Englestead Canyon - Zion

March 25, 2022
Englestead Canyon with exit down Orderville Canyon

Englestead and down Orderville. We had estimated the canyon would take us 12 hours. We met John at the visitors center at 6 am. He would be our shuttle and canyon partner for Englestead. John is a new partner to us but is an experienced canyoneer. Laura and I were looking forward to doing a new canyon with someone more experienced than ourselves. Our group of 5, Laura and me, John and Isaac and Nicole drove to the east side of Zion and parked about a mile from the Englestead parking area due to mud on the road. Choosing to walk rather than risk getting stuck, we were parked and moving at 7 am. It took about an hour to reach the head of the canyon and when we arrived, we knew it was going to be a cold day. We'd already been walking on snow and ice and the canyon would be no different. As we all geared up in wetsuits and harnesses, I made an effort to be ready quickly. I wanted to rig the first rappel and show our new partner John that we were a strong group and he would not have to be our guide. Isaac belayed me across a patch of ice and to the anchor and I set the first rappel with a 300' rope. I verified all was good and set off on the rappel knowing that efficiency would be important today. Laura agreed to go last and bring the pull cord. I lowered down the first rappel, descending past several ice falls and large blocks of ice at the pothole 250' down, eventually reaching the bottom of the rappel at 300'. Wow, that was a long one! John came down second. I had expected to see Isaac or Nicole come down next but it turned out that they decided not to join us in this canyon. They were bailing and Laura was on rappel. This happened to work out nicely because they were able to then pull the 300' rope and take both of the long ropes back to the car, saving us from carrying them all day. We simply switched to using John's 200' rope and pull cord combo. It also saved us a shuttle trip, or about 2 hours at the end of the day!

 

So, when Laura reached the bottom of the rappel, Isaac pulled the long rope back up they headed back to spend a tourist day in the park. Laura, John and I continued down the canyon, efficiently moving through the first 5 rappels. We would descend short drops onto frozen pools and were continuously on snow. We crossed several sections with 20+ feet of snow. We weren't sure if this made the canyon easier or more difficult but it was beautiful and fun. 

According to the information we had there would only be 5 rappels. As we descended, we soon learned that was not the case at all. One after another, they kept coming. We believe that we did about 17 rappels total before reaching the exit of Englestead into Orderville Canyon at 12:30 pm. 5 hours to complete Englestead.  We had made excellent time to this point and were happy to now be at the walking portion of the day, the Orderville exit. The snow stayed continuous until we were within a mile or so of the Orderville/Narrows junction. It was fortunate that we were able to walk on top of the snow without postholing otherwise we would have been in for a long exit. As we neared the exit of Orderville, we encountered one mandatory rappel and several swims that were about 25' across. We kept moving smoothly with few breaks and were at the narrows junction at 2pm. 1:45 of walking with the tourists in the narrows and we were at the bus at 4 pm.

The Guillotine