Treking the Salome Jug

You know why I put pictures on my blog? Because my pictures tell a better story than I ever can. I am but a mere soul, adding 1s and 0s to the ever-growing frontier of the wild wild internet, and the best possible contribution I can make is in the form of thousands of RGB values which tell a visual story. Confused? Well forget all the mumbo jumbo of actually how a picture I observe through a camera lens gets turned into a digital rendition and just look at the damn photos already.

We went canyoneering at Salome Jug on Sunday with a group of 12 friends. It was phenomenal. That sounds like a broken record of every "river trip" I take I know, but it is sort of true. In the past month I have explored three separate but amazing rivers, all close located in the area of Arizona about 2 hours NE of Phoenix. This river flows into the Roosevelt Lake Dam though versus the Verde which flows into the Bartlett Lake Dam. Like it matters.

The Salome Jug as it is called, is basically a slot canyon that is flowing down elevation and and it traversable by sliding, climbing and jumping down each waterfall to the next deep pool and swimming to the next falls. There is one major falls at the end which is over 30 feet and requires a rappel to the bottom so climbing near is needed (although I see a way to get out to a jumpable 30 ft cliff if you had to). It was about a five hour trip but due to all the swimming, rock scrambling and climbing, I was pretty tired by the end. It was a tough day on the knee, but completely worth every bit of knee swellage it incurred. Some things are just too fun to past up.

Photo Story Commences..

The hike started out with a couple miles down to the river overlooking Lake Roosevelt from the north. It was pretty exposed and hot but quite beautiful, except for the little weird bugs flying around.

Once we got to the river, it was basically water from here on out. Most of us hiked with water sandals and a dry bag because swimming was going to be the main mode of transport.

Many of the waterfalls seemed to run down natural smooth slides. This was of course the easier and most fun way to descend. Weeeaaaahh! Go Tom go.

Between each falls were deep canyon pools that we would swim through. The water was chilly but not cold and we didn't wear any wussy wet suits (shivering is just extra fitness training right).

Crazy Rower #2 and Em show off their jumping skills for the camera. At this point, we got out our climbing gear and prepared for the rappel to get down the next falls. It was about a 35 foot rappel with a sketch 20 foot traverse out to it (made safe by clipping in to a safety rope).

Hannah is tired, hungry, wet and happy. She wishes every day could be just like this.