Woody Canyon Pothole Escapes

Does the idea of having to escape from a pothole intimidate you? Going into Woody Canyon we felt the same way, but it ended up being our favorite canyon of the trip!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast intro
• 1:01 Introducing Sharlene
• 2:13 North Wash trip summary
• 3:49 Woody Canyon description
• 4:33 What is a pothole?
• 6:18 Keeper pothole vs regular pothole
• 8:04 Get recent conditions reports
• 10:55 Wetsuit/drysuit choices
• 13:55 Pothole escape strategies
• 14:27 Partner assists
• 14:47 Throwing bags
• 18:18 Rope lengths
• 21:09 Types of hooks
• 24:12 Rappeling in Woody
• 25:25 Our canyon crux
• 28:12 Sand traps
• 29:55 Pot shots
• 30:34 Diving for lost gear
• 37:13 Pothole escape sequence
• 41:51 Creating a 2:1 with a pulley
• 44:20 Episode summary
• 48:26 Podcast outro

Transcript

Katie: 0:08

Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Katie

Carma: 0:10

and I'm Carma and you're listening to, I'd rather be canyoneering.

Katie: 0:14

We're best friends who totally geek out about canyon rigging and beautifully slot canyons. Basically we'd always rather be canyoneering. But when we can't, we spend every spare minute, we have talking about it.

Carma: 0:26

This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please seek professional instruction and practice technical skills in a controlled environment before entering slot canyons. Your safety is entirely your own responsibility.

Katie: 0:41

Welcome to our canyon crew! For today's episode, we are going to do our first ever trip report, and we thought that it would be even more fun if instead of Karma and I just talking about it, we might tell an actual person who was not with us, but would've loved to been with us. So today we've invited our friend Char Evans, who's on our Canyon crew to come join us. Say, hi, Shar.

Sharlene: 1:08

Hi.

Katie: 1:10

Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sharlene: 1:11

so I'm Charlene uh, a little bit about me is, I love doing lots of things in the outdoors. I'm a recreational therapist by trade, so I like to keep that up. I live in like the Orum area and have like three kids and a husband, and it's fun family life. I also volunteer with a group called Mountain Mamas. And we do a lot more than just canyoneering. We do all kinds of adventures, but I'm one of the quote unquote canyoneering guides. It's all volunteer runs, so that's why it's kind of a quote unquote canyoneering guide thing, I enjoy taking women on adventures and, yeah so that's just, that's me.

Katie: 1:58

Awesome. Thanks for being with us

Carma: 2:00

Yeah.

Sharlene: 2:01

Yep. Thanks for having me.

Katie: 2:02

and for everyone else, all the listeners out there, this'll be kind of like a campfire environment where we're sitting around and telling stories and asking questions and this should be a fun episode.

Carma: 2:13

Katie and I just got back from an awesome trip in the North Wash. We had so much fun. It ended up just being the two of us because we were able to get away in the middle of the week, which is like a super hard time for most people to get away. But, um,

Sharlene: 2:28

a miracle.

Carma: 2:29

yeah, it, it really was. It was like the last week possible to do this before my husband started his new job, which he starts tomorrow. So we spent a couple days in southern Utah, near the town of Hanksville, and that whole area is called the North Wash.

Katie: 2:47

Yeah, and some of you might recognize this area as where the Leprechaun Canyons are, the Irish Canyons chale, blarney, those are all in the same area.

Carma: 2:56

And our favorite canyon of the trip was Woody Canyon.

Katie: 3:01

Yeah,

Sharlene: 3:03

So how many canyons did you run down there?

Katie: 3:06

four plus

Sharlene: 3:08

Nice. Wow.

Katie: 3:10

It was that adventure that I'd talked about like a year ago of doing the poison springs area in maybe a figure eight. So it was scenic and slide nine and constrict nine, and there's this upli extravaganza that you can use to link them and you go up this unnamed canyon with entirely too much rope on your back. But we did those first as a warmup, waiting for the day when it was not cold or having potential snow. So at a 70 degree weather, we decided to go get the potholes that were full of water.

Carma: 3:46

yeah.

Sharlene: 3:46

Awesome. Yeah, I wanna hear about it.

Carma: 3:49

Yeah, so, Woody Canyon is pothole after pothole after pothole is how road trip Ryan describes it. that was really intimidating to me at first reading the descriptions. it also says you need like three people minimum for your group, and it was just me and Katie. So, um,

Katie: 4:12

we had some good intel.

Carma: 4:13

yeah.

Sharlene: 4:14

I was wondering about that, and so I don't know too much about potholes. but in my brain, I always thought, don't you need more? Don't you need like a team to, you know, partner assist if the potholes are sketchy or, yeah. Does that play a big factor in potholes normally?

Katie: 4:33

Yeah, let me start out by telling people what a pothole is, in case they don't know. It's really common to find these in the desert and maybe a little less common in other places. but A pothole is when the canyon water comes down and a waterfall carves out, kind of a bowl or a tall dish. Another word for that would be like a silo and. Those become these kind of dark shafts that you can go down to. They can be anything from just a foot deep down to, I mean, they can be 20 feet deep, but these particular potholes were mostly in the 15 foot area, like eight to 15, a lot of that size. And then those can be dry or they can be full of water or they can be half full. So when they're totally dry, then you can stack people on top of each other to get out. when they're full, you could just swim over them and you're pretty easy. If they're half full, that's when they get tricky because you can't necessarily stack people on top of each other. If three people would be underwater, that doesn't work out. It's harder to stack rocks to get out, harder to stand on bags, just get a little more tricky. And so, yeah, definitely recommend having more people. Kind of the more the merrier in a pothole fest. for us, we actually knew some people who have been down this canyon upwards of 50 times, and they knew our skillsets really well, and they had just been there the week before lots of fresh beta on how all the potholes were, what levels, and they knew that we'd be able to stem over because they not only are right around our same heights, but they've done it that many times and had been out with us enough to say, yeah, the one that might be tricky, you could stem over. So we had a lot of really good intel to make that choice.

