Yesterday my friend Dane and I took our first canyoning/canyoneering trip to a place called silver creek. It was an epic adventure, including getting stuck in traffic for an hour because of the blue angels jet team, then arriving to find 3 miles of road washed out making the hour hike in a 2.5 hour hike in.
All of which meant we didn’t get into the canyon until 3:30 by which time shade had almost completed captured the canyon, so the jumps into the cool water were less refreshing and more an intense passage. The fatigue and cold made it a little harder to enjoy the incredible beauty of sculpted rock, the crystal waters and the many beautiful waterfalls, but intensity is enjoyable in its way, to face something difficult, something new and pass through it, is an amazing feeling.
This what I train for not to be fit or to look good naked, nor even to just be able move beautifully, but to experience aliveness. To step into the chaotic maelstrom of reality and the capacity to adapt, to thrive and to enjoy it.
Does your training develop your ability to buffer cold and heat, to deal with chafed skin, to keep moving through fatigue, to tell how deep a pool of water is and if there are any objects in it, to be comfortable dropping 20 feet from a cliff into water, to climb while being buffeted by a watefall?
Here is some canyoneering inspiration for you courtesy of Warren Verboom.
If you do choose to go canyoning please read up and be careful, there are special dangers involved in canyoning, flash floods, hypothermia, difficult rescue, its not just about being physical capable you need to have your brain turned on too.
