A couple of months ago, I was talking with a friend about trying to ghost Heaps and Imlay canyons. How awesome would it be to know that you could do canyons of that caliber, in their natural states, without modifying anything, and without leaving a trace that you had been there? Better yet, knowing that you could explore similar canyons without beta, and leave them the same way you found them. A great goal to have for this year!

Two weeks later I contacted Tom Collins because I wanted to plan an unrelated trip with him.

He says, “Taylor Arave and I were talking about trying to ghost Heaps and Imlay.”

I laugh and tell him that I had much the same conversation just two weeks previously. We plan the dates and Tom gets the reservations.

One week later Tom Jones challenges me online to do Heaps and Imlay without using any hook holes, or bolts.

Okay ... so this trip was obviously meant to be!

We all meet up Saturday morning. The team is Tom Collins, Taylor Arave, Chris Oliver, and me. We leave the Grotto lot at 5:50 AM toward the sneak route. The hiking was pleasant with cooler temps. I couldn’t remember much of Imlay, and when I did it the first time I wasn’t looking for Sandtrap/Waterpocket placements. I also wasn’t thinking about the possibilities for throwing potshots or packs. Would we be able to do it? We certainly had the team for it.

As we started the canyon it was a little lackluster in the challenge department. We quickly remembered how much of Imlay is rappelling from logjams. We either fiddled or double–stranded all of these with no extra difficulty. We skipped many rappels by meat anchoring and jumping into the deeper pools or downclimbing. The trash compactor section was really fun. It was WAY harder than it was last year for me. We couldn’t stop laughing as we crawled over and rolled off of logs to work our way through it.

We made it to the first really big hard potholes. It seems to me that the sand floor is up from last year in most of them, or I just have more experience now, so they aren’t as intimidating. We were able to partner assist almost all of them, usually with Taylor being the climber.

When we reached the three potholes that are stacked really tight, we finally needed to use the Waterpocket for a two–stage rappel into the first and second potholes. We also decided to throw potshots (about 40′) for the escape from the first hole before entering.

We all rappelled into the first pothole and escaped. Chris started the second stage, but now the rope was pulling more horizontally, with less friction on the rock, and the anchor started to fail. We thought it was just settling back into position after he had unweighted it, but it kept slipping and the top of the Waterpocket started rising into view over the lip of the hole behind us. I had my back to the opposite wall and pushed hard on the rope against the wall with my hands. It was enough to stop the failing anchor and gave Chris an extra few seconds to get down. After he checked depth the rest of us jumped to the middle of the hole. If the anchor had failed he would have landed in the shallow side, an 18′ drop into 3′ of water.

Approaching the last rappel before the narrows, I was catching up after packing a rope. I heard a huge crash up ahead that ominously sounded like rock or log coming loose and tumbling. Did I just listen to someone die?

I was pretty concerned until I heard laughing and Taylor say, “We have an anchor!”

They had dislodged a big log down into a pool of water. We fiddled from of it and it worked great. That was my first floating anchor!

The final rappel was the one I was most anticipating. I couldn’t remember the geometry of the canyon up to the drop, and wondered if it would hold a Sand Trap or Waterpocket. I was fairly certain there was nothing to fiddle. There ended up being a pool to fill the water pocket, and I carried it up to an 8′′ step for it to sit behind about 15′ back from the edge.

The hardest part was keeping LDC on rappel. There was a crack and constriction RDC that would have almost certainly stuck the Waterpocket. Taylor went LAMAR, and was the one to get applause from the 20–ish tourists awaiting his descent with cameras at the ready. We pulled the Waterpocket, and Ghosting the Imlay–sneak had been a success!

After Imlay Canyon Chris and Taylor headed home. Saturday Tom and I had a chill day. We opted to do middle and lower Echo Canyon. We both realized we didn’t know the beta for lower echo and didn’t really care to find out, so we just hauled as much rope as we wanted to carry and headed up. We made it down seven rappels before we ran out of ropes and ascended back up. It was fun to have a reminder of my caving days ascending up everything we rappelled.

The next morning at 5:00 AM we were ready to start the hike to Heaps from the West Rim trailhead. The team was Tom Collins, Braden Jenkins, Cassy Brown, Scott Matthys and me.

We took a pretty fast clip reaching the first rappel in three hours. Down the rappel, and over ‘the knife’s edge.’ After rappelling the 210′ into Phantom Valley I noticed a core shot in our 360′ rope. It wasn’t where any of us had rappelled, it was just sitting on the ground ... I had coiled the rope the night before and pointed out a frayed spot to Tom, letting him know to keep an eye on it, but it wasn’t anything to worry about right now. I would have rappelled past it without concern, and here it was fully core shot with no use whatsoever?! Cassy had the idea the it could have been from all of the rope twisting while we rappelled. Scary.

This also brought up another complication. We were planning to combine the final two rappels of the canyon for a whopping 450′ rappel from the lower tree, and we were planning to pass a knot at or before the bird’s perch where you could have your feet on the wall. Scott had specified before he came on the trip, that this was the only place he was comfortable with passing the knot and free hanging below the perch was above his necessary risk tolerance...and now we had two knots to pass and one would definitely be below the bird’s perch. We were already committed so we continued on.

We laughed and said, “Of course we have to pass two knots!”