Sharlene: 6:18

Okay, so my first question actually is, is there a difference? I've heard the lingo like this is a keeper pothole. is a keeper pothole the same as a regular pothole?

Katie: 6:28

A keeper. Pothole is one that usually you need more than one person to escape. And a keeper is one that for a number of reasons might become really difficult to get out of, even with two people, maybe even with three. So it could be a keeper pothole if it's hard to climb on people to get out. Maybe it's really, really vertical, or maybe it's kind of overhung which makes it hard to climb up, or it could be a keeper when it's half full because then it's hard to throw something up and over because it's hard to tread water and throw a pack. One of the ways to get out of the potholes is to fill a bag with sand and throw it and it could be a keeper if that throw is really long and far and maybe you physically can't throw 40 feet. And so you might have to do some really creative things to be able to get out of it.

Sharlene: 7:16

Cool. So yeah, like not all potholes are keepers, but keepers are potholes kinda thing. Okay.

Carma: 7:22

Yes, exactly.

Katie: 7:22

It's a pothole that is particularly difficult to escape,

Sharlene: 7:26

Gotcha.

Katie: 7:27

and people have been known to spend hours in them.

Sharlene: 7:29

and that's what this Canyon specifically had, right? It had a lot of those kinds of potholes.

Katie: 7:35

It had one or two that they call keepers

Carma: 7:37

Yeah.

Katie: 7:38

people will say actually that it's in keeper mode because some of'em are really easy to escape when they're dry, and so people will put conditions up online. It's like, oh yeah, this one's in keeper mode, or this one's in swim over easy mode.

Sharlene: 7:51

Right.

Carma: 7:52

it depends on the mode that it's in.

Katie: 7:55

There's one in Neon that we did and that one took a pyramid of three people to get out and that's a potential keeper. If it were full, it wouldn't be though, cause you just went right over it.

Sharlene: 8:04

it seems like in general you're always gonna wanna stay up to date on the most current beta of what's going on in canyons. But like, really specifically with these potholes, it was really great for you to have local beta,

Katie: 8:17

Yeah.

Sharlene: 8:18

very recent information because you really wanna know what the water levels of these as they are consistently like changing.

Katie: 8:25

Yeah, and we got our be from like four days before

Sharlene: 8:31

with all the spring runoff, were they all pretty full then?

Carma: 8:34

They weren't as full as we thought they would be. They were kind of, we think like mid-level, like we didn't swim across the top of any of them, and none of the significant ones were dry either, so they were somewhere in the middle. I think it was in fun mode. That's what I would say. Woody was in fun mode because it was problem solving mode, which is also keeper mode, but there wasn't anything that got us trapped for very long. Like we were able to solve all of the problems that we came up against.

Katie: 9:11

And most of the time you weren't treading water. There was one swim at the end, but usually you were just a little less than shoulders deep. And so that made it so it was easy for me to go over and basically I'd climb into a pothole and make sure we could get out on the other side. Then I'd come back over and partner assist karma down into what would be a significant down climb. And so it was nice that I wasn't trying to tread water and help her climb down. So I think that was a fun mode type of thing. However, if it'd been a lot deeper, she probably just would've jumped right into the water. So it's kind of in between where that is and how the catches are.

Carma: 9:46

Yeah. We had two full swimmers. Yeah. Cuz we had the, the one, uh, where Katie did some diving and then, uh, we had the long one that we had to swim.

Katie: 9:57

Oh yeah, that happened.

Sharlene: 9:59

By diving you mean like diving down into a pothole or,

Carma: 10:04

Yeah.

Katie: 10:05

Karma's giving me crap because I dropped a basic into the bottom of a pothole,

Carma: 10:10

She dropped. She dropped my basic into the bottom

Sharlene: 10:13

Oh, no.

Katie: 10:16

so I had to retrieve it. I mean, I didn't have to, I could have bought a new one, uh, but I chose to get into my diving mode from my college days. Yeah. And so luckily we had wetsuits on the entire time and they were hooded wetsuits. So that's plays a big part in whether you're going to have fun in one of these canyons, or whether you're gonna come out hypothermic because you might be in the pothole for a while. And that's also something that we kind of gauged so we wouldn't have karma get in at the same time as me. We'd see if I could escape it and once I was ready to help her out, then she'd get in and come over that way. No one's just chilling in the cold water for no good reason.

Sharlene: 10:55

so My other question is, how do you determine what millimeter of wet suit to wear to these canyons?

Katie: 11:02

Right? That would be what you find out in your research, you know, what's suggested and what other people are running with. It definitely depends on how wet the canyon is, cuz if it's totally dry. Then you're not gonna eat much of a wetsuit, but if you're swimming the entire time, you're gonna want something thick and maybe even five mil and five mil on your chest and a hood. I wore five mil and it had a jacket, so I had 10 on my chest and I was comfy, cozy, and that's worked for me in a lot of canyons. But you might be able to drop down if you happen to own a couple of varieties or you're gonna go rent something in particular, then that's where you look up the bay and see who's running it, in what mode. And how big are they? Because people who are on the smaller side are getting colder more easily, or some people are just more susceptible to cold in general. Like I've got Ray nods, so that'll catch me sometimes if I wasn't careful. So I pay attention to who's saying, yeah, if you're on the colder side, you'll wanna do this or add a vest to your current wetsuit. I look and pay a lot of attention to those types of things.

