April 28

The Final Expedition started early Sunday morning when we left Leadville and headed toward the Canyonlands of Utah. We spent the night at the Comb Wash campground and woke up to the sun rising on Cedar Mesa. The landscape of the mesa was breathtaking from dawn until dusk. There were distant peaks and endless miles of open space carved with deep sandstone canyons. Traveling through the canyons was spectacular; you can't tell what's inside them from above. When we entered into numerous slots in Cowboy and Cheesebox Canyon, we looked up hundreds of feet to nothing but blue skies and looked ahead to meandering slots that opened up to sun that made the rock strata glow with the numerous layers and colors. Back on the mesa after exploring the depths of the canyons, we watched golden sunsets and colorful sunrises on the distant landscape of Jacob’s Chair and The Cheesebox.

Our group entered Fry Canyon. Just getting into the canyon proved pretty challenging. It began with a few neck deep wades through the first section of slots. The canyon opened up for a while until we rappelled into the next slot. This next slot required us to stem down a V slide into a pool of water. This pool was too deep to wade, so we swam about 10 feet until our feet touched. We all cheered each other on as we warmed up from the cold water. We emerged from the slot into the sun, proud of the first canyon that some of us had ever experienced.

The canyons offered ample opportunity to relax as a group and take in our remarkable surroundings. We often took detours from the travel day to explore Anasazi petroglyphs and ruins. The old adobe structures were extremely well preserved, as were the occasional ears of corn and various pottery shards. Particularly memorable were the visits to “Perfect Kiva,” the site of an Anasazi ceremonial site and other buildings; “Jailhouse Ruin,” an old house with cross-bar style wooden planks laid across the window; and “Big Man Panel,” a petroglyph site with numerous depictions of people and animals. Once we reached camp and finished our work, the games began. The Frisbee came out in preparation for the student-staff Ultimate game, Yee-haw stole our voices, and Twister tested our flexibility and cunning. No matter what the travel plan was for the day, the students and I-team always managed to bring out the best in the group and let loose.

This being our third expedition, there was not much leadership and expedition curriculum left to cover, and classes were mostly informal reviews and chances to practice our skills. We did have an extended discussion on the Practices & Principles reading, an essay called "The Argonaut's Folly." We debated whether or not the RMS was an "Agronaut's Folly" (defined as a quasi-utopian community formed by people who are frustrated by "normal" society). In the end, we decided it was not, as we came to the RMS with a common bond of appreciation for the outdoors and willingness to try something new and not from a common rejection of typical society. And while this was our only backcountry class, we still had plenty of backcountry homework that really let us express this appreciation that brought us all together. Science gave us an opportunity to do an independent field study on an aspect of the canyons, some popular topics being the cryptobiotic soil that gives so much life to the canyons and the river’s effect on the landscape that we just finished studying before we left for the expedition. English homework contained two readings, one by Edward Abbey and one by Jon Krakauer, and asked us to evaluate each author’s ideas about adventure in addition to recounting an adventure experience of our own. For history, we read about the Anasazi people who inhabited the area in addition to the natural history of the area, and then wrote down our own thoughts about the canyons in a variety of forms. All of our academic work related very clearly to our experience in the canyons, whether through understanding the ecosystem of the desert or the ideas of the people who travel through it.

Later in the trip, we hiked through a section called “The Narrows” of Gravel Canyon. This involved one short pitch down a ten-foot wall. Next was a rappel into knee-deep water. Although this seems exciting, it didn’t compare to the next section. Almost everyone was lowered into a pool, where we had to get off the rope and then swim about twenty-five feet. We had to swim and wade through a few slots, but eventually came to the wider part of the canyon. We popped out of the canyon and hiked back to camp, very satisfied with our success in such a challenging and excited day of adventure.

From the very beginning of the expedition, we had much more independence and control over how the expedition ran. Each group had one or two Student Expedition Leaders (SELs). These leaders got to choose groups and led the group through such tasks as picking food rations, deciding on group ur group make decisions and would only interject if asked. The first two days were somewhat difficult because we would sometimes make inefficient decisions, but as the trip wore on we began to take full ownership of the trip. We began to hone our risk management skills as well as our navigation skills. Each member of the group had a chance to lead the group and be a part of important decisions. On our fifth day, we split up into two hiking groups and both groups made it successfully down steep drainages and across the mesa to our campsite with minimal help from the instructors. That night the I-team announced that we would be awarded for our competence with a chance for independent travel. We made a plan for the next few days and shared our plan with the instructors. They would follow about forty-five minutes behind us during our travel, and camp out of sight the following night. We had a student-only circle that night and slept under the stars together. In the morning, we began our hike, but not before we put on lots of war paint (zinc oxide) and waved goodbye to our instructors who were still cooking breakfast as we began our trek across the mesa. We had predicted a very long day of hiking; instead we cruised through the day singing lots of songs and working together as a team. Before we knew it, we had made it to the campsite in under three hours. We spent the rest of the day getting water and doing homework as well as hanging out and relaxing. In the evening, the I-team visited us. We had a debrief on our first day of independence and our discussion of the P&P Reading. Again, our group slept out under the stars together, and in the morning we hiked to the vans and met up with our beloved instructors. We individualized our trip with our independence and took pride in our shared accomplishments.

By: Kerry Sullivan, Henry McKenna, Katie Kornman, Gabriel Rosenstein, and Charlotte Kaye

Photo 1: Hiking down White Canyon on the first day.

Photo 2: Technical scrambling to avoid a swim.

Photo 3: David and Matt try to imagine what it was like to be an Anasazi.

Photo 4: Ben in the Narrows of Gravel Canyon.

Photo 5: It's never a bad time for Twister! Kat, Becca, and Cayla show their best moves.