In the Master’s Chambers

 Somewhere above our heads, an unseen sun beat down over a moonscape of broken stone, its bare-rock hills and the few scrub plants tough enough to survive the central Utah heat.

The walls of Chambers Canyon filtered out both heat and light. I was wedged deep inside its recesses, feeling the cool, smooth of the stone pressed on my hands and squeezed against my back. My legs strained to maintain steady pressure on my climbing shoes. Right then, those points of contact were the most important things in my life. If I let go, I would drop into the darkness.

A wanderer on the surface above might never suspect this great crack in the earth, not until he stumbled right up to (or into) it. Andrew and I, we sought it out. 

Now, I craned my head to the right where I could still see the light from the north end of the crevice that we had walked into. Still not too late to turn back?

Eventually, we would cross the point where it would be impossible or damn near it for us to turn around. At that point, our fates would be wedded to whatever challenges the canyon had in store for us.

To my left, Andrew scouted for the best route.

“It’s getting wider here, I don’t think we can keep going this way.”

“Well, where well the hell do we go then?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

If there was a way, it was beneath our shoes, in the place we couldn’t see, down there.

In a minute, Andrew was already working his way down into the crevice and was swallowed up inside the dark. I heard the friction of the canyon walls against his clothes, the occasional grunt as he worked against gravity to descend safely. How far until the bottom?

It would be possible in theory for him to climb back up the way he came, though much harder. The choices we made in the canyon wouldn’t be reversed easily. Maybe we couldn't reverse them at all. It was different from most hikes that I’ve taken where I’ve been comfortable with the idea that it wouldn’t be too hard to turn around.

Canyoneering seemed to cut a little closer to the real truth about the way of the world: that we are always crossing thresholds. Every decision has permanent consequences, some more than others. Once we cross those thresholds, the only thing we can do is accept the new reality, try to adapt and keep moving forward.

Claustrophobia anybody? This was one of the wider places in the canyon.

I stayed squeezed between the walls for a small lifetime, finally heard Andrew’s voice from below: he had made the canyon floor. Now it was my turn.

I started scuffling downward, working to maintain steady pressure as I felt my way along the knobs and indentations on the surfaces. In one instance, my legs would be fully extended and I kept my arms behind me. In another place, I held myself up with my knees. The friction of the sandstone ground and bit at me, on my hands, through my pants and jacket. Finally, Andrew came into view, and then I was able to put my feet down on the sandy floor. It was the first time I’d had my feet on anything like solid ground since we had started on the canyon about 20 minutes earlier.

Going down 

We began our descent about a mile from where we had parked the car. The journey began innocuously enough, a sandy path between chest-high walls of stone. The walls themselves formed a curious ripple pattern that I can only liken to carton drawings of ocean waves, only laid out horizontally. The stone moved in smooth arcs and then abruptly turned into a new direction. There were about 18 inches between the walls at the beginning, forcing us to move awkwardly between the curves. Gradually, the space between the walls began to tighten and the floor began to drop out from us.

We put our feet up on the walls and continued forward, getting higher and higher above the crevice, until eventually we both needed to climb down.

Back at the bottom, the walls closed out the sky. It was dark, but still light enough that we wouldn’t need a headlamp to navigate. There was the sandy path again, a road through the dimness we could follow to the next challenge. Here and there, a space would open up. There would be a sunlit alcove or some other place where ages of water on rock had carved out natural splendor.

Water. Even here in this dusty canyon, that ambitious liquid had left traces of its presence. Every now and then, I would make out a branch or a knot of desiccated vegetation on one of the walls overhead, reminding me that floodwaters had climbed that high. It probably hadn’t been that long ago either. 

No one had forecast rain on the day that we were going down, but if they had, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how screwed we would be. The narrow slot we were walking down was essentially an enormous storm drain for the acres and acres of surrounding hills. Because most of those hills were mostly stone, they would sluice all that water to our location trapping us like rats.

The thought of getting in such a maelstrom kept me on edge.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of liquid trickling over sand.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Just taking a leak here,” Andrew said from around the corner.

The water has shaped some interesting passages in the rock

One thing I noticed going through the canyon was how little life there was. The environment consisted of bare rock and bone dry sand with an occasional glance into the cloudless sky. At least it was cool here in the shade and that was a mercy. Eventually, the canyon walls widened and a hot strip of midday sun cut down into the center of the canyon. Soon we had to climb up again to where the water had carved the stone into a convex hollow, with the widest portion at about 6 feet across, that tapered at the top and bottom. I felt as though I was navigating an enormous sewer drain.

There were plenty of other places where the water had worn out immense chambers that were probably the reason that the place has the name Chambers Canyon. Distant light from above created a soft illumination on the red rock. The stone was pleasing to the eye, lit up in warm color and defined by sensuous curves.

At the same time, everything in those chambers was utterly lifeless, like a tomb. The places reminded me of the elaborate ballrooms in “The Masque of The Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe. Those rooms, like the chambers that we walked through, were arranged so that no one walking down the main corridor would suspect that they existed until they came upon them. Similarly, the only way to see the rooms in the canyon is to enter, and the only way to enter is to clamber down through the walls.

Abstract art

 There were more narrow sections of the canyon up ahead. In order to go forward, I got familiar with using my butt as a means of transportation. I would keep steady pressure on my hands, back and climbing shoes and shift my butt by degrees in order to get a new hold on the walls. It was slow, but it was progress.

My jaw stayed clenched tight in these sections. A fall at that point wouldn’t have just meant injury, it also would have meant getting stuck deep, out of sight and miles from where anyone could hear screams for help.

A similar predicament had befallen a young adventurer by the name of Aron Ralston only 20 miles or so from this place. Most people are probably familiar with the story of how he got stuck in Blue John Canyon with a rock crushing his arm and only escaped because he cut off his trapped appendage with his pocketknife. I didn't have a pocketknife.

I was amused to read a National Geographic story later about some Aussie canyoneers who had taken to calling the dangerous rocks in canyons rall stones as a dark homage to the amputated outdoorsman.

There were a few rall stones in the canyon, including a few that fell into the canyon and got wedged between the walls. I tried not to put any weight on these, but sometimes it was hard to avoid.

I watched with some discomfort as the floor dropped further and further away, but the canyon walls were still too narrow for me to get there.

Beware the rall stone

The sight of a light in the canyon up ahead was just about the closest I’ve come to having a religious experience.

I scuttled eagerly toward the brightness like a green tendril seeking sun. I executed a couple of last tricky moves and then I was out.

Or was I?

Gradually, I became aware that I was still closed in by walls, that I had to scramble around a house-sized, boulder.

After that boulder, we found a 20-foot drop we had to go down by wedging our backs into the stone. When we got to the bottom, we found another narrow canyon section. I opted to wedge myself up higher where there was a wider passage. Andrew opted for the low road, which worked out for him until he got stuck and had to wrench himself out.

The narrow section moved on to another chamber and an up-climb.

We crawled out dazed, into the bright sun. We were still closed in by canyon walls, but now those walls were about 100-meters apart. The zone between was lush and green There were cottonwood trees with impossibly green leaves, cacti and sedges, all drawing water from the canyon drainage. The passage through the weird dark of the canyon made it all the more exhilarating to be in this place.

I thought back to all the tomblike stone behind me, beautiful but barren. And yet that crack through the desert was the reason for the life here. It was the Nile in the Sahara, enriching the plants and animals with water, filling the visitor with an appreciation for strange beauty. 

View from the last section of technical canyoneering