Sharlene: 12:03

Cool.

Carma: 12:04

Katie and I both have the same kind of suit, but honestly I think I probably could have ditched my jacket for a lot of this canyon until the very end when we had to swim, across the lawn keeper. I was glad I had the jacket on.

Katie: 12:19

And I couldn't have dove without a hood and a jacket. So maybe consider some of those things that might be a rescue scenario where you might be in the water longer or. You know, or if you're the person, I mean, this would really suck, but if you're the only person in your group wearing a wetsuit, then everyone's gonna vote you to be the person to stay in the water and help people out all day long. And you're gonna maybe even get colder if you're the only person wearing a wetsuit.

Sharlene: 12:43

look At those worst case scenarios like, Hmm, if I drop my basic in the water, I might need to retrieve it.

Katie: 12:49

Yeah. Hmm. That might happen.

Sharlene: 12:51

Things might happen.

Carma: 12:53

Right, or like the whole thing with the keeper pothole is that it could keep you in there for a long time. When you're in the shade in really cold, canyon water, how long can you maintain your body temperature in that situation? So,

Katie: 13:09

And how bad is the wind? The day before there were 20 mile an hour winds and 40 mile an hour gusts. If you had had all that evaporative cooling on your body, you might need a jacket to put over the wetsuit if it was a really windy day like that,

Sharlene: 13:23

do you ever have canyons where you do a dry suit?

Katie: 13:27

You could. Yeah, you could. they're popular in Zion. They rent'em for Zion. Seattle has dry suit canyons for a long time. They're kind of looked down on, cuz you might get a leak and people are saying, oh, that blows everything and you've lost all your heat. But a lot of those leaks are pretty slow. So it just kind of depends on what you're comfortable with. If you're more afraid of ripping your dry suit or if you're more afraid of being cold. But I've seen it work for a lot of people, so it's up to you.

Sharlene: 13:55

I was gonna ask you a question. You know, it sounds like there's a lot of terms I'm used to, like partner assists with getting out of potholes. And I know a little bit about what a potshot is, but yeah, if you could explain what a potshot is and then maybe did you have to like, use an ISIS hook? Is that what that is?

Carma: 14:15

Oh,

Sharlene: 14:16

I abyss. So yeah, I'm really unfamiliar with the mechanical means of getting out of potholes as well as, the skillset of getting out of potholes. So if you could like, talk about some of the gear.

Katie: 14:27

Yeah. So some of the main ways of getting out of potholes is a partner assist, so somebody boosting you up, or maybe a couple of people boosting you up to get you up there. One of the really cool things about it is you can have one person standing up against the pothole and another person pushing them into the pothole wall to help keep it stabilized and then another person can climb up. So that's cool. Some other ways to get out are to throw some sort of a bag of sand, like a pot shot is a name brand. And then I think the other one is an escape bag. I think that's the on rope one. And those you fill'em up with sand and then cinch'em shut. And then they have two handles that you tie your rope to, so you chuck that rope up past the pothole that you're gonna get into so that it goes up and over the lip of it. And when it drops over the other side, that gives it 90 degrees, of friction going up and over. And that helps it to stay down. So you kind of. Tend to send lighter people over first if you're in a big group so that it holds, and then they can help the other person handline up or grab onto a cord that they're holding or put down a foot strap. Or you might even bring two pot shots. Or two of those bags. Or three of those bags so that you can throw over extra weight. And that way any size person could go over first, and that's really helpful.

Carma: 15:44

Yeah, and it really depends on the canyon geometry of the specific pothole that you're trying to escape from. So you throw the potshot first, the bag of sand before you even get into the pothole a lot of the times so that you're high up and you have space to throw. You're not like down in a hole trying to throw it out. you try to throw it

Katie: 16:05

The basketball shot does not work. Don't do that.

Carma: 16:08

especially if you're treading water.

Sharlene: 16:10

Right. I was thinking if you can't touch the ground, if you don't have that momentum, that would be a big issue.

Katie: 16:15

Yeah, so throw before you go,

Carma: 16:17

Yeah, throw before you go. That's a good tagline, Katie. Um, you're gonna throw, whatever, you know, your pot shots or your packs, whatever you're using as your weight over the lip of the pothole before you even get into it. And it just kind of depends on the canyon geometry, how much weight you need in, the pot shop bag, like how much sand, whether it's dry or wet. And then whether you're getting over like a really big, lip, cuz some of the edges of these potholes are just like a balance beam width wide that you're standing on.

Katie: 16:53

you're barely riding the pony.

Carma: 16:54

Yeah. if it's one like that where you're gonna throw it over and this bag of sand, the pot shot is gonna like sink way down into the water. So you have the weight of that down and then the rope going up and over. This saddle like that gives you a lot of friction. And usually just one pot shot was enough for one of us to climb out on. It was enough weight and enough friction for us to climb that rope,

Katie: 17:18

but it feels like a flat exit. If you came into a pothole and then it was just flat for a while, There were very few of those in Woody. Those are tricky because your bag's just gonna come right back at you, so you'd have to throw more of them and maybe do more climbing work in order to not wait it as soon. And so that worked better on ones that had more footholds, and you kind of might wanna send your best climber if it's got a pretty flat exit to it.

