Did you miss me?

So, I was going to write a great post for my come-back into blogging, but Matthew just reminded me that we need to watch the season finale of Downton Abbey, so here's the pics I uploaded from today. We went to Snow Canyon. It was a gorgeous day! Now I'm off to check on the Grantham's. (Maybe this is why it's been so long since I've blogged - too easily distracted & too much awesome "British crap" to watch on TV.)

Sheep Bridge

What do you do when it's 100 degrees at seven o'clock at night and everyone's bored from playing inside all day because you don't have a pool in your backyard?

Climb in the SUV & head for some water!

Preferably cool water.
With a sandy beach for the young 'uns.
And some low cliffs to jump off of for the brave.

Head home at sunset.

Don't forget to stop for ice cream cones on the way home! Enjoy the feeling of being wet and cold and eating ice cream after the melting heat of the day.

We're doing this again soon!

Beach Vacay

I'm working on a photo-filled post about our week in Oceanside. Here is our annual pic in front of one of the cottages we stay in every year. We had a blast. The weather was perfect. More later...

Heaps Canyon Revisited

For the thrilling account of our first venture into its depths, click here. For the thrilling account of our second adventure, read on! (OK, maybe not thrilling, I get a little long-winded, maybe you should just scroll through the pictures.)

This year's party was supposed to consist of me, Matthew, my brother Ross and my uncle Chris (my mom's brother.) Unfortunately, Ross had to work, and Matthew pulled his hamstring at scout camp last week. He wasn't hurt badly, but Heaps is not a canyon you enter when you're not feeling 100%. So, it was just Dad, Chris and me. We missed Ross & Matthew so much! They would've loved it. I especially missed my husband, and was a little nervous going in without him.

Chris and Dad arrived in Toquerville Thursday. We spent the day renting dry suits, packing, gathering equipment, and dropping off the very important 300 ft rope at the Upper Emeral Pool in Zion. I had to work that afternoon, but thankfully got off early and we actually went to bed at a reasonable hour. 11:00 P.M.


2:30 A.M. Friday morning, our alarms went off and headed out at 3:00. Matthew was kind enough to drive us to Lava Point and drop us off. We started out on the West Rim Trail at about 4:00 A.M. It was a beautiful night with bright stars. Watching the world brighten in the early morning hours is inspiring. The sun came up as we hiked and marveled at the beauty of the earth. Zion's backcountry is wild and lovely. There is such a range of scenery along that 6 mile section of trail: pine forests, rocky mountaintops, deep green canyons, red and white rocks. Gorgeous. With our first glimpse of Heaps Canyon in the distance, the butterflies started in my stomach. We made it to the first rappel at about 8:00.


We put on our harnesses and pointed out Heaps Canyon to Chris. We rappelled, climbed, and rappelled some more down into Phantom Valley, a huge valley with white sandstone hills sloping up from the bottom and towering vermilion cliffs surrounding it. The walk along the stream there was pleasant and easy. We reached the real beginning of Heaps Canyon at 11:30 A.M. We stopped for lunch and suited up. I put on fleece pants and two more shirts over my shorts and T-shirt. Then came the dry suit with its watertight rubber gaskets at the wrists and ankles, then neoprene socks, 5.10 Canyoneers (boots), coveralls (so the $800 drysuit doesn't get ripped to shreds in the canyon), harness and helmet. Whew! We were hot and sweaty and eager to get into the water after putting all that on. We were not hot and sweaty for long. Just around the first corner, the canyon drops away and we came to pool after pool of cold, deep water to rappel into and swim through. It was fun. I love being places far away from other people and experiencing the majesty of God's creations on an individual and intimate level. We worked our way through the first series of rappels and swims in a few hours. I was a little alarmed when my "dry" suit leaked early in the canyon, but I kept moving and didn't get cold - yet!



We stopped at about 3:30 for snacks in the last place the canyon opened up before the narrows. Chris and Dad quoted poetry: The Cremation of Sam McGee and Gunga Din, were the two I remember hearing them recite. Very appropriate for our circumstances! I laid down on a hot rock and soaked in the sun for what I knew would be the last time that day. Half an hour later, feeling warm, rested and revived, we plunged ahead.

This is where the canyon really gets good. The Heaps Narrows are lovely, dark and deep. There are many places where the sun doesn't reach the canyon floor. It's like a different planet. The walls of the canyon remind me of ocean waves. The canyon is full of water and we swam, rappelled, and climbed through hour after hour. At times, it was too dark to see very far ahead; other times, we could look up and see bright orange cliffs and green trees reflecting the sun's light far above. The bright blue sky was merely a ribbon overhead. As the afternoon got later, I got colder. Shivering and exhausted, I started to wonder how much longer I could go on. (Not that I had any choice!) It got harder to paddle through the murky water, set up rappels, climb over log jams, and lift the heavy ropes and packs out of potholes. We practiced and perfected the highly technical and difficult move to get out of potholes, "beached whale." Just when I was wondering why in the world I had come back into this canyon, we came around a corner and I recognized a log jammed in the canyon from last year. I climbed up and over it, dropped into the water, swam through a skinny passage and walked up onto the sandy beach that we camped on last year. It was so encouraging to see it again. It brought back so many good memories. Also, I knew that we were close. I felt like I could sprint through the rest of the canyon. Well, I didn't exactly sprint, but I felt energized and pressed on with new vigour. We reached the end of the narrows just under an hour later and set up camp at 8:30 P.M. while it was still light.

