Introduction

My name is Eric, from now on known as smoker. after a couple of great hikes FatMan and i have decided to share our adventures and our views with you. at this point im going to assume i know you or at least you know me or someone involved, because why else would you be reading this??? If you really appreciate our writing we accepts gifts of all kinds our favorites are baked goods or anything deep fried, especially sweet potato fries... i write for the enjoyment of myself and believe it or not english is my only true language.

i hope you enjoy the read and if you dont, i dont care!!!

Warning!!! i swear and say uncalled for things if i offend you then please stop reading...

Episode 3 - Sausage wagon goes to the Narrows

Sunday morning comes and there were special plans in the works, we meet up and pile into cars to head off to Zion national park. The popularity of our adventures continues to grow and this time we take lucky number 13 people with us. This is three cars worth.

A special note, from now on you must earn a nickname by doing something extraordinary, this could be from something amazing or something terribly stupid. In a couple of cases it might not be related to hiking at all. The real reason is that I’m lazy. Unless I get something from it, I have trouble doing it and naming that many people sounds like work and doesn’t offer me much. Deal.

So as the cars pile up we look around and realize that in fatman's car there are four of us; myself (yes I come first) fatman, dick dick, and half a smoker. This car is now deemed sausage wagon. After half a smoker finally gets his shoes we are on our way. We stop by the local cesspool of commercialism and try to go. 'nam finally drags his sorry ass out of bed so someone goes to get him but this is where some pure genius is born (more on that later). On a side note today’s candy is a pair of peanut butter cups. I believe it was stated "these will make great shots later. We are now off and running. This car trip flies by as it is filled with penis jokes and the best horrible stories we want to share. A new (at least new to me) term is coined K.W.T. (kittens with titanium).

We arrive early afternoon and begin our walk. Its hot today, a real scorcher, but we only have to walk to a shuttle and head to the last shuttle stop in Zion. We prepare ourselves at the top of the trail and hike on down. On our way I decide to see who would be interested in a lottery pool about how many times bearfood will be falling down. It’s a pretty short walk and soon we are at a river. WITH A TON OF OTHER FUCKING PEOPLE!!! But what can you do?

We plunge into the river. It’s cold and has a pretty good current, but we are young and dumb and there is no match for that. Now we quickly realize that this trip makes kanarraville look like kids play. Which now I realize it was. This river is much stronger and filled with larger rocks to trip over. There are so many people at the beginning of the trip that it sort of ruins the views a little. I like to go places not everyone goes and everyone was definately here. But after about the first quarter mile the pack thins out and we leave the fathers with infants in carriers on their back walking in the river behind us. Also I have noticed how many people don’t come prepared for this, people it’s not a day at the beach. For a while we cross the river in and out of the water is actually a great hike with the exception of trying to break my ankles in-between rocks. some of the highlights include; nam getting stuck in the mud and after snakebite couldn’t pull him out, I go to help and it took some real effort, we took turns finding out how deep the pools off to the side were, most of the girls being horrified by the carcass of some former animal off to the side, finding a great couch in the middle of the river, and lest I forget the cliffs that climb up a thousand feet while only being fifty feet wide and the waterfalls that we must scale.

We get to a fork and have to make a choice; we break and wait for the whole group to arrive. I take a little time and investigate both sides. The left looks actually more beautiful to me but also looks deeper and more strenuous, since we have traveled a couple of miles we decide on the right (the easier one) and fatman says it has better views. For a while it’s a slow trickle of a river but opens back up and picks up pace. There are some beautiful views really amazing things. We cover a couple of small waterfalls, fun little climbs. Head another mile or so in and decide we have traveled far enough overall because it will just continue on farther than we are prepared to travel on this day.

We turn back, bearfood and I are in the lead and traveling at my pace and are making good time. After about a mile and a half we decide to wait for a little while. Wait a little more. Ok I’m getting impatient. then finally what do I see which I knew was coming, but none other than fatman, dick dick, and half a smoker traveling down the river on the inflatable rafts which were purchased earlier. It was truly amazing. As it turns out they spent two dollars on small inflatable tubes except fatman who went with the recliner and they were now sailing their fleet down the river. They inflated them at the fork in the path and rode about ninety percent of the river on them including over small waterfalls and into or around large rocks. By the end they were banged and bruised but had an amazing time on the best two dollars they have ever spent.

Everyone had a good time, total distance was approximately five miles and four of it was unbelievable . So you know bearfood only fell down eight times. We then trekked out still wet and made it back to the car. We had our now standard post Zion trip to Oscars for too much amazingly great food.

On our way back home there was a beautiful storm over the mountains in the distance, what a great way to end the day...

Episode 2 - is there really snow in this canyon?

The answer is a resounding NO!

On a scorching sunday afternoon we decide on the most logical course of action. we pile in cars drop down a few thousand feet and head into the desert. we head to a place called snow canyon, apparently its named after a person and not the weather there. you might ask what would bring us to such a place? i will tell you, LAVA CAVES!!!

