With a good, long day of North Wash-area canyoneering under our belts already, me, Rick Kent, Mike Cressman and Andy from Colorado found ourselves with an hour or two of daylight left. What to do? Well, Lucky Charms!
Lucky Charms is a very short canyon located just off the road near Sandthrax Camp. A short bit of narrows and a bit of climbing up-canyon leads to a traverse and drop-down a wider canyon to the north/northwest. Pretty and all, but not a great canyon. But worth doing, if you have an hour or two you wanna kill off in anticipation of better things!
Returning to Sandthrax Camp after our third canyon of the day, I was eager to talk to A.J., who'd descended Sandthrax that day. Sandthrax has the reputation of being a very tight, very strenuous, very technical, and rather unprotectable slot. A.J., with whom I'd done the Full Left Fork of North Creek a couple years earlier, had been cool enough to invite me to join him. Since I was the unofficial organizer and leader of my own group that weekend, I had to decline. Ram, a man who's done Choprock more than twenty times, had done Sandthrax once, and only once...hmmm.
I really wanted to know how it turned out.
From our spot at Sandthrax Camp, we wandered off to A.J.'s. He was there - a good sign! Turns out, Sandthrax went well. They'd done the canyon in five or so hours. He encouraged us to take the short walk over to the mouth and take a peek.
What we found was a creepy, jet-black, narrow hole that required one to crawl on his hands and knees to get through. I can only imagine what's up-canyon...
Put it on the to-do list!
*Photos courtesy of Rick Kent
Lucky Charms, And A Peek Into Sandthrax (North Wash)
