Canyoneering | Quandary Canyon
Hype:
Quandary Canyon is one of the San Rafael Swell classic canyons. Most of the canyon is mediocre with only minor obstacles, but the crux pothole is a real challenge. Because of the potholes, a minimum group size of 3 is recommended. Because of the long approach and exit, Quandary has a high pay-to-play ratio.
Canyon Rating: 4B (pothole escape) 
Time: 6-8+ hours
Length: 0.75 mile approach, 2.3 miles in canyon, 1.5 miles to Muddy Creek then either 2.25 miles to Factory Butte Trailhead or 4.0 miles to Hidden Splendor Trailhead plus 3.1 miles of road walking back to camp
Longest Rappel: 2-7 rappels up to 70 ft
Gear: Standard canyoneering gear. Pothole escape gear. Retrievable anchors (toggle, sand trap, water anchor). Wetsuit and drybags.
Fees: None
Recommended Ages:
 | 0-3 |
 | 4-11 |
 | 12-19 |
 | 20-49 |
 | 50-69 |
 | 70+ |
Recommended Months to Visit:
| Jan |
| Feb |
| Mar |
| Apr |
| May |
| Jun |
| Jul |
| Aug |
| Sep |
| Oct |
| Nov |
| Dec |
Links: https://www.roadtripryan.com/go/t/utah/san-rafael-swell/quandarycanyon
Closest City or Region: San Rafael Swell, Utah
Coordinates: 38.570173, -110.928014
By Jeremy Dye
Jeremy Dye, Ondylyn Wagner, Matt Laurendeau,
Start: 9:00 a.m.
Top of Quandary: 9:30 a.m.
Bottom of Quandary: 3:00 p.m.
Bottom of Knotted Rope: 4:00 p.m.
Top of Knotted Rope: 8:00 p.m.
Finish: Midnight
Matt, Ondy, and I went down Quandary Canyon and up Knotted Rope Canyon. We started hiking at 9:00 and made it down Quandary Canyon without any major delays. On one of the first drops, I did a climbing bypass on the left and when Matt did the same move to follow me, I was spotting him and he slipped and banged his shin on a rock. He didn't realize it at the time but when we got looking at it later, his shin had a pretty deep gash most of the way to the shinbone. The canyon was mostly dry and at one of the first potholes, we wanted to try to keep Matt's foot dry if we could so it wouldn't get infected, so I did a bit of a wall climb over and then dropped a rope so that Ondy and Matt could do the climb while protected from above. That worked but ended up being unnecessary because we had lots of water for the rest of the canyon.
We made it to the bottom of Quandary at about 3:00 and hiked west to the bottom of Knotted Rope Canyon, arriving at about 4:00. If we had known how long Knotted Rope would take, we would have just taken the river hike exit instead of attempting Knotted Rope, but Knotted Rope sounded more exciting so we did that one instead. The GPS tracks that we were following were not very accurate so we had to do quite a bit of route finding on our own, starting at the very bottom of Knotted Rope. We did quite a bit of hiking to get to the bottom of the canyon and missed the drop from the cliff down to the bottom of the canyon, so we did a little bit of backtracking and finally made it to the canyon. We bypassed most of the lower section potholes by walking high on the left. We probably could have tackled them but they would have taken a ton of time and they were all pretty easily bypassed with runarounds so we didn't feel the need to drop in to each of them.
