Cherry Creek Nine Years Later

Notes on the ebbs and flows of canyoneering progressing and regressing through time

                                                     Beautiful Cherry Creek Canyon

I had the opportunity to descend Cherry canyon one more time. My first time was about 9 years ago, first time down this limestone route. This last time, still beautiful and with signs of steady increase in traffic in the form of trails, ever larger cairn anchors, tat, chopped bolts, and traffic jams. Although canyoneering would seem to grow in ebbs and flows, it is more a steady increase in popularity, and the ebbs and flows aspect seems to be linked to the awareness of the history, culture and skills of this activity. Through the years, formal training and education has been a spotty resource in communities all around the USA, but the ever present and well meaning word-of-mouth peer-to-peer instruction is ever present, and alive and well. I had the luck of doing this canyon first with an ACA’s Lead Program (American Canyoneering Association) with a group from Las Vegas. Trained leaders that were tasked with taking groups of less trained aspirants to build a numbers of lead canyons to get their Leader shot at an ACA assessment. As time passed by, such structured program could not scale anymore to accommodate the influx of newcomers, and the flood gates of peer-to-peer "instruction" slowly took root again as the primary source of know how.

                                                        Cherry Creek 2015 ACA run

I ended up being part of the ACA Leader program, leading canyons, taking assessments, and becoming a ACA Leader, and eventually, a Pro Canyon Guide with Canyon Guides International.

Does it matter how and where you get your canyoneering “know-how”? No, and yes.

It does not matter if you get your friends to share their know-how in a canyon as long as you memorize correctly and accurately what they passed along, and you apply it in that canyon, or very similar ones. As long as you venture into different canyons, with different anchors, and different risks, that know-how becomes less and less usable, and probably a liability instead of an asset. This scenario has been painfully clear as “extremely experienced” word-of-mouth and/or self-learners venture outside their native territories and get in trouble themselves, or get someone else in trouble, while “leading'“ other less experienced people.

                                          Trained ACA Leader down Cherry Canyon 

Hard to tell where canyoneering will end up:

Peer to peer self-learners doing laps in familiar canyons? Or venturing out and picking new routes from social media photos and/or “praised routes”? Or small clubs, groups, or identity based organizations embracing formal training and acting as “guides” for weekend warriors? Probably all of the above.

But in all cases, all formal or informal groups will experience the same “priming the pump” problem that the ACA dealt with in its day: Having enough trained and experienced canyoneers at the top, willing to train and mentor aspirants up the ladder of skills and leader responsibilities.

Hopefully, the comprehensive curriculum of skills and collective culture and history will get preserved, somehow.