Excerpt of Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
(Page 9 of 15)
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It's two-fifteen P.M., and in the balance of sunshine and thin stratus
layers, the day's weather is poised at equilibrium. In the open section of the
canyon, the temperature is about fifteen degrees warmer than it was at the
bottom of the deep slot. There are a few full-fledged cumulus clouds listing
like lost clipper ships, but no shade. I come upon a wide yellow arroyo entering
from the right, and I check my map. This is the East Fork. Kristi and Megan
definitely chose the correct fork to return. The choice seemed obvious then, but
even obvious decisions need to be double-checked in the backcountry. Navigating
in a deep canyon can be deceptively complex. Occasionally, I'm tempted to think
that there's nothing to it; I just keep going straight. With three-hundred-foot
walls fencing me in five feet to either side, I can't really lose the bottom of
the canyon, like I can lose the route on a mountainside. But I've gotten
disoriented before.
A forty-mile solo trip in Paria Canyon comes to mind. There was a stretch
about a third of the way into the canyon when I completely lost track of where I
was. I hiked roughly five miles downstream before I found a landmark that
indicated an exact position on my map. This became critical, because I needed to
find the exit trail before night fell. When you're looking for an entry/exit,
sometimes being fifty yards off-route can hide the way. So now I pay close
attention to my map. When I'm navigating well in the canyons, I check my map
even more frequently than when I'm on a mountain, maybe every two hundred yards.
If we could see the many waves / That float through clouds and sunken
caves / She'd sense at least the words that sought her / On the wind and
underwater.
The song blends into something atonally sweet but unattended as I pass
another shallow wash coming in from the right. On the map, the arroyo seems to
correspond with what Kelsey has named Little East Fork, dropping from a higher
tableland he labels Goat Park.
The elevated benches and rolling juniper-covered highlands of Goat Park to my
right are up above the 170-million-year-old Carmel Formation, a sloping capstone
of interlayered purple, red, and brown siltstone, limestone, and shale strata
deposit. The capstone is more resistant to erosion than the older wind-deposited
Navajo sandstone that forms the smooth ruddy-hued cliffs of the scenic slot
canyons. In places, this differential erosion creates hoodoos, freestanding rock
towers and tepees, and tall dunes of colored stone that dot the upper reaches of
the canyon's cliffs. The juxtaposed textures, colors, and shapes of the Carmel
and Navajo rock layers reflect the polarized landscapes that formed them -- the
early Jurassic Period sea and the late Triassic Period desert. Settling out from
a great sea, the Carmel Formation sediments look like solidified mud that dried
up last month. On the other hand, cross-bedded patterns in the Navajo sandstone
reveal its ancestry from shifting sand dunes: One fifteen-foot-high band in the
cliffs displays inlaid lines slanting to the right; the next band's layers slant
to the left; and above that, the stratification lines lie perfectly horizontal.
Over the eons, the dunes repeatedly changed shape under the prevailing force of
wind blowing across an ancient Sahara-like desert, devoid of vegetation.
Depending if the sandstone shapes left behind are beat upon more by wind or by
water, they look like either rough-hewn sand domes or polished cliffs. All this
beauty keeps a smile on my face.
I estimate that the distance I have left to cover is about a half mile until
I reach the narrow slot above the sixty-five-foot-high Big Drop rappel. This
two-hundred-yard-long slot marks the midpoint of my descent in Blue John and
Horseshoe canyons. I've come about seven miles from where I left my bike, and I
have about eight miles to get to my truck. Once I reach the narrow slot, there
will be some short sections of downclimbing, maneuvering over and under a series
of chockstones, then 125 yards of very tight slot, some of it only eigh-
From Between A Rock and a Hard Place by Aron
Ralston, pages 1-30. Copyright © 2004 by Aron Ralston. All rights
reserved, no part of this excerpt maybe reproduced without specific permission
from the publisher.
