Canyoneering Constrychnine

Trip Start Jan 08, 2007
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Trip End Dec 29, 2009


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Flag of United States  , Utah,
Saturday, February 28, 2009

I went canyoneering with the University of Utah's outdoors club. We had a group of 6 people, who all met up in Salt Lake City.  We drove through Price, the town I grew up in, on the way to southern Utah, so we stopped there and visited my mom for a bit.  I was driving my Mike and Schyler in my car and I noticed a couple of deer on the side of the highway.  Before they even crossed I knew they were going to, so I slammed on my brakes as one of them jumped in front followed by the other.  The first one crossed the road in time, but the second one just stopped and stared, now I know where the whole "deer in headlights" thing is really true!  I didn't want to see it get hit so I kept one hand on the steering wheel and covered my eyes with the other.  I ended up hitting the deer on the roading at 40 mph and it flew over the other side of the highway.  Poor thing!  I felt so bad it was still breathing and now had to die a slow, miserable death.  I remember reading somewhere that it's better to slow down as much as possible and hit the deer rather than swerve, because swerving might cause you to hit it from the side or rollover the car, which would be worse than hitting a deer My car
My car
 .  Luckily the hit didn't do any damage to my engine just messed up the hood and broke a headlight.  We were close to the town of Hanksville so we drove it there to stop and take it look.  It wasn't too bad.  Put some gas in my gas and continued on with a messed up car.

We camped that night somewhere in the middle of the desert.  It was freezing cold that night, I was in all the layers of clothing I had and slept in two sleeping bags.  The day never warmed up much either.  Not to mention I was sick with a cold.  Canyoneering did turned out to be an awesome experience though.  What we went canyoneering through was a section of Poison Springs Canyon called Constrychine Canyon.  It was a long hike just to reach the canyon and we used a GPS.  I'd highly recommend the GPS to find this place.  We did some crazy rappels, one as high as 190 feet (57 meters).  The canyon was real often real narrow, one of the rappels looked almost as if we were rappelling into a cave.  It was so far down and so dark I couldn't see the bottom. 

After all the rappels we hiked out, finding an interesting arch on the way.  I was really feeling sick at this point and I was also worried about how I was going to fix my car so I decided to head back early.  There was enough room for everyone to go back in one car (we had two cars) so they went and did more canyoneering and stayed one more night but I had to get to my mom's house in Price to figure out my car situation.  I'm glad I stuck around for Constrychine though, It was an incredible experience and I'd highly recommend it.  It's important for everyone to be well-prepared and know what they are doing, taking someone down into the canyon who is afraid of heights might be a bad idea because once you start into this steep, narrow canyon, you can't go back.  Wear gloves too for sure, I'm so glad I brought my or I'd have some awful rope burn!  I'd recommend going sometime in the spring, March-May, or fall, September-November, because it's quite cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer. 
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