Carma: 17:45

right.

Sharlene: 17:46

That makes sense. I'm just processing. So if the angle doesn't go like you said, directly up and back down, then that definitely throws off the whole friction on the rock so that makes sense.

Katie: 17:59

They actually used to teach firefighters that they could repel off their oxygen tanks if they put it up and over a window sill because they had a 90 degree bend on it, and that 90 degree bend added so much friction. So yeah, when you think of those 90 degree bends you can think of, that's a lot of friction. That's good. But then think of your tabletop and how things slide right off of it.

Sharlene: 18:18

Right. Okay. That makes a lot of sense.

Carma: 18:21

And Something that we learned by doing this canyon is that when you're choosing your rope length for a pothole canyon, you need to consider not only like the vertical length of rope that you're gonna have to use, but also. The horizontal distances that you're going to have to cover.

Katie: 18:42

Right?

Carma: 18:43

So when you're choosing your rope length in a pothole canyon, you need to make sure you have enough rope for your longest repel and for your longest throw.

Sharlene: 18:54

Oh, okay.

Carma: 18:55

And you may need to. Double or triple the length of your longest throw. If you're going to be throwing like two or three pot shots, each potshot needs an end of rope attached to it for climbing up on. A couple of like 60 footers or 100 footers can be really handy. in a pothole canyon. And this is a spot where again, it really helped that we knew people who knew this canyon really well and gave us. Very specific beta because when we were reading the Road Trip Ryan description, we got really confused cuz it said the longest repel was like 33 feet. And so we're thinking, all right, so minimum we need, you know a 70 foot rope and then at the top of the beta, it said for the rope length that you should bring it said you needed a hundred foot rope. And the math just didn't add up.

Katie: 19:55

Yeah

Carma: 19:56

we're like, that's more rope than you need to do that long repel. So why is he saying that we need this a hundred foot rope? When our only repel is 33 feet long, and when we were in the canyon and we had that really long throw at the end, we realized, Oh, when you're doing a pothole Canyon, pay attention to the rope length if they have one that they recommend you to bring, because it's not just about vertical feet it's also about horizontally, like how far are you gonna have to throw, what is your biggest pothole?

Katie: 20:32

Yeah

Carma: 20:32

then also how many pot shots or packs are you gonna be throwing, because you need rope attached to each one. So that you can climb out on'em.

Sharlene: 20:41

Right.

Carma: 20:42

And honestly, two in this canyon with the potholes being one right after another, right after another. We did, take the pot shot and actually had the rope stretched across more than one pothole, you know? So that's the thing too. It's not just how long is the one longest pothole, but how long is like the sequence that you're gonna need to keep your rope going through to, you know, get everybody across, the obstacles.

Katie: 21:09

Right?

Sharlene: 21:09

and did you need to, in this canyon, use any hooks or other hardware or things like that? I.

Carma: 21:17

we didn't have to use. Any hooks to hook out of a pothole in this particular canyon. So that's another way to escape a pothole is to use like IBUs hooks or what are the grappling hook ones called Katie the, Talents. Yeah. So we didn't have to like use any of those on the rock to get up and out of a pothole in this particular canyon. But that is a common strategy, like I believe, uh, Emily, you have to do that, right? You have to hook out a potholes.

Katie: 21:51

Yeah. So Emily has a lot of hooking and. It's not just the hook that gets you outta there. The hook is attached to a ladder an H V A, and you basically, use two of'em to go up the wall or you can hook one and then maybe get really high up the ladder and get out that way. But sometimes you need two, one for each of your Feet. So you can move up, put another hook in, move up, put another hook in, and it becomes a lot like aid climbing. It is basically, and yeah, that's another way we didn't need to do that,

Carma: 22:21

No.

Katie: 22:22

but it's nice to have those as a oh crap exit. It was cleaner to do this one with pot shots and you didn't leave a bunch of scarring behind. So it's nice when you can do it with partner assists and not hooks so that you don't scar the rock behind you.

Sharlene: 22:35

Right. It would make sense to not have that be your immediate go-to since we're trying to do Lena Trace and stuff.

Katie: 22:41

Exactly trying to do leave no trace. That's like, okay, we'll try that last, it's in my back pocket. We brought them and I brought like five of them, so I'd have different sizes, but yeah, that's more of the last resort.

Sharlene: 22:52

So I just realized you said different sizes. So I mean, in that respect, it's kind of. Similar to like trad climbing, how they have different sizes for different, like cracks and stuff. Okay. So that's kind of what you're looking at with like hooks and

Katie: 23:06

Yeah. The Talon has three on it and it's really cool cuz it goes in, it looks like a grappling hook. It has three sides to it. And so you can pick the width and depth and angle a little bit on'em, and that's cool. And then the two feet come in and help keep that pressure on the wall nicely. So the talons are really cool. The other ones are also very cool. But they have more of a depth to them.

Sharlene: 23:29

How do you know what size of like hooks or, did you say cloths is that they are

Katie: 23:37

It was a talon. It was one of the hooks. Yeah, it It's one of the hooks though. Hooks is the big word. So yeah,

Sharlene: 23:42

Okay. I guess that just depends on the research that you do. Will they typically say, Hey, you need this size of hook, or,

Katie: 23:50

sometimes. Sometimes they're as good as like our trash climbing friends who will say, you need a number two or something. Other times they just say a hook. But I actually saw it in the beta on like a Facebook forum. People were asking each other, which hook did you use? And someone's like, oh, I don't know. It was one of the IBUs hooks. And someone's like, well, was it this one or this one? They're like, uh, take both. I don't know. There was a spot where you could choose to repel off of a hook and there's what's called a solution pocket in the wall of the canyon, and that's like a little bit of an alcove. And in that little place that got bored out by wind and sand, it leaves something like a flake about the size of a handhold, and then you can put a hook on it, repel off the hook, and then flick it out. It's not a very long repel. You don't really want metal coming, you know, creaming towards your face on a big, long repel. This one's like 30 feet, but we chose to use a sand trap there instead. Because I didn't love the idea of metal flicking at my face.

