Conditions:Pandora's Box-20231116175747

Latest:	15 Nov 2023 (19 days ago)

Reported by:	Beerslot (17 reports)
Quality:	Great
Waterflow:	Very Low
Wetsuit:	None
Water temperature:
Difficulty:	Special challenges
Time:	11 hours

Team: 2 people with experience level Advanced

Trip report URL:

Comments: Borderline 5 star canyon with a large amount of hiking/scrambling. While in the canyon - it never lets up aside from sandy interludes between slots. Our difficulty wasn't the R- stemming; this part was relatively docile. The consistent contortion challenges, while fun and beautiful, mostly contributed to the physicality of this canyon. Even with the Meek's exit, this turned into a longer day than either of us anticipated for two people. My partner was on the larger side (6'-2", barrel chested, and roughly 215 lb) and he clearly had to fight his way through harder than I needed at 5'-10", 175 lb. At the exit, one is presented with a decision - a very long wash walk or a shorter (though still long) scramble, hike, and final downhill exit. After a day of fighting and squeezing through - this is not a clear-cut decision and I may choose the longer hike if I were to repeat this canyon. This was a fun day but not a canyon that I would recommend for everybody. Even with strong leadership, beginners, larger people, and those with less stamina may not be able to handle this canyon - a long day could easy escalate to a much longer day when parties begin to struggle with squeezes as they are so frequent. For the adventure seekers and those happy with some suffering - this is a great day.

