the hideously cold air, and a spice of understanding for the uneasy opinion of this cave by the local cavers. Leaky Faucet is a tight ~300ft pit, with sharp rock and a constant unavoidable dripping of water. Cold dry air flows through here down into the rest of the cave too, causing an instant chill throughout the body.

On my way down the pit for the first time I could sense the lonely unwelcoming nature of the cave, an unforgiving cave, one where the smallest mistake couldn’t be afforded. Some caves feel this way. Constant noise within Main Drain, along with the wind tunnels and breaking rock (brittle dolomite) gave the sense that the cave was alive, a living – breathing thing.

After bottoming Leaky Faucet (along with noting multiple rope-rub and fraying points) the cave continued as narrow meandering canyon passage, before a junction room and a few nuisance pits (largest maybe 80ft). Beyond this, nothing, at least it seemed that way. Even with my bright light, I would have seen nothing if it wasn’t for Peter making his way down “Frayed Knot Falls”, the name given to the ~250ft pit that nearly took a life in its early exploration days.

Once I’d gotten the “rope free” from Peter, I hooked up the rack to the rope and started my descent – slowly. The rack was causing a jerking motion again. Knowing this was bad for the anchors, I resorted once again to feeding it – this time with both hands, trying to find time to admire the fascinatingly vast pit all the way to the bottom. After touching down, a short 20ft rope ascent and some scrambling took us over the “Mega Boulder”, a massive chunk of dolostone the size of a 3 storey house that used to be part of the roof (shit... what?).

The next pit (accessed through some more winding canyon) was a smaller 120-130ft drop, the last obstacle before “Kilo Pit” and the -1000ft mark. Knowing how badly my descender was working, seeing Peter rappel so slowly and jerkily even on a ‘C’ configured bobbin made me nervous. I HATE jerky descents. I hooked up the rack and tried to descend. After maybe 25ft the rack became so jumpy on the horrendously stiff rope that it wasn’t worth the effort of feeding it for the feeble distance gain. By this time, the sound of fabric-on-metal due to the loops on the central maillon moving and the jerking associated with it was pretty normal until a particularly different noise became apparent.

Also, this time, it was my right leg that felt more motion than the left when the descender jerked. It felt like it might be dropping more than the left side...  the onset of a tearing noise confirmed my suspicions and a immediate sense of adrenaline kicked in. Fuck. Double check... fuck! The harness connection between the central maillon loop and leg loop (and stitching) was tearing. Mild panic took over, knowing the continued rappel would only exacerbate the situation and that the time needed to switch to ascenders might take a little too long, I had to somehow remove the weight from the harness (and not be stuck).

I felt somewhat relieved when I spun around to find a ledge on the pit wall nearby and managed to swing slightly over to it to stand. It was less than a foot in width and sloped, but it would have to do. I shouted to Peter below that there was an issue and that I was going to ascend but he couldn’t hear me, so after a few more shouts I switched over and ascended out. Luckily I had a Petzl Pantin foot ascender, allowing me to climb without weighting the harness much. I’m glad that ledge was there. If this had happened 10 minutes prior halfway down Frayed Knot I might as well have cut loose I suppose! It’s not like the other leg loop connection (also tearing) would have held in the event the right one failed, besides, it’s the maillon loop connection. Air rappel anyone?

By the time I’d ascended out, Peter was following. We met near the Mega Boulder and I explained the situation. The situation was pretty clear, we couldn’t stay where we were, we had to keep moving, the caves too cold to dilly-dally. We had to get out. Shocked at my first real (in use) gear failure, I was a little shivery and quite nervous. We had no supplies (in terms of webbing etc) however improvising with some old rope, a sharp rock and some carefully tied knots. We used this as a reinforcement harness to go over the Fractio, essentially making it bomb-proof (but bulky). Peter insisted on using the damaged harness for exiting the cave and that I used his new one. Still nervous (due to the multiple times Peter – hopefully jokingly - insisted he didn’t trust his new experimental American knock-off superavanti ), I figured I’d been lucky and began to climb.