Carma: 24:48

And with that too, there's always a chance that you could blow the hole that you're hooking out of

Sharlene: 24:53

Whatever you're hooking it onto. Yeah,

Carma: 24:55

yeah. Cuz it is just sandstone. I mean, it. There's always that chance and it had really good canyon geometry for the sand trap at this particular repel. Like it is a great sand trap. Repel.

Sharlene: 25:08

How many reps were there? Were they all. Repels where you had to build sound traps. Were there other types of repels there?

Carma: 25:18

For us, there was only one mandatory repel, and that was that 30 foot repel that we used the sand trap for. And then at the very end of the canyon was another like 15 footer that

Katie: 25:32

This is like the crux for us.

Carma: 25:34

Oh my gosh, it was so dumb. So like we got through all of these potholes, right? With just the two of us. And then you go through this really pretty like corkscrew section that's just you know, a little down climby, but nothing major, like, no major obstacles. After we get across this long keeper anyway, and we get to the like 15 foot repel and the hook hole for it had been blown. So we couldn't hook it to repel down it. And so I was like, oh no, we wouldn't have wanted to anyway, but it didn't look too bad. So I was like, Hey, Katie, just like handline me down it and then I went to a partner assist Katie down it. But it was super awkward. There was no good place for me to stand down there. And so I'm trying to stand on this little shelf, kind of off to the right and trying to support Katie, but she's coming down and can't quite get her weight over to me.

Katie: 26:28

I am like, I'm sorry, but Gravity's gonna pull me straight. Karma's like, go right. And I'm like, I can't.

Sharlene: 26:33

Yeah. Her fall line was definitely not where you were.

Carma: 26:35

no, her fall line was not where I was, but I, there was nothing for me to stand on in her fall line. no And it would've been nice to have a third person to like push me into the wall as I helped her down. And anyway, we ended up getting to a point where she just had to bail and.

Katie: 26:54

it was with finesse. So car was like, come this direction. I'm like, I can't. Um, the fall line is right here. And so I basically lowered myself and found like barely a foothold and I was just like, push my hip in. And that gave me the room to kind of spin my shoulders around and get a good jump off of it. So it worked out. It was fun and ridiculous though.

Carma: 27:18

It was like the sketchiest thing we did all day. Was that,

Sharlene: 27:24

I think it's funny how many times in canyons it's always that. Aspect of, we were not expecting that to be the hard part. And that's always what pops up in these canyons. Like, oh, we planned for this keeper and that keeper, and we had all the beta on this. And then you kind of relax and then suddenly this new challenge pops up and it's like, oh, we were not planning for this.

Katie: 27:49

yeah. and I'm looking around, I'm like, can I fiddle something? Can I use a fiddle stick on something? The hooks have all blown like, Hmm, tricky.

Carma: 27:59

And it was only like 10, 15 feet. This is such a seemingly small thing to be like stumping us right now after we've just gotten out of all of these potholes.

Katie: 28:12

So do we need to get you some gear for pothole escapes? Charlene

Sharlene: 28:18

I know.

Katie: 28:20

does.

Sharlene: 28:20

Would you recommend first purchase, maybe a sand trap, and then go from there to purchase other,

Katie: 28:26

I'd say the potshots the most basic,

Sharlene: 28:28

Oh, okay.

Katie: 28:29

cuz most people can fill that with sand and truck it. And that's pretty straightforward. The sand trap. I went with friends who knew how to use it and I practiced it a lot before I did it on my own. I've known how to do'em for over a year and this was the first one that wasn't double checked by somebody else

Sharlene: 28:47

Okay, so there's a little bit more technique involved with the sand trap versus

Katie: 28:50

a lot. Yeah. Sand traps when you pull'em. You need it to be heavy enough that you're not going to drop anybody, but you need'em light enough that you're not going to core shot your rope when you're trying to retrieve it. And even in the milking of it, the way that it works, you could still really easily, the friction of the pole could core shot your rope when you're retrieving it, or you could get it stuck and there's too much weight and you just can't get it down at all. So lots of little nuanced things with that. I would definitely go with people who are quite seasoned in using it and watch them and learn from them. And we even went with a group where somebody in front of us was doing sand traps and pulling'em. So I got to see the pole on quite a few. Then set one up and pull that one myself. That was really helpful to get a really good idea of how they work and what they look like and what they look like from the top and the bottom before I set'em up for anybody else.

Sharlene: 29:42

Yeah, I would definitely not plan on going out with a pot shot or a sand trap without having gone through a Kenyon with someone who can teach me how to do it first and do it like multiple, multiple times.

