Imlay Canyon is one of the longest and most technical canyons in Zion NP. It is considered second in difficulty only to Heaps, a legendary canyon that has claimed lives. This classic canyon is two long days rolled into one: a five-hour hike that goes up about 2,300 feet in elevation, followed by a long canyon with 20+ awkward rappels and several large keeper potholes. The final rappel takes you deep into the Narrows with two hours of uneven river walking after a very long day. Needless to say, this canyon tests your body and spirit.
Both Imlay and Heaps are very condition dependent. If there has been a lot of rain and the potholes are full, the trip through is easy, albeit cold and wet. You can swim right through the potholes and emerge on the other side. If the canyons are drier and potholes are low, you will encounter difficult conditions that involve escaping keeper potholes using partner assists and tools such as potshots or hooks in extreme conditions. Our descent of Imlay was at the beginning of June, a time when these canyons are usually fairly dry, so we knew Imlay would be in hard mode and we armed ourselves appropriately with materials and time.
We began our ascent at 3:30 am, walking up the Zion West Rim Trail from the Grotto. It was going to be a scorcher of a day, and we wanted to do all the climbing in the dark and reach the canyon around sunrise. Our party consisted of me, Max, Iris, Eric, Pride and Troy. Plenty of strong young men to carry ropes đ. At Scoutâs Landing we took a short rest. As I was lying on my back, looking at the incredible dark sky overhead, one of the most amazing shooting stars that I have ever seen made an appearance. It streaked across the sky for a full five seconds, illuminating the firmament. We took this as a good omen for our journey and continued onward and upward along the West Rim Trail. Just past the bridge before the ascent to Behunin Pass, we turned off the trail into a wash and climbed several ridges, passing the drainage that leads to âNot Imlayâ, a different canyon entirely. We were nearing our goal. A few more climbs up and down saddles and steep trails and we found ourselves on a huge expanse of sandstone, looking down into the sneak entrance to Imlay Canyon. The sun had risen, and we were making good time. We descended the huge sandstone face to the bottom of the drainage, filtered water for the rest of the day and put on our wetsuits. This was the beginning of our canyon journey.
Imlay is the secret heart of Zion â a place that very few people ever see. White Navajo sandstone is deeply sculpted into gorgeous narrows throughout the entire canyon and filled with water. As you proceed further into the canyon, the walls get taller, the potholes get bigger and deeper, and you develop a sense that you are descending into a subterranean world with only the most filtered light reaching the ground.
Even though conditions in Imlay were fairly dry, there was still a lot of water to get through. The awkward rappels began right away. Although there are some bolts, most of the time we were rappelling off logs or chockstones, making for difficult starts. Fairly soon we came to the first landmark called the trash compactor. Imlay gathers a lot of dead wood, present throughout the canyon as stuck logs or logjams, but the trash compactor is a particular gathering place due to its topography, featuring a depression and a steep slope upward, completely filled with logs. Some years this presents a formidable swimming obstacle, but fortunately the trash compactor seemed to have dried up and thinned out, so all we faced was a slippery climb up a few logs.
For a short stretch, the canyon turned into a sandy dry wash with beautiful hanging gardens and sculpted walls, giving us a brief moment to warm up. In reality, this section is the entrance to what is called the Extreme Narrows, the deepest, darkest and most beautiful part of Imlay. With the light dimming, and after what felt like a hundred awkward rappels, we finally got to Big Bertha, the first keeper pothole. Water levels were fairly low, so Max and Pride were able to toss me over the edge quite easily, where I sat and provided an anchor to everyone else. And thus, my illustrious career as a pothole dwarf began đ. Once in a while, it pays off to be small and light.
The narrows kept going and the potholes got more complicated. One of the potholes requires an accurate potshot toss around a log across the pothole to set up a guided rappel and avoid entering into the pothole, which is deep and difficult to escape. Towards the end of the section, we all wound up swimming in a huge pothole with all of our bags floating by in a giant yard sale, getting pulled out on a rope by Troy.
