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Between a Rock and a Wet Place (cont.)
Even when I was 13, I was never that lithe or confident. Give me a rope. In the morning, the class moves to the girders beneath a bridge spanning the Salt River. Rich Carlson, our instructor and the driving force behind the ACA, has us practice rigging various rappels, this time with consequences: Get it wrong and you send your partner for a ten-foot tumble into the gravel. (My partner is a six-foot-two bow hunter who outweighs me by 40 pounds, so the consequences are greater for me.) Placed in the context of an actual fall, the training takes hold and soon we're setting up canyon-ready rappels with quick hands. Just as important as all this rope work, though, are the lessons on canyon etiquette. We learn the proper use of natural anchors and the ethics of placing bolts, how to wade in streambeds instead of on delicate shoreline plants, and how to stay safe so a search-and-rescue team won't have to save us, destroying fragile rock formations in the process. Surprisingly, flash floods, the cause of the tragic high-profile deaths of 21 canyoneers near Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1999 and 11 in Antelope Canyon, Arizona, in 1997, are low on Carlson's list of what to watch out for. "Flash floods are a real danger," he tells us one night, "but they're not as common as people think. It's not like they're a surprise. If you look at a canyon with a 100-square-mile watershed and you have a 40-percent chance of rain, it's probably not a good day to go."
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