Frayed Knot seemed to take forever, me being a tad more nervous than before had to do a compulsive “everything check” every so often as I went. My trust in gear had vanished, at least for now, and all I wanted to do in this what seemed like at the time, a vertical hellhole, was to get the fuck out. Tough though really, the predicted time to get out from the bottom of Kilo Pit is 4 hours, without breaks at full speed. We were still around 600ft down at the top of Frayed Knot, so it was a huge relief when we eventually surfaced, bones intact, my dignity and nerves not so much. “Well... you survived?” Peter chuckled, as we de-rigged and de-kitted and headed back down to the car. Was it a successful taster trip to Main Drain? Not really. But we were coming back.

That evening we discussed the plans for the next day over some freeze-dried Mountain House packets, definite recommendation! They actually taste good. It ended a late night on the wine (yeah, I know, American cavers? Or just Utah!).
The morning came and I was woken by Peter who had got up a tad earlier to get the coffee brewing. I’m glad he did, the air was very cold. A down jacket and cup of hot coffee later and we were discussing the cave of the day again, Neilson’s Well. This time there were three of us, Peter and myself, along with Michael, an Austrian post-doctoral fellow at a well known Colorado university Geophysics department.
Neilson’s Well, although a much easier cave overall than Main Drain, has two of the largest pits in the western U.S., with an entrance pit at a depth of 350ft, the deepest open air cave pit in the U.S. (although containing 3 rebelays and a 190ft free-hang lower section) along with Fantasy Well/Dixiecup Pit in the lower reaches of the cave with an overall drop of around 400ft, 370ft of which is a free-hanging single drop.

It’s a 4 hour round trip hike to get to the entrance to Neilson’s with a 1000ft elevation change, not strenuous but a drag when lugging rope and caving gear along. A short while looking around on the plateau at the top and we found it, a massive hole in the ground surrounded by shrubbery and bridged by a large tree that had fallen not too long ago. Apparently it used to be the rigging tree, however a smaller one farther back is now used.

The entrance pitch is full of rope rub points, despite the rebelays, a situation I noted well in Main Drain. The rebelays only solve the major sharp rub points, the dolostone having too numerous an amount of rub points to solve them all. Regular rope inspection is advised! I saw oh so many frayed areas throughout the weekend, including core damage missed by the rest of the party near the top of a relatively large (60ft) drop.

My descending seemed better this time since I managed to scrub a bobbin the night before, however the second section of the entrance pitch seemed stiffer so it wasn’t long before I was using ‘C’ configuration and descending quickly and smoothly. The manufacturers explicitly advise not to use the bobbin this way but it works! The entrance pit opened out into a massive chamber below through a hole in the centre of the chamber roof, fantastic views! I could have used a brighter light to see some of it though.

Once we were all down, the way on towards Fantasy Well was through a series of long tight crawls and free-climbs/traverses (some with 30 year old “safety ropes”), there were some “pits” but they weren’t more than 50ft each. The crawl of all was probably the most challenging due to the fact we were wearing our SRT gear, which insisted on catching on everything. One of the bends meant we could only go IN on our left side and out on our right side to prevent getting stuck – a slight problem for my dodgy shoulder. It also was the spot where we spent most of our time trying to un jam our gear from the walls.

The approach to Fantasy Well is impressive, a crawl over some flowstone with a massive void into the unknown just to the left. “DON’T SLIP OFF THE FLOWSTONE!” was all I could think of at the time, its right at the top of the pit. A small descent into the boulder pile beneath leads to the usable pitch head where we encountered some VERY revolutionary rigging. The main 20-30ft drop to approach the larger free hang rebelay was rigged off an incredibly thin, corroded and rusty 12 year old hardware store bolt with rock split surrounding it. This was backed up by a non tensioned old peice of water knotted webbing, which didn’t hold much hope for a shock load.