We finally exited into the sunshine, cold and tired and needing some sustenance. We located a lunch spot and sat sunning like lizards. This was where Pride decided to entertain us all with one of the most unique stories Iâve heard. It all started when we took out our sandwiches. In a series of unfortunate events, Pride had purchased some extremely cheap sandwich bags that were apparently not for human consumption and reeked of petroleum. Worse, they had contaminated his sandwiches and made them inedible. As anyone who knows me is well aware, aside from being small and tossable, I also bring a lot of extra food and snacks. Fortunately, I had an extra sandwich as well as bars for Pride. As we sat eating and discussing the nasty petroleum sandwich bags, Pride took out a small plastic bag from his dry bag and informed us that the sandwiches smelled almost, but not as bad as this bag of mice preserved in formaldehyde that he was carrying around. There was a collective gasp and everyoneâs jaw dropped as we all said in unison: What?!?! Pride then calmly explained that the mice were from a science laboratory class he had before he came down and he forgot to remove them from his school backpack. This seemed almost impossible to believe, except that he passed the bag around and we all agreed it smelled horrible and contained things that looked like mice. Â We couldnât figure out how he had managed to take this terrible item with him and how it wound up in his first aid kit. Eventually, he owned up that these were actually cotton balls soaked in fire starter and part of his emergency kit. We all laughed. He really had us going for a while!
After our lunch break, it was time to head into the last and most difficult section called the Terminal Narrows. This section is filled with a succession of keeper potholes, which were all in hard mode as they were all half full. What this means in practice is that the water is too deep to stand in, but there is still about five to seven feet of lip to climb over. This makes it challenging to toss potshot anchors over the lip from inside the pothole. It was time to take out the hooks.
There is a specialized type of hook used to escape these types of potholes. There are small holes pre-drilled in the rock at regular intervals that can be used to hook into and install an etrier, which you can then use to climb up and over the lip. This is not easy and requires a lot of physical effort. Fortunately, we had several fit young men with us who had no trouble and were then able to throw down a rope for us to step into. As you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of time to get everyone up out of one of these potholes and down into the next one. The last pothole was the most difficult for the shorter ladies in the group. The pothole contained a log and a lot of woody debris and the rappel took us right into the pothole, where we promptly got stuck behind the log as it was too slippery to climb up. We were already really tired from the efforts of the day and this last obstacle was almost too much. Fortunately, Max was able to bodily drag me up and over the log, while Troy was able to help Iris. After the last pothole, we rappelled into a spectacular chamber with a deep pool and a final ledge a hundred feet above the Narrows. The view was breathtaking.
Once our party was down, all that was left was the interminable slog out of the Narrows. I realize that the Narrows is a huge draw for visitors to Zion and is the most popular hike in the park, so you might be surprised to find out that the Narrows is absolutely my least favorite Zion experience. I find river walking to be very slow and tedious and the throngs of tourists rather annoying. The worst is the paved river walk trail that seems to go on forever slightly uphill while my backpack gets heavier and heavier.
Imlay comes out far into the narrows where few people go, but for me the exit is definitely the worst part of the day and having it at the end of a very long and strenuous day wasnât helping. My general policy with the Narrows is that since Iâm wearing a wetsuit and have buoyant dry bags in my backpack, I try to float every single stretch that I can. The rest of the party were definitely with me on this one, and we spent a lot of time floating past tourists who were staring at us like we were some type of ninja. A few people asked what we were doing and I gave my usual answer: scuba climbing. I figure this makes more sense to people than canyoneering since we are wearing what appears to be scuba gear and have ropes. Most people have no idea what canyoneering is. A few people tried to emulate what we were doing, but without the flotation, it didnât work very well. We finally stumbled into the shuttle about two hours after the last rappel. Dinner at Oscarâs never tasted so good!
