Jul 05, 2019 — Imlay Canyon always seemed too big of a day with its "27 rappels" and absurd number of obstacles. It actually never even made it on my to-do list because it felt too advanced, but Madeline, Scot, and Kelly invited me and I committed, not without anxiety. Imlay turned out to be my favorite canyon to date. It's all sorts of fun, challenging, and gorgeous. We lucked out with the water levels and only had to pot-shot one keeper, but the climbs and stemming kept the day really interesting. We were also able to downclimb and handline many of the rappels, and most of the raps we did do were short, resulting in fewer than 27 rappels and faster travel than anticipated.
I think it's good to note that there is the extended Imlay Canyon, which starts from the West Rim and drops into what I have heard is the less-pretty part of Imlay. We took the sneak route, and is what this route describes, which cuts out the first half of the technical section. We brought 5 short ropes to keep us moving faster, as well as extra wetsuit layers. I was happy for my 6mm even in July. In order to do Imlay, we acquiried the required technical canyon permit from Zion National Park, as well as a White Pass, which allowed us to drive a car into the canyon to park within the main Virgin River Canyon in order to get an earlier start before the Zion shuttle system started. This was a wonderful VIP experience.
So, at 4am, we left from The Grotto Trailhead, headed up past the Angel's Landing junction, and continued onto the West Rim Trail. Once the trail started to drop down and crossed a footbridge, we kept a lookout for the standard route into the backcountry, leaving the trail about a quarter mile after the bridge. It was dark during our approach, so I didn't take any pictures. However, I was just within this area on my way to Sneak Peak a few months ago, so you can refer to those photos on the approach if you care to do so. We followed a small hump of a ridgeline that avoided brush on either side, and continued along a social trail up the middle prong of what appeared to be three drainages - it's also the most reasonable-looking one. We gained some vertical feet to a saddle/notch, then dropped back down, and then gained more to another saddle/notch. We encounered a short Class 3 section where we set up some webbing to aid as a handline on the way to the second one. Eventually, we worked down the final drainage - had we followed this drainage to the mouth, it would have brought us into Imlay with a couple of rappels, but instead we scrambled up the east side of the drainage onto a wide slickrock ridge that dropped us down into the bivy area, a wide section within Imlay Canyon (Class 3 down climb). A gorgeous, massive sandstone wall larger than I can describe hovered just above us.
Now at the head of Imlay Canyon's Sneak Route, we geared up and headed in. Almost immediately, we were faced with some down climbs, and the obstacles continued from there. There are too many to describe, and the conditions vary so much, but expect a long time in the canyon. I'll note that there are two open sections: the first is shortly after the start of the canyon, and the second is a bit farther than halfway through and served as our rest area. Also on our trip, there was a log jam in a dark section with a squeeze that two of our party couldn't fit through (myself included) and had to climb up and over.
The final rappel is by far the longest, and dropped us into the Zion Narrows. We followed the watercourse to the Temple of Sinawava and took the shuttle back to our car at The Grotto.
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