Cerberus

[Turtle]

From another thread...



Speaking of Cerberus, I was out there last weekend descending it again and I was shocked at how many anchors we didn’t find. I don’t’ remember Sonny setting up “that� many retrievables.
Sonny can correct me, but if I remember correctly he set about 5 to 8 retrievable slings (toggles). I set a macrame or two as well.



When we first dropped into the canyon we found many anchors with a couple of “non-anchored� drops but then we came to a very long section of canyon where there were no signs of passage whatsoever!
My guess is you are referring to either (a) the two drops that we bypassed by scrambling canyon left, or (b) the canyon-right option immediately below the bypass. About the latter, Chris says "From here there are two potential routes downstream. One is to follow the main streambed. However, we chose the alternative which is to hike over a low, rocky saddle off to the left of the gravel platform. That leads to a small, steep rocky gully.".

Though I'll note you wouldn't have seen many anchors in the canyon-left option either. We did three rappels in there. The first was where Sonny had his incident (http://www.canyoneering.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1298). The second and third Sonny rigged with retrievable slings. (I remember the middle rappel well since I had a hell of a time actually pulling the toggle via 180 ft of 9mm dynamic retrieval line.)

So now that I think about it, if you went down the two drops we bypassed, you'd have travelled a long, anchorless section, regardless of whether you went canyon-left or canyon-right at the split.



I thought maybe we’d ended up in the N. Fork somehow, but according to Chris’s report/map…the first drop in the S. fork starts after the input to the N. fork.
Not sure what you're referring to here, unless you're talking about the two drop-in alternatives. Though I'm not sure how Chris would know with certainty that the drop-in option we did not take had no rappels upstream of the confluence.


I was confused (not surprising to many I’m sure) that so much of it looked unfamiliar.
No comment. :p


So then we come to this 300’ drop with no signs of anchors anywhere and they’re like “surely you didn’t use a retrievable here?� And I’m like “ no, we never did this drop�. I’d never seen it before (it wasn’t the big one we did last time – that would come later)

This was almost surely in the canyon-right option described above. There was indeed a big drop in there.


I can’t figure out for the life of me either how on earth it took four of us (all competent and fairly expedient) 15 hours to descend, when it only took 12 hours for 6 of us last time and building anchors the entire way.
Are you saying you went slower than the turtle? :eek:

[Canyonette]

From another thread...

Sonny can correct me, but if I remember correctly he set about 5 to 8 retrievable slings (toggles). I set a macrame or two as well.

I thought it had been maybe 5 or 6, but we had more "anchorless" sections than this. So you set some retrievables as well - that would have put us between 8 & 10 "anchorless" raps. That sounds about right.


My guess is you are referring to either (a) the two drops that we bypassed by scrambling canyon left, or (b) the canyon-right option immediately below the bypass. About the latter, Chris says "From here there are two potential routes downstream. One is to follow the main streambed. However, we chose the alternative which is to hike over a low, rocky saddle off to the left of the gravel platform. That leads to a small, steep rocky gully.".


Though I'll note you wouldn't have seen many anchors in the canyon-left option either. We did three rappels in there. The first was where Sonny had his incident (http://www.canyoneering.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1298).

We actually stayed canyon right the whole time and I never did see that "incident" spot. I looked for it.


So now that I think about it, if you went down the two drops we bypassed, you'd have traveled a long, anchorless section, regardless of whether you went canyon-left or canyon-right at the split.

Yes, we did rap those drops that we’d bypassed. I guess this is where some of my confusion came from. So the canyon actually has two drops near 300’ depending on the route one takes. We didn’t keep track of the number of raps but there’s a good possibility they numbered near to or more than 30!


Are you saying you went slower than the turtle? :eek:

Well Mark, you really ought to change your name to "Roadrunner" or some similarly descriptively accurate moniker. As I recall, we spent a lot of time catching up to “turtle� who’d gone on ahead rather quickly! You’re no more a turtle than I am an orienteer!

~Cya soon….but probably not this weekend! :(

I’ll call you tonight.

~Canyonette