Hype:
Shenanigans is an awesome slot canyon that is incredibly tight in several places.
Time: 6-10 hours
Length: 4 miles one way with shuttle
Longest Rappel: 50 ft
Gear: Standard canyoneering gear. Wetsuit generally not required. Bring a dry bag for anything you don't want wet.
Fees: None
Recommended Ages:
0-3 | |
4-11 | |
12-19 | |
20-49 | |
50-69 | |
70+ | |
Recommended Months to Visit:
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
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May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
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Navigate to 38.064297, -110.500111.
You can do this canyon without a shuttle, but with a shuttle, you can shave off a little bit of hiking.
Park along the side of the dirt road. Hike straight to the canyon head.
Drop #1 - 40' rappel off a tree.
Drop #2 - 15' chimney downclimb.
Drop #3Â - 15' downclimb down a dryfall chute.
Opening #1- Canyon opens.
Slanted Hallway.
Opening #2 - Canyon opens, good spot for lunch, optional exit LDC (east) for larger canyoneers.
Drop #4 (The Grim Crawl) - 30' rappell off a meat anchor or crawl through "The Grim Crawl" and downclimb onto a chockstone and chimney down.
Drop #5 - 40' rappel/downclimb. Wrap rope around rock. Last man remove rope and downclimb.
Drop #6 - 45' rappel off a chockstone into a pool of water. 200' rope is required if you want to do a guided rappel.
After the last rappel, the canyon opens up into a wash. Continue down the wash to the exit canyon. Climb up the canyon, generally sticking to the left. About 1/3Â of the way up is a section of 4th class climbing. Then about 2/3 of the way up, cut right (north) onto the slickrock. Continue north around and then up to the canyon rim. From there, head northwest to the shuttle vehicle.
Closest City or Region: Hanksville, Utah
Coordinates: 38.060679, -110.488676
By Jeremy Dye
Jeremy Dye, Tara Dye, Savannah Dye, Madilyn Dye, Cooper Dye, Matt Laurendeau, Amanda Laurendeau, Alex Laurendeau, Caleb Laurendeau, Rose Laurendeau,
Start: 11:00 am
Finish: 11:15 pm
We slept in a little bit and had breakfast and got our gear and lunch packed. Then we headed up to do Shenanigans Canyon with the Laurendeaus. We dropped the van off at the exit point and piled into the Laurendeaus' truck to go to the trailhead. We started the canyon at 11:00. The beta said the canyon normally takes 4-6 hours, so we figured that if it took us up to 8 hours with our larger group and kids that we would still finish by 7:00 and be OK. The canyon was a lot of fun. We went down at a normal pace, not hurrying but not really wasting time either. The kids complained the whole way through the slanted hallway.
At the grim crawl, we meat anchored everyone down then I did the crawl and downclimb. At the last skinny section, Amanda got a bit wedged and Tara and to pull her back up canyon to get unwedged. I stemmed high and tried to get a rope down to her, but that ended up not being necessary because we used several helmets as steps for Amanda to walk on and get over the pinch. The last rappel sequence ended up eating a lot of time because we only took two ropes. We used one for the first rappel and one for the second, but then when Matt went down first, he discovered that the pool was too deep to shuttle people across. He also discovered that his phone was not waterproof, whoops. So we needed to set up a guided rappel to keep the kids dry, which took 2 ropes. That meant we had to wait for everyone to finish the first rappel before anyone else could go down the second rappel. After rigging and getting everyone down, it was 7:00 p.m. and getting dark. Luckily we all had headlamps, but the exit hike still took us more than 4 hours.
At the rock climbing section, there were quite a few tears shed by scared and tired children. Then the traverse and slickrock climb also took longer than normal because we couldn't see far enough to find the rock cairns in the dark. We got back to the van at 11:15 and all 10 of us rode in the van back to camp, not bothering to retrieve the truck shuttle. We were worried that Ondy and Jaren would be calling SAR and wanted to get to camp as soon as we could. The hike out was pretty stressful and the kids were extremely tired from a lot of exertion and also being kept up way past their bedtimes, but they were troopers and held out to the end.
By Jeremy Dye
Jeremy Dye, Tara Dye, Savannah Dye, Anthony Dye, Brenen Dye, Shaylin Dye, Alex Woolsey, Nathaniel Booth, Jeff Bates, Ash Burton,
8 hours car-to-shuttle
9:00 - Park and start hiking
9:30 - Top of first rappel
3:00 - Bottom of last rappel
4:50 - Arrive at shuttle vehicle
We had a great time in this canyon with family and friends. We had a big group including a six-year-old, so we took it a bit slower than most groups. The canyon was dry except for a pond at the bottom of the last rappel. We clipped a rope to the rappellers to pull them out over the water as they rappelled down, and that worked mostly well for most of the people. Anthony and Woolsey took a little wade/swim. The tight section was not nearly as tight as we feared. Everyone made it through no problem, except for Anthony who had to push fairly hard at one spot.
Butler Canyon Primitive Camping
Maidenwater Canyon, Middle Fork