On Saturday, April 21, 2007, Steve Lewis and I explored Three Canyon. Three Canyon is a nice little canyon located south of Green River, UT. Here is a map showing the general area:
Here is a map of the canyon itself. As you can see, you enter the canyon from the south and exit at the north end:
On the short hike from the parking spot on the road to the canyon, we ran across several clumps of these pretty light purple/white wildflowers:
After a short hike and an easy downclimb into the canyon bottom, we hiked north for a short distance to find the entrance rappel:
This rap is a three-stage drop of about 100 feet total. There are no particular difficulties about it, other than taking care not to stick the rope when pulling it. There is a pool of water at the second stage of the drop, hanging about 6 feet above the canyon floor. With care, one can almost completely avoid getting wet. Here I am getting ready to descend:
Here’s Steve, partway down the second portion of the rap (the white line is the pull cord–I’m keeping it out of way so it won’t get tangled up):
The canyon is nice and narrow for the first mile or so, with many interesting formations. Here’s Steve walking through some of the narrows:
As the canyon opened up, we ran across this little cottonwood which added some green to the reds and browns that we had gotten used to:
Here are a couple more pictures of the interesting rock formations and canyon narrows:
After much stream-hopping, a little pool-avoiding, and a couple of short downclimbs, we came to the exit canyon:
Before we entered the canyon, Steve had fixed a handline to this bolt in the exit canyon:
Unfortunately, it turned out that the end of handline was quite some distance above the canyon floor, requiring a scrambling climb up. The climb wasn’t really difficult, but there was some considerable exposure, so we stopped part way up to haul packs, then Steve belayed me up. Here is a photo of Steve getting ready to belay me:
It was a very enjoyable day and a good time was had by all!