I changed out of my wet clothes (it turned out to be more like a damp suit than a dry suit), and got out some food. Dad and Chris pumped and boiled water and we had a hot meal. The stars were bright overhead as we smoothed out a sandy spot to sleep on and laid down. I saw a shooting star and wanted to stay awake looking for more, but I was so exhausted I fell asleep almost instantly.
The morning came with the sun hitting the cliffs high above us. It would be hours before it reached the bottom of the canyon we were sleeping in, so we got up, had a delicious breakfast of instant oatmeal, and loaded up our backpacks again for the final rappels. We were out of the wet part of the canyon, so the suits and boots all went into the packs. We climbed up a little ways and we could see out of Heaps Canyon and into Zion hundreds of feet below. We could see the Visitor's Center and tiny people hiking on the Emerald Pools Trail. It was exhilirating to be up that high and to see birds flying below us. We were excited and careful as we prepared the final raps. The first is a 50 ft. rap to a tree growing out the side of the cliff, then 150 ft. to the Bird's Nest, then 300 ft. to the ground.

Looking up from the Bird's Nest

The three of us made it safely to the Bird's Nest and looked around. I wanted to remember every sight and sound. I was also anxious to be safely on the ground. It does funny things to my mind to be up that high.

Looking 300 feet down from the Bird's Nest.

I got to go first. We had 2 two hundred foot ropes which we tied together and ran through the anchors bolted to the cliff wall. Then I ran my Pirhana (favorite rappel device ever) through the rope below the knot and locked it off. Dad and Chris had the other end going through both of their rappel devices.When all was ready and double and triple-checked, they lowered me over the edge. I felt safe and secure as I went down slowly, enjoying my surroundings. If you want to learn about trust, get lowered off of a 300 foot cliff. As soon as I could see the rope touching the ground below me, I hollered up to them to stop. Then I rappelled down the rope to the ground. It is the most incredible rappel I have every done. Awesome. There's just no way to describe it. Like last year, people were watching and clapped when I got down. Kinda fun.

I quickly found the 300 foot rope stashed under a tree, tied it to the end of the 2 ropes I rapped down & Dad & Chris pulled it up and rappelled down it. By the way, I used the EDK to tie the ropes together. Anyone know what kind of knot that is?


I belayed Chris and Dad as they rappelled and they both made it to the ground safely. It's always a relief, but also bittersweet for the adventure to end. It was lovely to get home and see my husband and children again. I missed them. It was another adventure never to be forgotten and I'm so glad I got to go. Thanks Dad & Chris! & thanks Matthew for being so sweet & supportive even though you were jealous!

Heaps Trailer

Yes, I'm texting. We had loved ones at home who wanted to be updated. Who knew you could get service 450 ft above Emerald Pools?

Stay tuned for the rest of the story...

The Sunday Swarm

Look Closely. This is what a swarm of bees looks like.

A lot has happened in the past week. We installed hives on Monday (bringing us to seven hives). On Tuesday, a colony of bees that we bought just disappeared (taking us down to six hives). On Thursday, Dad drove back to Santa Clara and bought TWO hives packages of bees to replace the ONE that flew off (bringing us to eight). (No pictures of the installation that day.) On Friday and Saturday it snowed about 4 inches. On Sunday we were looking up in the trees above our hive and spotted... no it couldn't be. We spotted... a swarm of bees.

(If we could catch it, we'd have nine hives.)

We're pretty sure it wasn't the bees from one of our hives as we had done several inspections recently and didn't see any swarm cells. It seemed too big a swarm to be the colony that disappeared on Tuesday-- plus the nights last week were very cold (27° On Saturday night) too cold for any colony to survive a week in a tree. It must have come from a neighbor's colony. That's all we can figure out. Maybe it was our missing colony... but I don't think so.

Anyway, we captured the swarm. It was 2o feet high up in a tree. Neither Dad, nor I had had any experience with capturing a swarm before. We didn't have all of the right equipment... but we made do and we think we got it in a little nuc box-- which is a little hive box that is usually used to rear queen bees.

Here are the photos from the event. My mom took them all-- and wasn't wearing a veil or gloves. She stayed back a bit but she was pretty brave. Dad and I each got stung once on the hand in this process, and were pretty lucky since we had more than a few bees get INTO our bee suits. Among the bees in our suits, Dad had one crawl into his ear and I had one walk across my face. The fact that we are still alive is testament to the calm nature of swarming bees in general, and this colony in particular.

Hopefully we didn't inadvertently smoosh the queen in this attempt to gather them.

After cutting branches to get them out of the way, we climbed 20 feet up a ladder, that was sitting in the bed of Dad's truck, and tried to shake the swarm into a box. That was the theory anyway. We hoped to get the bulk of them with as few shakes as possible. We got about 75% of them. We hoped the queen was among the clump we got.

Duct tape is a wonderful thing. 30,000 bees need to be contained.

I had a bee INSIDE my suit so I removed it and put a mosquito net over my face.

There were bees everywhere. We thought we had our suits zipped up tight... somehow we had them crawling around inside both of our suits. Luckily the bees were very kind.

We tried a trick that we saw on Youtube... where you set the bees out in front of a hive and they just walk right in. Too easy. It didn't work.

We ended-up opening the hive box and dumping the bees in. It worked.

Hopefully we caught the queen. We'll know by tomorrow.

Update: We think we captured the queen. We placed the nuc on top of a regular hive body... with what Johnny Cash referred to as an "A-dapter kit."