Katie: 29:55

Yeah, and the pot shot's pretty intuitive. You're basically throwing and seeing if it stays, so, and then how much weight holds you with so much friction, you kind of get a feel for that. The only surprises I've had with the pot shot were, okay, we're gonna go back to that one spa where I had a little bit of trouble, and it's the tricky pothole. So basically you have to look ahead with potholes, one, two, maybe three potholes to know if you can get out of'em, because sometimes you need to do your throw from a couple of potholes back to get out of the final one. So it's very much a looking forward type of thing. So on this one, I threw it and then I went to ascend out and I had a TI block on it, they're really good for pothole escapes because they're really narrow contours of a TI block. Allow it to go up very cleanly, and if it gets up to the rim and the lip of the pothole, it's still going up nicely and I'm not trying to shove like an entire hand to sender over the edge of the pothole. Scarring it up a ton. That low profile's really cool. So I was trying to use my tip lock and I realized I needed an attachment point. I needed like a foothold attached to it, and so I let go of the tip lock to grab my tether, and when I did it went up and over the edge and it was out of reach. And the other side was just heavy enough to pull the rope up and over the edge of that lip again because I wasn't able to hold onto it with just my hand strength anymore. So I was like, dang it. And I lost my ti lock up and over and I was like, it's fine. We brought extra stuff. I had another tib lock in a bag, and I had a basic in my bag, and Karma had a basic in her bag. So we had lots of ascending options. And so Karma hands me her basic, and I've been in this deep water for a little bit now. Messing with this and getting everything set up. And I went to put the basic on and I have one neoprene glove that has a thumb cut out of it so I can use the dexterity of the thumb. And I unscrewed the carabiner and put the basic in my hand that had all glove and it was cold and the glove was thick and I just, I babbled it and I dropped it to the bottom of the pothole and

Carma: 32:17

Yeah.

Katie: 32:18

I look like karma. And I'm just like, ah. Cause I know it's like a hundred dollars worth of gear. I just dropped down there.

Sharlene: 32:24

Yeah. I, totally agree with your decision to have dived down and grabbed that, by the way,

Katie: 32:31

Right. But it was deep. Uh, I took one kind of exploratory dive and just to make sure there's not any junk down there to get caught on and stuff. And kind of if can I get a quick grab on it? And I went down there and I'm just like making a grid with my hand. I'm just doing like three across by three tall. I just like putting my hand down in the sand and I didn't find it, but I kinda got close to where I thought it might be, cuz when I babbled it, I tried to catch it with my legs and it went between my legs. So I knew it was somewhere right in there ish. And I made a mental note of where ish was. And so I come up after the first quick dive and I come up with like a handful of crap in my hands and throw it out of the way so it's cleaner down there. I clear a couple more sticks and then I go for my real dive and karma recorded it. She had her GoPro going and I go under, I go upside down. I dive all the way down. There's this little like archway that sometimes people can walk through and I put my hand up in the archway to hold myself under cuz neoprene makes you wanna float up. And then I found two footholds to like hold myself underwater by my feet. And in the video, you really can't even see my feet anymore. I'm like gone.

Carma: 33:41

She's like doing a handstand under the water. And like I see her feet, her boots come up and push on the wall, and I can tell she's like pushing herself down under the water to try to get this basic, and on the video it's like, I know she's a diver, but like it feels like she's under for a long time, long enough for me to be like, okay, uh, come back up. Now. I don't like how long you've been down there.

Katie: 34:12

Oh man. We counted it or watched the video and it was 10 seconds.

Sharlene: 34:16

Oh man. That's a long 10 seconds though.

Carma: 34:18

Yeah, it felt like a long time. It was when I realized like, okay, um, I don't wanna be alone in this canyon. Like, come back up, please.

Sharlene: 34:27

Oh, no.

Katie: 34:28

Oh, I came up with it. I was really glad I had a hood on my wetsuit because I couldn't have done that dive. It was so cold the night before had some snow like it was 70 degree weather for us, but the water was cold and so I would not have wanted to, I couldn't have done that if my head was that cold.

Sharlene: 34:43

Mm-hmm.

Katie: 34:44

can have a hood, you can get like a neoprine skull cap. Those are really nice to have in pothole canyons. But I also could have just walked away from that and it would've been fine. A hundred bucks isn't a big deal,

Carma: 34:54

Yeah.

Sharlene: 34:54

I guess in the long run it's not a big deal, but still there's that part of you that's like my canyon booty. I need to get this stuff back.

Katie: 35:02

Right. But we got it back and that was awesome.

Carma: 35:05

yeah. And then, That TID lock ended up being really helpful in the end for getting out that pothole.

Katie: 35:13

Yeah, so we would've had to throw another pack over. But as the TI block came over, it wedged itself in the rope groove. There's a rope groove there from where people have pulled each other in and out a lot. The ti block wedged like a climbing nut and made it super easy to get out. So I don't know that, that's like a normal trick of the trade. And then you climb on top of that pothole and I had to throw again. And this one you have to throw really far to get it out. And I was pretty tired at this point. So, I actually ended up going, you know, I think I can climb out of that other side. So I had Karma came in where she could give me a hand assist out. And so then I proceeded through and I found I could climb up high enough to throw the pot shot far enough to kind of hook a shelf on the other side, like an overhang. And I was like, yeah, let's do that cuz I don't wanna stand up here and throw 40 times and get exhausted cuz it's just, it was like one foot out of. Reach of where I wanted to throw it, and I probably could've taken more sand out and thrown it that far, but

Carma: 36:09

Yeah,

Katie: 36:10

it's just kinda a trick of how much sand to throw. Or do we need to throw two of these? But it'd be really awesome if everyone in your group had a pot shot

Sharlene: 36:18

yeah, in that case, yeah, how big is a pot shot? Is it a pretty minimal piece of

Carma: 36:23

a small rope bag. It's like a canvassy bag that's, I don't know, the size of like a pull cord bag

Katie: 36:31

Yeah. Like

Carma: 36:31

kind

Katie: 36:31

small travel pillow

Sharlene: 36:32

mm-hmm. So, I mean, it wouldn't take up too

Katie: 36:36

No,

Sharlene: 36:37

you know,

Katie: 36:38

you can usually lay it in the bottom of most packs

Carma: 36:40

Yeah,

Katie: 36:41

and it's just two layers of canvas thick.