In the upper section of Knotted Rope, we ran into a lot more meat than we expected. We did the first few potholes without wetsuits because they were a pain to get on and the water was only waist deep. Several of the middle and upper potholes were much deeper and required swimming exits. One of the potholes we were able to barely stand on a ledge in about neck deep water and then boost each other up with a knee stand shoulder stand and then headstand to get out of it. We had a pack wedge up inside but not far enough because we couldn't throw it while treading water. That was one that we almost couldn't get out. It took three or four tries before we made it. There were quite a few obstacles that were right at our max ability to get through. One of them involved some rock climbing up a slopey shelf with no hand holds to get around and out of the pothole. It took me two tries with Matt pushing me against the wall before we got through that one. Another one that was quite hard ended up being very easy with a dynamic wall run to get around it. Without the wall run I don't think you could get up the other side. Several of the upper potholes had metal pipes across them and those proved very helpful for reversing and going up canyon. One of the pipes was too slippery, so Ondy stood in the bottom of the pothole and put her hands on the pipe to keep my feet from sliding when I got up, and then we boosted Ondy up. Matt tried walking up the pipe but even with a rope, it was too slippery. Both of his feet slid out from under him and he landed smack on his stomach straddling the bar and then flipped upside down and landed in the water. He tried again and slipped again and almost got his ankle injured pretty bad between the pipe and the wall. Eventually he got up by not using the pipe at all and by bridging across the pothole. There was another pothole where there was a fin halfway across that you could swing onto and then use that to swing to the far end. I went across and then Ondy followed next with a rope tied to her harness so I could back her up if she slipped. She made it but only barely and ended up jumping and landing on her knees on the far side because her feet didn't catch. We ended up doing the last two pothole challenges by headlamp and then we were worried about how much canyon was ahead of us, so we exited and walked up a sick rock face only to be intersected by a couple of drainages that we couldn't get across, so we went back down to the canyon and then realized that we were actually at the top of the technical section and so we just stayed in the wash and followed that up and out. If there had been any more potholes, we were worried that we wouldn't be able to tackle them because we didn't have enough strength left.
Once at the top of Knotted Rope, we followed the GPS track in the dark by headlamp back to the trailhead except that the GPS track was wrong in a bunch of places and led us down cliffs and across gullies that were impossible to cross so we had to do a lot of backtracking and winding back and forth until we could find a route that worked. It would have been very easy in the light but it was very time-consuming at night. When we got close to the top of the reef, we ended up going down the wrong side, so we backtracked and crossed a cairn which was very helpful because it told us we were on the right track so we followed the trail down the nose of the rocks and then got cliffed out at the top of a 50-ft cliff with no way down and by this point it was like 9:00 and we were guessing that we could be down by about 9:30 but we couldn't ever find a way down and got very discouraged. We thought we were going to have to spend the night until it was daytime so we could see to figure out how to get down. We were right on the GPS track but it definitely did not go in the correct location. We ended up backtracking and went back up to the top and then found the cairn again and it pointed to gullie that we could follow under a boulder and down. It was very easy once we found it but by that point Matt's knees were killing him and Ondy's hips were hurting. We were still in our wetsuits to stay warm and we got back to camp just before midnight. I changed into dry clothes to warm up and cooked hot dogs and then crashed.
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By Tara Dye
Tara Dye, Ondylyn Wagner, Saori Barlow, Someone Else,
This was a girls trip and we had a great time. We got an early start. Between the four of us, we were able to tackle the obstacles efficiently. We had a lot of fun and made it to the bottom of the canyon by noon. The exit hike was a slog. Scott picked us up at the airstrip trailhead to save us some hiking. Camp-to-camp was around 12 hours.
By Tara Dye
Tara Dye, Anthony Dye, Ondylyn Wagner, Kevin Christensen, Logan DeGrand, Katy Sedlak, Someone Else,
We camped near the trailhead and got an early start. It was a nice hot day, so we splashed around in the water lots. We had wetsuits, but we mostly didn't use them. We had a big group, but everyone was competent, so we moved quickly. On the exit, we hiked up Knotted Rope Canyon. There were some tough obstacles, but we had good teamwork. It was especially fun to do the guided rappel over the pothole.
Camp Sites: Goblin Valley Primitive Camping
Quandary Trailhead Primitive Camping
Temple Mountain Road Primitive Camping
Canyoneering: Goblin's Lair Canyoneering Route
Caving: 
Fun Places: Temple Mountain Wash Pictograph Panel
Hiking: 
Slot Canyon
Rappels
Downclimbs
Wading
Pothole Escapes - Sand Bag
Fixed Anchors
Wetsuit Generally Required
Arches
Desert
Wayfinding
No Restrooms
Road Access is Dirt - High Clearance
Access Road is 2WD Accessible
Wildflowers and Vegitation
Wildlife and Birding