On September 10 at 4 PM, Mike and I set out to attempt a mega Zion canyoneering link-up, doing all three of Zion‘s biggest canyons in under 24 hours. It is a project that’s been a dream of mine for years and is one of the most complicated adventures I’ve prepared for.
On September 11th, Mike Dunn and I completed our version of the Zion Trifecta in a self-supported fashion, all on foot from beginning to end in 17 hours and 45 minutes. We stashed two backpacks before the attempt, which is well within the self-supported FKT-style rules. It is between 28 and 32 miles depending on the route future parties take.
It’s been an amazing project. We scheming together during our trip to the north wash last fall and trained rigorously throughout the spring and into the summer until I injured myself running the trans-Zion run. We did multiple speed runs through canyons, climbed West Temple and East Temple in a day on foot, and went Grand Canyoneering for the first time. While I was injured over the summer, we wondered if we were going to try at all.
Fortunately, Mike is an awesome partner and patiently waited for me to recover for months. I was depressed from being hurt but we were chomping at the bit for a run at this thing.
When another group told me their plans, Mike and I had already put the project on the back burner since I could barely run two months ago. Then when I got wind of their planned attempt dates, we scramble to get our shit together, got the gear packed, and went to stash our bags two days before our attempt. I had to work the morning of and the day after, we were extremely sore from running Heaps and carrying three backpacks, but we were psyched.
Mike’s partner Audrey dropped at Lava Point and we arrived early to sort our ropes, hardware, and a small trad rack together, and get fully in the zone. She sat back and watched, we made it clear that no help was allowed if we wanted a fully self supported attempt to be valid. Audrey stayed with the vehicle while we ran Kolob, after our resupply she would drive herself back home and be one of our emergency contacts I sent check-ins to from my ZOLEO. At 4pm we started the tracks and ran to Kolob.
We flew through the canyon, shocking ourselves when we we jumped the last rap in Kolob at 5:46pm, we got to the bottom of boundary canyon significantly faster than expected, began the climb out back to the car.
instead of ascending the fixed ropes, we decided to to the exit on our own power, clawing through the dirt and then Mike led two pitches of climbing, fixing our own canyon rope to a cam anchor and then the final tree so I could jumar on two hand ascenders fast. We used a rack from .2 to 3 BD cams.
After the uphill slog back to the car, we hastily ate some snacks, changed into dry clothes and shoes, donned small running packs, slammed an energy drink each, and took off with apples in hand down the west rim trail to Potato Hollow. At dusk we put on canyoneering packs and rappelled into Full Imlay canyon at 8:33pm.
11pm we had wetsuits on at the Imlay Sneak crossroads, and completed the final sequence of the canyon in short order. 12:32am Mike and I rap into the Narrows at Floating rock, pulled ropes, and power hiked to the temple of Sinawava for cache number two.
We changed at my car, pre stashed the day we started, ate, hydrated, and grabbed running packs for the road run and west rim trail climb to Heaps canyon. On the road, we were already running at 1:59am when I remembered to take a video of our progress.
2:27am we crossed the Bridge at the bottom of west rim
3:23am we crossed the second bridge on west rim
4:43am put on harnesses at the entrance rap to heaps canyon.
6:10am suiting up on wetsuits at the head of Heaps.
8:39am we were at the top of the final rap sequence, changed into dry clothes.
9:45am Arrived at Lodge canyon parking lot and stopped time
Canyon Timelines:
Leave Lava 4pm 9/10
Kolob, car to car - 3hrs 11min
Full Imlay, lava to temple - 5hrs 23min
Heaps, temple to lodge - 7hrs 52 minutes, 9:45am 9/11
We allotted two short breaks of 10 min or less between canyons to eat and resupply.
All in all a stellar adventure. Half the fun was planning preparing and training adventures together. We had no close calls, developed some decent blisters, and broke the only previous time of 25hrs 3min set by Buzz, Jared, and Ryan in ‘09. Thanks for the vision!