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Lodge Canyon Flash Flood - July 24, 2010
July 24th I got in line at the backcountry desk a little before 4 am to pick up our reserved permit for Lodge Canyon (Saturday) and wait for a permit in another canyon for Sunday. In the early morning, the weather report left from the day before showed 20% chance of isolated thundershowers and flash flood risk as low for Saturday. For a few hours I was waiting and talking with a Las Vegas guy who was waiting to get permits for a group of three. He was the leader of the Las Vegas group of Spry Canyon fame. He had done many Zion canyons. Before opening, the ranger posted the new day’s weather report and it had raised the chance of thundershowers from 20 to 30% and the flash flood risk from low to moderate. While the two of us were picking up our permits, a man came up to the window and handed in a permit for five people who had decided not to do Spry Canyon that day. The guy from Las Vegas asked the ranger if he could switch from Behunin to Spry, which the ranger let him do. He had done Spry before and the two guys he was with, he said, were climbing buddies, but hadn’t done much canyoneering. Since Spry and Lodge have the same trailhead and we only had one car, I asked him if we could bum a ride up top. He gave me his cell number and I went off to assemble my group of four and pack our gear.
Driving up I assumed (never a good idea) the guy from Las Vegas knew the location of the trailhead since he had done Spry before. It turns out he didn’t remember correctly. He drove too far and so both his group and ours hiked up the wrong canyon east of Upper Pine Creek in what turned out to be more than just an unfortunate waste of time for them. Anyway, it was a very hot day and this detour cost us about an hour and some water, but backtracking to the road my group of four split with the Vegas group and hitched back down to the correct trailhead and headed up through Upper Pine Creek and up to the saddle. Dropping down from the saddle we waved to the Vegas group as they went left down Spry and we hung a right through the wash and then descended a steep sandy area with a few boulders between Twin Brothers and Deertrap Mountain. At the base of the steep section we continued walking through sand. The temperatures were over 100 and the skies were blue. We stopped for a quick bite to eat near the turn-off to go up to Mountain of the Sun. Soon thereafter we were at the top of the first rap into the Lodge slot. Taking a look at the weather conditions we saw only blue skies with very few wispy clouds, certainly nothing that would have made us think twice about continuing on.
The four of us made good time down the first and second rappels with one of us setting anchors while another pulled rope and cleaned. We descended the third rappel (30-35’) with a long piece of webbing to the top of the dry fall at the end of the slot. It was at the third rappel that we heard the first sound of thunder and saw the first flashes of lightning. There was no rain yet, but we picked up our pace. The first of our group dropped the 40’ or so off the dry fall and traversed to the block just east of the watercourse. Trying to pull the ends of the rope up to the ledge he found that one of the stopper knots was caught on a log. While he went to scout out the R5 anchor, the second of our group descended to the ledge and with some sort of magic touch managed to whip loose the stuck end of the rope. I came off the top of the dry fall last and pulled the rope, moving toward the R5 anchors as it started to rain and the wind started to pick up. By this point the rain was picking up steadily and we were trying to decide how much time we had and whether we should wait on the top of R5 or drop the 190’ to the anchors of R6. We decided we were too exposed so the first of us descended 155’ to an intermediate 2-bolt anchor. He had a third 60 meter rope that he set on the intermediate anchor and dropped as a single line all the way to the ground, before descending the rest of the way to the top of R6. We figured on leaving this rope and rapping two at a time to the ground (it was an old backup rope for just such a situation). I came off R5 last, in what was now an all out downpour. Coming down I could see water pouring off two slots on the western side of Zion Canyon, at least until I couldn’t see the other side of the canyon at all. I pulled the rope from R5 faster than I had ever pulled a rope before and unsure how safe we were at our location we set the anchor and threw the piles of rope off R6 hoping we could move fast and get off the cliff. We wanted to move because we were worried about rock fall and we didn’t know what to expect when water came flashing out what had been a dry fall just minutes before.
As the first of our group went to move off the edge of the final rappell there was a loud crack of thunder felt as much in my chest as my ears and a bolt of lightning that hit on the western side of Zion Canyon. Almost at exactly that same moment I looked over the block of rock on my left and saw, at the same time the guy who was about to rappel saw the flash come bursting out the Lodge Canyon slot. It was black and dark brown and was throwing rocks and debris. It looked like the smoke monster from Lost. So the guy who was about to rappel came back up and we settled down at the top of R6 to analyze the situation and our options should it get worse. It rained for at least 30-35 minutes while the temperatures dropped sharply and the wind whipped mist and sand on us. After the rain stopped and started and stopped again the falls kept gushing for at least another 30 minutes. Once debris was no longer coming off the falls we descended to the bottom and made our way down to the employee living area and then to the shuttle.
We headed back to the backcountry desk to check in. It was then that a group from Las Vegas had been washed out of Spry. We gave them what information we could about their start time and where their cars were and then left to reflect on a wild day. I hope the guys from Vegas recover quickly.
I'm new to the forum but have been impressed by the discussion. I look forward to your comments. I'll post a few pictures as soon as I can figure out how.
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