All condition reports

Date	Quality	Waterflow	Wetsuit	Difficulty	Time	Team	Reported by
15 Nov 2023	Great	Very Low	None	Special challenges	11 hours	2 people Advanced	Beerslot (17 reports)
Comment: Borderline 5 star canyon with a large amount of hiking/scrambling. While in the canyon - it never lets up aside from sandy interludes between slots. Our difficulty wasn't the R- stemming; this part was relatively docile. The consistent contortion challenges, while fun and beautiful, mostly contributed to the physicality of this canyon. Even with the Meek's exit, this turned into a longer day than either of us anticipated for two people. My partner was on the larger side (6'-2", barrel chested, and roughly 215 lb) and he clearly had to fight his way through harder than I needed at 5'-10", 175 lb. At the exit, one is presented with a decision - a very long wash walk or a shorter (though still long) scramble, hike, and final downhill exit. After a day of fighting and squeezing through - this is not a clear-cut decision and I may choose the longer hike if I were to repeat this canyon. This was a fun day but not a canyon that I would recommend for everybody. Even with strong leadership, beginners, larger people, and those with less stamina may not be able to handle this canyon - a long day could easy escalate to a much longer day when parties begin to struggle with squeezes as they are so frequent. For the adventure seekers and those happy with some suffering - this is a great day.
22 Apr 2023	Great	Low	None	Normal	11 hours	6 people Intermediate to Advanced	Tcarlisle (37 reports)
Comment: - TLDR Group of 6 intermediate to advanced. Total time: 11 hours 45 min car-to-car using the up-canyon, or short exit. All anchors in great shape. No wetsuits needed. Very little water present and all of it but one knee-deep pool is avoidable. The approach, mesa top, canyon, exit, etc. are complete free of snow or ice. Very fun canyon. DETAILS APPROACH We departed the Meeks Mesa trailhead at 7:20 am in cool temps, no wind, and the sun coming up in a blue sky with patches of white clouds. Forecast on 0% chance of rain. It took our group a little under 2 hours to reach the canyon with minimal route finding once on the mesa. THE CANYON It was everyone's first time in this canyon but, with good beta and a recent condition report, we felt quite prepared for the R-rated high stemming and anchor challenges that awaited. We quickly descended the first three raps and headed into the first narrows. This section was the much talked about section of high stemming. Ultimately it proved to not be nearly as high, exposed, difficult, or sustained as we were expecting. In fact we all had a blast in this section and felt it was over too fast. For the remaining narrow sections of the canyon we were able to navigate them on the canyon floor, with the exception being that one member or our group briefly went high over an obstacle or two. I figure the R rating is for the high stemming combined with the tight squeezes and the natural anchors. ANCHORS All the anchors in the canyon are natural anchors and in great shape; so we didn't have to spend much time with them. The webbing looks to be placed quite recently. All anchors are rigged as courtesy anchors which helps with the pull; however a few of them you can still stick a rope at it is a good idea to do a test pull and make any adjustments as needed. We had to adjust our rigging on one rap because it stuck on the test pull. The anchor from rap 3 is in a dry, shallow pothole in which a deadman anchor stacked with cairns has been built. This is rigged as a courtesy anchor but extends too far. I was LAPAR here and as I held the webbing to lower myself over the edge, and before I could weight the anchor, my gloves slid on the webbing and I dropped a foot or two and shock loaded the anchor somewhat. It held but, this isn't an ideal occurrence. The webbing length should probably be shortened so it doesn't extend quite so far. WATER There is one knee-deep pool that you will have to go through, but other than that, only a few spots of water are present in the canyon and they are avoidable or else foot deep at most. The knee-deep pool is in the latter part of the canyon and while there isn't any ice or snow present the water is still very cold. Some beta describes spots that can be swimmers in full water conditions--I believe this must be the spot, but if so it is, as of this posting, it's quite full of sand and would have to scour for it to be a swimmer. TIMING We did the approach and the first third of the canyon in about 4 hours, which we felt was good timing. After that we starting slowing down due to navigating obstacles, or just having fun. The lower narrows sections we tight and wavy and we had a blast going through there. We probably spent more time than needed at the last rap but at that point we knew we would have plenty of daylight for the short exit. EXIT The up-canyon, aka, short exit isn't difficult or all that exposed. There are strong warnings about not attempting this in the dark and after going up it in the daylight I can see why. It isn't a straight forward path up. There are some cairns but we kept loosing and finding them. In the dark, with the limited visibility of even the best headlamp, it would be extremely difficulty to see around features, over edges, and up the cliff side. It would be hard to determine in the dark what feature gave access upwards and what didn't. Once on the mesa top it was more route finding--and trying to avoid crypto--back to the top of the mesa where the Meeks Mesa trail ends or rather begins again. We got back just in time to get burgers at Slackers!
19 May 2022	Great	Dry	None	Normal	12 hours	5 people Intermediate to Advanced	Nathan (7 reports)
Comment: Team of 5, 12 hours car to car. Started hiking at 630am, at the drop in at 830am, exited the technical section at 130pm, back to the car by 630pm. Canyon completely dry, all anchors in decent shape, did not replace any. No issues with rope pulls or navigation. Exited via the upstream exit, route sparsely marked with cairns, built a cairn at the bottom to mark the location to begin the ascent.
3 May 2019 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by Slot_Machine.
19 Apr 2019	Amazing	Dry	None	Special challenges	11 hours	2 people Advanced to Intermediate	Johnbcaves (139 reports)
Comment: Great trip! Almost completely dry- stepped in water twice. Anchors in good shape. Beautiful day, great temps. 11:20 via Chimney Rock exit. Team of 2 strong stemmers/downclimbers.
5 Apr 2019 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by sampo419.
1 Dec 2018	Amazing	Very Low	None	Advanced	9 hours	2 people	Felixrulz (76 reports)
Comment: Did this with Dad just before the snow fall that night meaning we'll likely be the last ppl visiting for the season(?). There were a couple of shallow pools. We rigged an extra rap at the start of the canyon to avoid one of them. The canyon is quite nice with a mix of spectacular slots, some open sections, some high(ish) stemming as well as a bunch of tricky downclimbs (avoid large packs if possible). We had a bit of snow on the approach which made it a little slower as there is a little bit of scrambling in the old cowboy pass to the plateau. The final rap is around 45m where you can escape to a shelf. This might save some a bit of rope. With the light snow the night before, we elected to hike out Chimney Rock rather than the shorter (but more vertical) Meeks Mesa route which allegedly requires traversing shelfs and involves some slickrock (we figured it would be dangerous with the snow). We had an hour or so in the dark before we reached the TH where Mum was waiting.
13 Oct 2018 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by Backcountry.
14 May 2018 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by hlscowboy.
11 May 2018 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by eleven.
24 Mar 2017 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by TNugent.
24 Mar 2017 Trip report							Candition.com (287 reports)
Comment: Most recent conditions reported at Candition.com, see Trip Report for full details.
18 Mar 2016 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by peakbaggers.
15 Sep 2015 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by Tirrus.
11 Apr 2015 Trip report	Amazing						CanditionBot (2096 reports)
Comment: See the full condition report at Candition.com. Submitted by bighornmonkey.

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