Canyoning
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Canyoning (also known as canyoneering) is travelling in canyons using a variety of techniques that may include walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling, and/or swimming.
Although hiking down a canyon that is non-technical (canyon hiking) is often referred to as canyoneering, the terms canyoning and canyoneering are more often associated with technical descents — those that require rappels (abseils) and ropework, technical climbing or down-climbing, technical jumps, and/or technical swims.
Canyoning, frequently done in very remote and rugged settings, often requires navigational skills, route-finding skills, and other skills and preparation needed for wilderness travel.
Canyons that are good for canyoning are often cut into the bedrock stone, forming narrow slots with numerous drops, beautifully sculpted walls, and sometimes, spectacular waterfalls. Most canyons are cut into limestone, granite or sandstone, though other rock types are found. A canyon that is narrower than six feet (two meters) is called a slot canyon. Canyons can be very easy or extremely difficult, though emphasis in the sport is on aesthetics and fun, rather than pure difficulty. Because of the wide variety of types and difficulties of canyons throughout the world, canyoning is enjoyed by people of all ages and skill levels.
Canyoning gear includes climbing hardware, static ropes, helmets, wetsuits; and specially designed shoes, packs, and rope bags. While canyoners have used and adapted climbing, hiking, and river running gear for years, as canyoning becomes increasingly popular, more and more specialized gear is being manufactured to suit the needs of the canyoner.
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[edit] Canyoning Around The World
In most parts of the world, canyoning is done in mountain canyons with flowing water. Some countries with established canyoning include: Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France, Ecuador, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Reunion Island, Greece (Crete), Jordan, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, Turkey, Israel and the United States. In South Africa, canyons that involve lots of jumping are common, and it is called Kloofing. Even in Hong Kong, where there are numerous stream gorges, a similar activity is becoming popular, but it is called stream or river trekking. In Japan and Taiwan it's called river tracing and typically involves traveling upstream.
In the United States, while descending wet mountain canyons is sometimes referred to as canyoning, descending non-flowing (though often wet) desert canyons is nearly always referred to as canyoneering. Much of the canyoneering done in the United States occurs in the many slot canyons carved in the sandstone found throughout the Colorado Plateau. Outside the Colorado Plateau, numerous canyoning opportunities exist and continue to be explored in the San Gabriel, Sierra Nevada, Cascade, and Rocky Mountain ranges.
[edit] Hazards
Canyoning can be dangerous. Quite often, escape out the sides of the canyon is not an option, and completion of the descent is the only possibility. Due to the remoteness and inaccessibility of many canyons throughout the world, rescue is sometimes impossible for several hours or even days.
In significant water flow, canyons may become very treacherous and require special ropework techniques for safe travel. Hydraulics, undercurrents, strainers, and sieves are some of the features that occur in flowing canyons that can potentially trap or pin and drown a canyoneer. A 1993 accident in Zion National Park, Utah, USA (and the lawsuit which followed) in which two leaders of a youth group drowned in powerful canyon hydraulics brought notoriety to the sport [1].
One of the biggest potential dangers of any canyoning trip is flash flood. A canyon "flashes" when a large amount of rain falls somewhere in the drainage, and the water levels in the canyon rise quickly as the runoff rushes down-canyon. (In canyons that drain large areas, the rainfall could be many kilometers away from canyoneers, completely unbeknownst to them.) A calm or even dry canyon can quickly become a violent torrent due to a severe thunderstorm in the vicinity. Some fatalities have occurred as a result of flash floods, the most infamous of which happened when a group of tourists on a commercial canyoning adventure trip were drowned in Saxetenbach Gorge, Switzerland in 1999.
Hypothermia is a serious danger in any canyon that contains cold or even cool water. Wetsuits and drysuits can eliminate this danger to a large degree, but when people miscalculate the amount of cold water protection they will need, dangerous and sometimes fatal situations occur. A canyoneering tragedy in 2005 in which two college students drowned in a remote Utah canyon is believed to be a result of hypothermia due to inadequate cold water protection.
Some canyoneering, especially in sandstone slots, can involve escaping from large "potholes." Also called "keeper potholes," these features, carved out by falling water at the bottom of a drop in the watercourse, are circular pits that often contain water that is too deep to stand up in and whose walls are too smooth to easily climb out of if water or ground levels are too far below the lip. Canyoneers have developed several unique and creative devices to escape potholes, including hooks used for aid climbing attached to long poles and various techniques involving the throwing of weighted bags attached to climbing ropes over the lip of the pothole.
Narrow slot canyons, especially those narrower than humans, can present unique and difficult obstacles for a canyoneer to overcome. At times, a canyoneer will be forced to climb (using chimneying or off-width climbing techniques) to a height in the canyon where he can comfortably maneuver laterally with pressure on both walls of the canyon (called stemming). This tends to be a very strenuous (not to mention abrasive) activity, and can require climbing high above the canyon floor, unprotected, for long periods of time. Failure to complete the required moves would result in being trapped in a canyon where rescue would be extremely difficult.
[edit] External links
- American Canyoneering Association - courses, rendezvous, annual conference, online community
- CanyonWiki - a wiki devoted entirely to canyoneering
- Descente-Canyon.com - french portal on europeans canyons : about 1300 canyons in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland..., forums, reglementation about canyoning
- OZ Canyon Wiki - a wiki devoted to canyoning in Australia
[edit] References
- 1: Whose fault? A Utah canyon turns deadly by Christopher Smith and Ray Ring, High Country News, August 22, 1994 (Requires free registration as of July 18, 2006)