After a brief pause to contain our discomfort with the rigging, we slowly and gently made our way down one by one to the rebelay. Pete descended the free hang first; I then rigged the bobbin up and went to descend. Just my luck, it kept jamming – likely the mixture of pretty new descender and a good amount of rope weight, plus – the rope was different than the rest, still kernmantle but a different stickier sheath material.  I tried multiple solutions, even trying ‘C’ config without the braking krab! I switched to ascenders in the end and came back up the meagre 30-40 feet I’d managed to drop, frustrated. Due to it being incredibly worn out, we concluded that Michael’s rack would likely get stuck too as the top bars started pinching the rope (they were over 50% worn through). We shouted down to Peter and he ascended before lending Michael his worn out bobbin, it seemed to work! Michael bopped the pit, I followed suit on Pete’s bobbin. It was a long wait but was totally worth it. The pit seemed to have layers of fog in it, like its own weather system, obscuring visibility in all directions. It widened towards the middle to the point it was like floating in space, the rope disappearing into the darkness in both directions and my light unable to reach the walls. Amazing.

After I’d been to the bottom and ascended (hard work!) we made our way out without problems. The rigging in Neilson’s is dodgy at best, all bolts are old and most spin to the touch. Dolostone, being brittle makes bolt failure much more likely, especially with 8mm bolts! Bolt failure is not uncommon in Neilson’s either, with only two trips per year (ish) the rate of failure to use is remarkably high, likely due to the freeze-thaw cycle its entrance seasonally experiences.

More wine ensued that evening, along with a regional camp-cooked meal and a presentation on the Hydrology of the Tony Grove karst basin. Main Drain is, of course, the main drain for the area and coincidentally the most serious of all the caves in the area making data collection and other fieldwork much less abundant than for the other caves.

Speaking of Main Drain, it was once again our destination for the following day. I’d managed to source another bobbin, a more used one that’s better for the type of rope in Main Drain. Michael was to come with us this time too, however we had to spend a while attempting to botch his rack into a usable order over coffee that morning.
The trip in was essentially a faster paced version of the last, without the harness failure this time, using my “trusty” superavanti. I had to descend everything in ‘C’ configuration but after a short while it became practically second nature. We passed our previous turn-around point to the top of the 180ft Kilo Pit. The rigging of this pit is dodgy, as is the descending. Peter rigged it and warned us of extremely loose boulders at the pitch head. After Pete signalled that he was clear it was my turn to go down and I’d never seen anything like it before. There was one massive boulder impossibly perched over the edge along with another about the size of my torso jammed between the large one and the pit wall, it had a crack through the centre so it won’t be there much longer. If boulders up here move, they could dislodge the rigging of our rope, which is bolted to and backed up to boulders.

After a careful descent to the bottom, the rockfall is obvious. According to Peter it is very frequent so the place to be at the bottom is totally out of the way. There used to be a stove down there but it got destroyed by falling boulders. Needless to say, the rule is only one person on the pitch at any one time (including the pitch head!). I unfortunately had to belay Mike from the bottom as his rack was no longer to be trusted, which was.... fun.

The way on from the bottom of Kilo had a few options, Kilo Inlet in one direction and the route to deeper than Neff’s pool, Neff’s Inlet and the terminal sump via the main gallery. We opted for the terminal sump, which involved going through a wet crawl and then chest deep in freezing water. It was here that the difference in clothing between me and the other two became apparent, that the gear we’d thrown together for me as a visitor was not suitable for this cave. Unlike me, Peter and Michael had PVC oversuits, with proper insulation and wetsuit socks; I had a cordura oversuit, some polypro layers and woollen socks. A bad idea! I got stone cold very quickly. The problem was that the air temperature was also very cold, so warming up could only occur if we kept moving at all times, rest stops are dangerous here, even waiting at a pitch head or bottom.

After a short while of fast pace we made it to the final pitch, the one that drops into the end room containing the sump, it wasn’t big, maybe 70ft so I went down it to “bottom” the cave at -1,247ft. The sump room is amazing, with beautifully clear water, words can’t describe how much I wanted to stay and admire it but my body was cooling fast.

On the way back to Kilo we explored a sandy side passage that is mostly unsurveyed, some unexplored. It led to a pool that seemed to end despite the survey indicating a turn. None of us were motivated to climb over or go swimming near the horrendously loose walls and overhead boulders.

