My oldest brother invited all of us to San Rafael Swell to spend some time camping and do some hikes. We did two hikes when I was there. The first one was supposed to be planned for Ding and Dang but the 4X4 road to it looked like it had some rock fall and couldn't go through with our trucks so we just bagged that one and decided to do Chute Canyon when we were in the area. It was a pleasant hike and good for the kids. Not as slotty though but pretty good for all of us.
This is the campground and my brother bought a nice brand new trailer. It's really nice! My nephews made this really nice fire pit area and they did a really good job!
The next day we did this big hike called, Eardley Canyon. It's supposed to be long so we left early in the morning. We hiked 2 miles on the wash until we got to Eardley Canyon. Then hiked along this ridge to get to the top so we can hike down Eardley Canyon which is more possible to do.
It took forever to get to the top but we made it, it was hot and tiresome. It was steep and there was a lot of rock scrambling to do.
At the top, we went down this chute. It was a freakish hike down! Lot's of loose rocks and really steep. My brother calls it "Devil's Descent". I call it "Devil's Chute". This took a long time especially for the little kids.
Then we made it down the wash and we took a break. This is where my brother started getting worried that we were losing time in the day. It was harder than he thought and thought it would be smoother than this. There were a lot of boulders to climb over and a lot of water pools to go through.
We had to go through like 15 pools and the water was cold. Everybody was shivering because there was no sun shining on us because we were in a slot canyon that is always shady.
Little Andrew had a hard time getting through the water parts and had help from his parents but he did most of the swimming. Good job Andrew! All the other kids were really brave too.
It took a while to go through all the water parts and we had 4 rappels to go down and with 10 people, it took a lot longer than we thought. We were worried that we were losing daylight. When we got out of Eardley Canyon, we were sighed with relief. We were all happy when we walked along the wash back to the trucks. It was barely getting dark when we got back. The grandparents back at camp got really worried about us but we stayed positive throughout the whole hike and made it.
This was the first rappel I have ever done. Not bad!