Our adventures are gaining popularity, today we take a pair of cars to keep our travelers with us. with us we have Rev. Pappy, 'Nam, HC, Snakebite, and little pink backpack.

today is a historic day for us as it starts the candy tradition. this began with a kitkat bar purchased at the local "sellout america but act like were a patriotic superstore". on the trip down it sat in the car and melted a bit. this doesnt become apparent until we arrive. there is only one course of action apprioate for our descision making skills, leave it on the dash as we go hiking in 110+ degree heat. yes it rocked!

so we start away from the cars and hike down into the desert scrubland, cacti assault us as the heat pounds down, but we march on. i like this cause it makes us sound way more badass than we actually are. instantly i start sweating, what can i say im a sweater, a wool plaid sweater. so as we travel there is a beautiful landscape of mountains out in front of us. we come up on the first cave. now what i see is a big black fucking crater covered in hot sharp rock.

we discover two ways into this cavern a larger way that takes a little climbing which most of us go for but not fatman, nope fatman invokes rule 7 and finds the other way, a small hole he must squeeze his ass into. we head deeper into the cavern bust out our lights and move deeper in. as soon as we get out of the sunlight the temperature begin to drop. once fully in the cave it has probably dropped a good 40 degrees. after the first section we get to a climb down point, its right about here i wonder if we will ever see fatman again he has not resurfaced so i back track a touch and he walks up i still to this day dont know what hole he climbed out of but i wish i was there to laugh at him when he did. anyway we now have a full party again, traverse down this climb point, now snakebite who has been thru here before finds a much more difficult way to climb down. we pass over some friendly grundling rocks and eventually come upon a larger cavern, this is where this leg ends. we hang out for a few minutes take a couple pictures and spread out to have everyone shutoff their lights. now this is the kind of dark even space cant offer, your balance goes to shit cause the floor is uneven you cant see, and every little sounds echoes off of the walls, it was awesome. lights back on and we head out. i trail behind like i always do one because i like to look around and two because i dont like traveling in big groups. i realize again that fatman has fallen behind, so i go back to look for him. i find him standing in the middle of the carvern still just looking around. its at this point that i start to wonder about airflow in an underground cavern and all of the people that have used this air before us. in looking at fatman man i was getting pretty sure he was going batshit crazy due to oxygen deprivation and i was going to have to drag his crazy ass out of here. as it turns out i was wrong and he was just staring in amazement at the wonder that nature can do, being all philosophical and shit. so i decide to philosophize with him for a bit, once done we decide its best to fuck with the people who have finally realized we are both missing by screaming like we were in a "b" horror movie. "ITS GOT FATMAN!!!!!" "OH MY GODDDDDdddddd" "SAVE YOURSELVES!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!" shit like that. it entertains us for another minute and we head out. nothing eventful happens untl we get back to the entrance people start finding the way back up and fatman has to once again prove he did actually fit thru his own tunnel. i think we should have put up an ownership sign for him cause noone else would choose that way or the relativly easy climb right next to his "tunnel". the rest of us call dibs for who gets to climb out last, back into the scorching heat, not because we dont want to move on but more because some people are slow climbers and we didnt want to be standing in the sun baking and waiting for the others. im second to last out followed by snakebite. back into the heat.

we look for the next cave, and find it.

climb on in, this one is shorter than the other but is larger on the inside, we play around for a bit finding holes to crawl into cause im sure nothing else could be living in these holes right??? i go about looking for a couch to take a nice little break and find one. fatman finds a hole in the back of this cave and of course needs to crawl his candy eating ass into it. its so small that we have to drop our packs to get in it. its a cool little place, the entrance is a slide that you have to go into forwards slide down right into a large sharp pointy rock that tries to eat your face! this cavern is fairly small and again we search it out people drop into holes that seem to connect under us. nam pink backpack and fatman man are all doing so. snakebite and i decide to look up we see some large cracks above us and that we have entered we are guessing an unstable cavern. we decide to leave... hc is still in the entryway, i impaitenly wait and scramble out of the rock closet of death as we are hanging out to see if the others die. we see another very large rock precariously hanging from the ceiling. this was cave #2. on out way out we decide to take a few pics and play in shit, no literally shit, that is probably covered in hanta virus. then we leave.

these are the two big caves our trip leaders are aware of so since there is no more cimbing down to do we decide to do a rock scramble, and we all find different paths up a large rock and by large i mean roughly 100-150' tall. wide in different parts we hang out on it for a bit, snakebite fails at falling off the rock at least im pretty sure thats what she was trying to do. then i see one of the most beautiful things of the trip. a storm system starts rolling in over the mountains in the distance, i watch for a while as the wind starts to pick up. we decide to head back and the wind picks up even more but we are in no imminent danger. most follow the winding trail back towards the car, but not me. i decide to strike out on my own across the scorching wilderness, fatman decides he cant let me die in the wilderness alone so off we go. to both die... this is actually really fun climbing over loose piles of lava rock and avoiding cactus patches, it turned into a nice little hike. now i have seen snake holes before and i can usually identify them from just some random hole in the ground. well as we are walking along we find a nice flat spot and i see one and then another and another i realize we are now standing in the middle of 12+ of these snake holes we decide to leave before finding out wether they were occoupied or not. the rest of the hike out is pretty uneventful.

i was doing some reading over the next couple of days and it turns out the rattlesnakes that populate that area are nocturnal. the funny part is an hour later was sunset. good timing on our part i think!

back at the car fatman investigates his soup that has been brewing for the last couple of hours, and right now i think it might be a nice wafer bisque, but for best soup options he decides to break the wafers down like crackers in chili. i didnt witness him eat it but im sure it was delicious.

In the End this wasnt much of a hike but was a really fun desert playground adventure.