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Oct 08, 2017 — Earlier this year, I did Fat Man's Misery (East Fork), an incredibly fun day. It turned out to be a little more work for slightly less pretty narrows than this trip report, the West Fork. I've wanted to check out this fork ever since we did the other one, and I'm really glad I did. Anyway, you really can't go wrong with either fork, but I might recomend this one over the East Fork due its shorter approach.
Head through the canyon to the west of Checkerboard Mesa to a notch at the top of a sandy slope, and descend into the Zion backcountry ahead. Follow cairns on a decently well-traveled social trail to the head of the West Fork of Fat Man's Misery. The trail regularly crosses slickrock, so you may need to keep your eyes peeled for cairns. Find an easy route down into the West Fork and you can't get lost from there. Once you reach the beautiful grotto before entering The Barracks (a section in Parunuweap Canyon), the rappeling is over and you can follow the East Fork of the Virgin River west for a short time before looking for a Class 3 scramble to escape The Barracks.
Above the Barracks, we were at the southern reaches of a wide ridge, which would eventually lead to the slickrock wonderland that we left to drop into the canyon earlier. We followed a good social trail supported by cairns that lead along some slickrock for a bit, then the trail continues traversing on sandy terrain. Paralleling Fat Man's Misery, the trail is in great shape for a time, but it fades away a bit and gets tricky to follow. Eventually after traversing pretty far away from the wide ridge, the faint trail finally ascends to the left and up to the wide ridge. It's likely we could have continued directly north along this wide ridge straight from the Barracks rather than do the bench traverse, but the more prominent social trail leading out of the Barracks tooks us this way. Once on the ridge, we managed to stick to a slightly better social trail as it continues north and merges with the aproach route from earlier in the day.
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