Sharlene: 36:43

so it's like if you're planning on all going and doing potholes, you might as well all have that extra piece of gear.

Katie: 36:50

And then that would be nice too, because if everybody was waiting around for the next pot shot to get thrown, you'd be kind of precariously placed trying to get lots of people up on those saddles in between potholes waiting for a bag to come through. So that might be a little harder with a big group. That was kind of an advantage to two, is we could usually sit on the same saddle together when we wanted to.

Carma: 37:13

yeah. Something that was surprising to me because this was my first pothole canyon really and I was nervous about it at first. Keeper potholes have always intimidated me and you always hear all of of the horror stories about people having to get rescued because they got hypothermic swimming for three hours in a keeper pothole. And so I was intimidated, but something that I learned, and maybe it just really helped being able to see it in person, was the sequence of how to get in a pothole and get out of a pothole, which I hadn't been able to picture beforehand. It would start with us standing on the lip of something and chucking a potshot over, the pothole on the outside edge of it. And then,

Katie: 37:57

Yeah, that other side, the down

Carma: 37:58

Yeah, the down canyon side. So we're taking the potshot, we're throwing it over the pothole and it's landing in the next pothole over the exit lip. And then we would have to partner assessed into the pothole. So usually we would handline the first person in which a lot of the times was Katie Handline. Katie in, she swims over to the other side and tries to see if she can get out. And so when I got towards the end and we were tired, Katie would get out on the other side to make sure that we could get out, but then she would have to come back into the pothole to help me get in. This is where a third person would come in handy, is there would be less up and down for the first person who's. Escaping the pothole cuz they wouldn't have to get out and then come back in to help the next person down. Because if you're the last person getting into the pothole, there's no anchor up there for you to use to, you know, get down this, Yeah. There's no handline, there's nothing. So unless it's steep enough for you to just slide into the water, which most of the ones we did in Woody weren't that deep. And so you don't wanna sprain an ankle getting into it, so you need someone to assist you to get down. And then we both go across and climb out on the other end. And so it was like that sequence of you're looking ahead, you're throwing first, you know, you're sending one person in, making sure that they can get out. And then in our case, because there was only two of us, we then had to have that first person come back in, and assist the last person into the pothole.

Katie: 39:33

And luckily, I didn't have to go back on every single one for you and it was more the ones at the end that kind of had bigger drops and needed somebody to help you get into it. It was only a few at the end.

Sharlene: 39:45

Yeah, I could see not every pothole, but if a pothole has a big drop, then yeah, you need someone

Carma: 39:49

Yeah,

Sharlene: 39:49

that was gonna be one of my bigger questions was how does sequencing, affect everything? Like what is your sequence? And so it sounds like you definitely always want to have one person, or well, in your case, one person because there are two of you, but like your whole group is kind of staying out until that first person they're like the explorer that goes and explores the area and they prove that it's possible. Once they prove it's possible, then everybody can move forward.

Katie: 40:22

yeah.

Sharlene: 40:22

That's kinda the sequence.

Katie: 40:24

you can see what's coming up next, and once you see it's possible. Yeah. And that way you don't have a bunch of people trapped in a pothole with no means of regress. And that was nice. Karma was always there for me. Even if I just got tired or got cold or anything, I could have always ascended back up to where she was.

Carma: 40:40

yeah, and we could have switched places.

Katie: 40:42

And that was my plan on the one where I was like, I don't know if I can climb outta that, but I think I can, I can always ascend back up. Or Karma can take some throws from right there cuz she's fresher than me right now. Cause I've been in this cold pothole for quite a while and taken a few throws already.

Sharlene: 40:56

Yeah, that's a good point. I like the idea of, yeah. It doesn't have to be solely on one person. If there's one person that's just pumped and needs to get outta the water, yeah. You can go handline back up. You can switch places and have someone else, you know, paste that out.

Carma: 41:13

yeah. As long as you always keep, someone on that up Canyon saddle, you know, they're the escape person. Anyone who is in the pothole has an opportunity to get out. And if they just need a warmup, if they just need to take a rest, or if you just all need to strategize because you haven't yet figured out how to get out, you always have that way to rewind where everyone can be in a safe place, to strategize or just to rest, or to swap out a person or whatever.

Sharlene: 41:44

I like that. The rewind. We need the rewind button constantly in place.

Katie: 41:48

control Z.

Sharlene: 41:49

cool.

Carma: 41:50

Cnrl.

Katie: 41:52

and you asked what items are good to have. Another item that's really good to have in potholes is some sort of a pulley. Doing a two to one to get someone outta a pothole is awesome. So like when I wanted to help Karma, she would just put a pulley or a micro traction, whichever one she wanted onto her harness. And what I would do is I would tie the rope to me and then I'd send it down to her and give her this little drop loop and then I could pull on that other one at two to one. And I don't have to lift her out of every single pothole. She can help climb, I can pull and I'm only pulling half of her weight out every time. So that is an amazing technique, that I learned from canyon earing chicks. Super fun, awesome way to do it. And it really helps you to not be exhausted by the end of the canyon, cuz you didn't pull somebody all the way out of everything.