We got to the start of Heaps just as an overnight group had finished putting on their wetsuits. The worst possible timing for playing leapfrog. We didn’t have any idea how fast they would be or how slow we would be, needing to set up our own anchors, but we quickly caught up to them and were on their tails for most of the first narrows.

A big part of the canyon drops was meat anchoring the team down and last man (or whoever else wanted to) down climbing or jumping into pools of varying depth. At the end of the first Narrows we did need to use a Waterpocket. It was not ideal geometry but there wasn’t another obvious solution. One by one we did the rappel and for each person the anchor would have failed if not backed up by Tom, resulting in a big fall followed by a giant bag of water landing on you and likely maiming you. Tom was LAMAR and rappelled like the boss he is making it to the ground safely without pulling the anchor on top of himself!

In the second narrows we caught up to the other group quickly again and there was finally an option to pass a few of their team. While waiting for them to escape a pothole I saw a slight chance of stemming over it. It was over water so there wasn’t much risk but it was one of the hardest potholes I have stemmed. While still five feet above a member of the other team, I answered a question Tom had asked me.

That guy was looking back and forth for 20 seconds before he said, “I’m trying to figure out who is talking!?”

I laughed and said, “Right above you ...”

“Well how the hell did you get there?!”

We all had a pretty good laugh.

It was at this point that their TL (trip leader) asked us to pass them. I should have waited because it made two of their group stay in the water (waist deep) for 3–4 extra minutes. Bad foresight on my part and I still feel bad about it, though it seemed they were fine with it.

Their TL explained to his group, “We are letting the purists pass us.”

Braden and I teamed up to throw my pack over the lip and somehow the sling slipped off of my wrist and my pack fell 20′ over the other side.

The other team’s TL said, “I’m starting to lose my faith in you guys.“

Ha ha, perfect timing.

Soon after we used the Waterpocket for a 15′ drop Tom going last.

In the third narrows we stayed in the watercourse where you would usually exit on the left. That was a lot of fun, and I will do it that way every time in the future. For the final rappel before the climb up to the last sequence, we used a sandtrap in tostada mode to add some weight to make up for poor geometry. I think Cassy was LAWAR.

We were now at the climb for the final rap sequence and it was time to address the extra knot pass that was now necessary. One idea was for Scott to wait until the other group caught up and to use their ropes. The problem with that is we hadn’t seen/heard from them in hours. We had no idea how long before they would make it, and there was always a possibility that they wouldn’t make it out that day. We determined that a stacked lower & rappel would work best. Tom and I headed up to rig the drop. We fiddlesticked the top tree and got to the second station. There was the typical cluster of six colors of webbing from the tree put there by pounding hearts at dizzying height. Our plan was to wrap the tree with our own webbing and quicklink for the lower and a tether. It was to be removed by the LAPAR in the spirit of ghosting the canyon.

When I got to the station I was pulling out my webbing and the thought of adding onto this mass of loops and confusion didn’t seem too appealing. We had a somewhat complicated system to rig with lots of moving parts I wanted to see clearly while I was working. I pulled out my knife to cut it all out, and had the image of the group behind us getting to the tree cold and tired and not having any webbing to replace what I was about to cut off. I voiced my thoughts to Tom and we agreed to leave the existing webbing and use is as our lower and safety tether, having had a plan and knowing that ghosting the tether would not have added any difficulty for us, but may have put those after us at risk.

For the stacked lower I rigged an MMO (Munter Mule Overhand knot) and attached it to another MMO which was then attached to the tree. Scott rappelled down to us and hooked his Critr just below the lowest knot. I released the overhand and Mule knot and lowered him until I was out of rope. I released the second overhand and mule and we lowered Scott until his whistle let us know the rope had reached the ground. He rappelled the last 250′. The most difficult part of this rigging was the 480′ of rope we had to keep organized on this ledge. I had a huge pile of lap coil and Tom had the same. This technique was used so that we didn’t have to ‘pass any knots’ through the entire process. You can see a recreation of the stacked lowering system here.

We pulled up the rope and re–rigged to rappel, removing the Munter and carabiner, and retying the ropes together. I headed down first, a little excited for the knot passes. I’ve done them before at similar heights but in caves so there wasn’t really the same feeling of exposure, just the rope disappearing into blackness above and below. Here you could see the tiny tourists at the bottom enjoying emerald pools, and it really gives you the sense for how high you are. The first knot pass was at 330′ just above the bird’s perch.

The second knot pass was free hanging at 240′. Bonus points for getting dizzy due to spinning while passing that knot.

Next came Tom, and then Cassy. Both of their VTs (Valdotain Tresse) wouldn’t hold well enough on the second rope and they involuntarily slid down until their devices were jammed into the knot. They rigged a loop for a step up and were able to use it to move up and get past the knot—both with level heads and no sweat. They actually admitted there may have been some swetting.

Braden was last. He was the only one to do this ALREADY sketchy rappel without a safety biner on the fiddlestick. He threw the 3mm Amsteel pull cord from just below the bird’s perch and managed to keep from twisting up with it.

He made it safely down and his first words were: “That was my first time passing a knot guys! I just didn’t want you to worry because I wasn’t.”

Ha ha, what a bad ass.

Tom had to pull hard to get the fiddlestick to release and then the waterfall made up of 900′ of rope and pull cord came crashing down. You could not ask for a better grand finale to an awesome canyon/adventure/weekend with terrific canyoneers and friends!


Anthony Dye

© 2018 Anthony Dye