We moved quickly back to Kilo through the water and stopped for a last minute decision. The original plan was that we were going to go far into Neff’s Inlet and push some climbs there for upper level passage; I was maybe even going to push a bolting climb. However, my lack of efficient equipment for the trip would likely have made it a near suicide trip as far as hypothermia goes. Evidently, our decision was to exit the cave. It was going to b a fairly slow exit due to the fact we had to de-rig the cave, much slower than the full speed ahead 4 hours guide time Peter uses. This didn’t matter too much though; Peter took the job of de-rigging as he knew the cave the best by far. Meanwhile, I was preparing to GTFO.
Standard practice when exiting Main Drain is for everyone to be solo (one person climbs a pit while the other leaves the pitch head and continues to the next, leaving the following person alone on rope). This is due to the danger of everyone moving at once and having people waiting for each other at pits. The danger of soloing out is outweighed by the danger of hypothermia through lack of exertion, especially after a bottom trip.

I went up Kilo first as I was the coldest, in the hope I’d warm up through climbing – I didn’t. As per protocol I kept moving, nuisance pits, meandering canyon, Mega Boulder, Frayed Knot Falls, more nuisance pits and meanders and then into a junction room. I went straight ahead and continued on my mission out of the cave, except I was heading the wrong way. The passage choked after about 10-15 mins of awkward meandering canyon, like what I recognised, but a different tube – dolostone gives very little clues. I had to turn back, confused. When I made it back to the junction chamber I was getting tired, to make matters worse, I had no idea if Peter and Mike had already gone through while I was lost. Then, to top it off my light indicated very low battery so I had to conserve it – Mike had my spare batteries. After a quick search in the chamber I got more and more confused and took to laying down and staying put, I couldn’t afford to backtrack into the cave if they’d passed, my light is dying and they’d look for me here at least, it’s the only real place to get lost. I’d been shouting their names for a while already to no avail. After about 30 mins I was very cold indeed and since they hadn’t passed by with me lying there (it had been long enough for Mike to pass at least) I began to assume they’d gone on, thinking I’d gone for the exit. If so, they’d have de-rigged Leaky Faucet, rendering me more stuck. One of them would have to surface before realising I wasn’t out since shouting up the vast entrance shaft might not work. They’d then have to return (re-rigging). The time that would take would be too much, at least that’s how it felt. A frightening thought, and one that sunk me into a feeling of stress and loneliness.

After a small while of lying there, with genuinely increasing thought they’d continued as time went on, I was about to give a last loud shout before huddling myself up and searching for warmth. I heard a very faint rustle, in the direction down-passage. I turned my now VERY dim light on and back tracked towards the nuisance pits, I bumped into Michael who was on rope. Relieved, I asked him what happened. They’d got held up for a long while at Frayed Knot. After a quick snack and replacement of light batteries Mike and I had a good look around the chamber and we found the way on. I’d been looking just below it earlier when searching the chamber while confused, a mixture of low light levels and hurriedness likely didn’t help my fuck-up of reasonable proportions.

By the time I got to Leaky Faucet I was determined to get out as fast as possible so I put my all into the ~300ft ascent, out from the top and towards Ryan’s Ice Climb. This area was very cold and my hands were already numb, after removing gloves for dexterity I managed a trouble free descent of the drop and through into the entrance snow cone room.

I’d not started to ascend past 20ft when I felt a sharp pain in my right knee, after letting out a loud list of profanities I looked down to see that my pantin had snapped on the foot-base strap and had forced its way up to my knee with my bodyweight. I removed it and sat there for a while, mainly being a miserable twat and trying to find a makeshift way to attach the pantin but with no spare webbing the idea failed. The exit was a nightmare, over 230ft of ascending on frozen, muddy rope. I could see it was dark outside, a morale ripper for sure, it meant it was cold out. Every step was hard, my knee was hurting from earlier, my croll slipped maybe a half-inch on every sit and I had to feed the wire coat-hanger style rope into it every time, even with 100ft of rope weight.

I emerged at the surface, nearly 11 hours after entering, in pitch black mountain air, crisply cold and knackered but glad I was out and overall happy with the trip – it was somehow still fun, somehow. The hike down was a gravity job, but it wasn’t long before we were in the car warming up and heading to camp for a spot of freeze dried heaven and forty (thousand) winks.

The next day was just a gear sorting relax (with restaurant food!).

Damn good!