Sharlene: 42:40

So you're saying just by that pulley system, it's the redirect of the rope that causes it to now you're not lifting all the weight yourself. That redirect, makes it so you're lifting like, what is it, half the weight now or

Katie: 42:53

it's half the weight. Mm-hmm. And you can picture that because I'm still holding all of her weight on my harness as the anchor, but I'm not lifting all of her weight. there's like a figure eight tied to my harness, and that static line is going down to her. Then it goes through the pulley that's on karma and then comes back up to me. So when I'm pulling the other rope is holding half of her weight and the rope that I'm pulling through, the pulley only has half of her weight on it. It's sharing the load. Those two ropes are sharing the load. And you can just sit up there and pull the whole group out one by one. And it wouldn't actually be a lot of work.

Sharlene: 43:29

Wow, that's awesome.

Katie: 43:31

I think that's probably the very first technique that I would learn in pothole escapes.

Carma: 43:36

Yeah, the micro traction was nice to use because you also get some progress capture with that as well.

Katie: 43:42

Yeah, made it really nice to not be able to drop her or anything.

Sharlene: 43:45

And by progress capture you mean, you're pulling the rope and if you were to like let go of the rope, this device you have is now grabbing that rope so it doesn't all fall back down. Is that what you

Katie: 43:58

Exactly.

Sharlene: 43:58

capture? Okay.

Katie: 43:59

So micro traction is a pulley with teeth.

Carma: 44:02

Yeah. so like as Katie pulls me up, if she needed to take a rest somewhere, you know, halfway up the pull, we don't lose the progress. She doesn't have to lower me all the way back down. the micro traction can keep me where I'm at for round two of pulling up

Sharlene: 44:18

That's awesome.

Katie: 44:19

That's a good toy.

Sharlene: 44:20

Oh, Well, I was just gonna say, I've learned a lot from this and I'm super less intimidated by the idea of going into a canyon with potholes. Now I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe now I know I can just go with some friends like you and, it definitely seems less intimidating after talking to you about it, which is great.

Carma: 44:44

Yeah.

Katie: 44:45

It's a new flavor. It's really fun. I've been in canyons where I run into like one or two or something, to go in and just the whole goal is to go play in the potholes. Made it really fun to get lots of practice and lots of confidence. I liked having'em one after the other and really getting a lot of variety.

Sharlene: 45:02

Yeah, that's nice.

Carma: 45:03

I was surprised. I loved it. I was so intimidated by it and I ended up loving it. I'm like, puzzles are awesome. It's all these puzzles that you get to solve one after the other, after the other. And really that's one of the things that I've always loved about canyoneering. And so it was fun to step into like this new type of puzzle to figure out. And. It's just a lot of fun. You get to splash around, you get to play in the dirt. Like, like we have a video of me, I'm filling a pot shot and I'm like, da da da da. Singing a little song about how I'm filling up the pot shot because I'm just playing in a sand Pitt. And then next we're gonna jump in a water hole and then you're gonna climb out and play in another sandpit. And Katie made up a song about fishing for packs cuz like at the end there's this long keeper that we could not throw the pot shot across.

Katie: 45:59

It's like 40 feet

Carma: 46:01

It's so far and there's not a good spot to throw from. It's a funky angle that you're standing on and it's just too far to throw. And so Katie ended up swimming across it with like a half full pot shot and found a lip.

Katie: 46:15

with the pot

Carma: 46:15

just swimming with the pacha. And then she found like a lip where she could stand up and just get enough leverage to bump it over. Cuz it wasn't a big edge on the other side, but it was just far

Katie: 46:26

And there was good climbing holds. Like char, you could climb on those and stand on those and you'd find them with your feet. Yeah.

Carma: 46:31

right. So she went exploring and found a place to do that. And then we ended up just like chucking our packs into the water and letting them bob around. And I tied them to the rope and Katie just like slowly like pulled them in, like fishing for packs, just fishing for packs across this huge pothole. Anyway, we were just playing around, joking around. It wasn't. Nearly as scary or intimidating as I thought it would be. By the time we got to that point, we had already conquered I don't know, 10 potholes already by that point. I don't remember how many. There's a lot. Um,, yeah, I lost count too, but it, it ended up being so much fun where I'm like, this is one of my new favorite canyons. I'm really excited to come back with friends.

Katie: 47:23

it's really fun once you learn the tricks, like so these kind of lips in the potholes when we throw'em over, usually one pot shot holds my weight, or I might need two on this one. And you start to feel even more confident about judging the angles and the friction, and especially when you have'em one after another after another. It's really fun. I can't wait for you to go,

Sharlene: 47:42

Yeah. I'm super excited. I'm, I'm ready to go try now.

Katie: 47:45

All right, well, I hope everyone out there is excited to go try some potholes too. Grab some friends who know and throw before you go, Thanks for being with us, Charlene. We appreciate you.

Sharlene: 47:58

Yeah, of course. Thanks for asking me.

Carma: 48:01

so if you think Woody Canyon sounds like a lot of fun now that we've talked about potholes and how to escape from them, and you wanna be able to like see what that really looks like. I. Katie and I took a GoPro down the canyon with us, and we'll be posting a video to our YouTube channel so you can get an idea of what it looks like for throwing pot shots and setting up a sand trap and just having a lot of fun splashing around in the potholes. If you're totally hooked on canyoneering like us, remember to subscribe, so you don't miss any episodes and you can also reach out to us on Facebook. with questions, comments, topics you wanna talk about, or just to say, Hey, cuz We would love to hear from you. Thanks for dropping in with us and we'll catch you on the wrap side.