Parunuweap Canyon

This week I completed the summer scout trip with our troop. We backpacked into the back country of Zion and rappelled through Fat Man's Misery. We are down to 2 scouts in the troop so we recruited the varsity scouts this year as Andy Powell (scoutmaster) and I (assistant scoutmaster) both have sons in the varsity troop. We had 6 boys and 2 leaders. The first day we canyoneered through Birch Hollow, a side canyon to Orderville Canyon, with 11 raps and a short hike out. We had a lot of fun through the canyon and the boys learned how to rappel from difficult stances. The next 3 days were spent exploring and hiking through the upper reaches of the East Fork of the Virgin River also known as Parunuweap Canyon. This route requires rappels, swims through pools, hiking upstream in a river and steep scrambles up sandy rocky chutes. Hot summer temperatures, bugs, poison ivy and searches for springs and water sources. We saw no other humans throughout our whole trip and we truly felt like we were in the wilderness. Just how I like it. Eric was a great help and partner and my years of taking the other scouts on back pack trips had paid off as they were prepared for this rugged trip. I took the boys to Oscars for a murder burger on the way home. They cleaned their plates, all of them!