In the Fall of 2023, I convinced Josh Allen to stop by and check out the canyons while he was in the area. With the exit being very uncertain, Josh planned to ascend/climb up anything he went down, and not do the final drops. Descending into the drainage that would later be named Burrly Canyon, Josh found old anchors on the first two drops. However, the anchors stopped showing up after the canyon became difficult. Josh was faced with what looked like an X-section. He did some exposed stemming down the canyon to a chockstone, followed by a roughly 60-foot downclimb to the canyon floor. He couldn’t get a clear view of the final sequence without committing to another large down climb, so he decided to bail.
Josh hadn’t fixed a line on the 60-foot drop he had just climbed down and was faced with a daunting chimney climb to get back up. Having done some of the most difficult X-rated canyons in Utah, Josh described the upclimb as one of the most burly things he had ever done in a canyon. This experience led to naming the canyon Burrly after we later did a full descent of the canyon. Josh continued on to descend the upper part of Swurrly Canyon to where he could escape the canyon before the final sequence. He wasn’t able to get his eyes on the final sequences of either canyon, but his descriptions convinced me that I needed to go do a full descent of both canyons. Josh believed that Burrly was an X-canyon, so the possibility of finding a new X-canyon really got me excited.
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| Looking up at the "burly" chimney climb |
In early December 2023, I put a group together to fully descend the canyons and find a viable exit. Before the trip, I reached out to several people involved in canyon explorations in the region to see if they had been to the area or had ideas on a possible exit. Multiple people I reached out to had the area on their radar but hadn’t been out there due to there being no clear exit from the canyons. Studying the contour lines on the map, a peninsula between Burrly and Swurrly looked like the best possible candidate for an exit. However, there would have to be a viable climbing route through the initial cliff band. If that exit didn’t work out, we would have to traverse 3 miles to the south for the next possible escape point.
With the scouting that had been done, along with elevation data, I knew the final drops of the canyons couldn’t be much more than 300 feet high. We packed a 320ft, 150ft, and 80ft rope with us, along with 460ft of Dyneema pull-cord. Josh wasn’t able to join us for the descent, but all six people in the group had experience doing X-rated canyons. You never know what you are going to run into while doing explorations, so it is essential to have a good base of high-stemming and pothole escape skills. I’ve been caught off-guard by both high-stemming and potholes in past explorations, so I brought a full set of pothole escape gear in addition to my standard kit.
When we arrived at the trailhead, a recent snowstorm had iced up all of the north-facing slopes, which further complicated our plans for finding an exit on steep terrain. We dropped into Burrly first and found it largely snow and ice-free. After one initial rappel, the down-climbs came one after another, getting bigger and bigger as we progressed down the canyon.
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| Sam near the bottom of one of the down climbs |
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Overlooking the many down climbs to come
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We soon got to the drop that marked the start of what Josh had called the X-section. The high-stemming did not look fun with our large packs, so we sent our smallest group member, Amanda, to scout out a possible downclimb on belay. Amanda discovered that by immediately downclimbing right at the drop, you could walk through on the bottom and bypass the high-stemming. A 60 foot downclimb is still X-rated in my book, but this drop could be easily rappelled, which only makes it X-rated by choice.
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| Amanda scouting out the 60-foot down climb |
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| The big downclimb from below |
After marveling at the horrendous upclimb that Josh did, we continued down the next drop, which gave us a view of the final sequence. We were anticipating a big rappel at the end of the canyon, but surprisingly, it looked like the entire 300ft drop could be down-climbed. Back-to-back down climbs led to one short rappel. It took three of us to rig the rappel off of a chockstone due to how tight the slot was.
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| Nearing the final rappel |
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| The rappel from the bottom |
After the rappel, more downclimbs led to the canyon floor. I can’t remember doing another canyon with as much sustained downclimbing as Burrly had. I was relieved that we didn’t have to deal with a large drop at the end of the canyon, but we still had to find an exit.
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| Amanda on a tricky rabbit hole downclimb |
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| The final downclimb |
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| The final narrow of Burrly Canyon |
As we approached the peninsula that I had marked out as a possible exit, it looked like a cliff-band was blocking access. However, continuing on around the peninsula, I spotted a route up the cliffs that I thought I could climb. A short chimney led to one exposed crossover move onto the face, followed by another short chimney. After getting to the top, I scouted ahead and was convinced enough by what I saw to throw a line down for the rest of the group to climb up. I thought that the climb wasn’t difficult, but falling from the climb would probably kill you, so a lot of groups are going to want a climber with them or to set a fixed line beforehand. The hike out took us up a narrow peninsula with impressive views of the Dirty Devil River Canyon below.
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| Myself leading the exit climb |
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| Nearing the top of the exit |
Before reaching the top, we cut over to the head of Swurrly Canyon. Some group members weren’t feeling up for a second canyon, so they decided to provide rim support while three of us descended the canyon. They brought our packs down to the exit before the final sequence so that we could do the upper section without packs. The upper section of the canyon required some mandatory stemming 10 feet or so off the ground, along with a lot of downclimbing. The whole upper section only took us about 10 minutes to descend, moving very quickly without packs. After reaching our packs, we entered into the unknown lower section that Josh hadn’t explored.
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downclimbing in the upper section of Swurrly
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The canyon deepened with a twisty 20-foot downclimb, leading to scenic deep narrows. Multiple downclimbs in the 20-foot range led to a straight corridor ending in a large drop. Similar to the mid-canyon rappel in Burrly, there were chockstones wedged in the canyon floor that would work as anchors.
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| Thomas dropping into the lower section of Swurrly |
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| Lower Swurrly Canyon |
From the scouting we had done, we knew the drop couldn’t have a vertical drop more than 300 feet. However, I never judge by the vertical drop alone, due to sometimes being forced to set anchors far back from the edge. With this in mind, I tied the 150 ft, and 300 ft ropes together and set up a contingency block right behind the knot, allowing me to lower an additional 150 ft of rope if needed. The tight slot made the whole anchor construction process very difficult, but we eventually managed to get the first person off of the edge. After visual confirmation of the rope reaching the ground, Thomas and Sam rappelled to the bottom.
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Thomas starting down the final rappel
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| Looking down the final rappel |
I usually use a toggle on rappels of this size, but the narrow bottom of the canyon made me go with a standard pull with my 3mm Dyneema pull cord. The final rappel was airy, with sweeping views of the Dirty Devil River Canyon. It reminded me of the final rappel of Montezuma Canyon and was similar in size. There was a pool at the bottom surrounded by trees, reminiscent of the final rappel of Heaps. We had a difficult time getting a clean pull, and had to climb a nearby hill to get the right pull angle. We could have made it easier on ourselves by extending the webbing further off of the edge, but we had completely run out of webbing between the two canyons.
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| Looking up at the final rappel of Swurrly Canyon |
We exited using the same route as we had used for Burrly but got off-route at one point. I had to do a very difficult mantle over an icy ledge to get us past a dry fall. This could have been avoided if we had stuck to the ridge, but we were totally exhausted from doing the brutal exit climb twice. Hiking back to the cars, we discussed possible names for the canyons we had just descended. I ended up going with the names that Josh had originally thought of when he was scouting out the area. The names Burrly and Swurrly are word plays on the nearby Burr Point and relate to different features in both canyons. Both canyons are high quality with Burrly being the better of the two of them. The exit climb is impressive on its own and enhances the experience of descending the canyons. It was surprising to find both of these canyons in a region that has been thoroughly explored and shows that there are still some good canyons out there waiting to be discovered.
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| Sunset on the canyon rim |
Route beta for both canyons:
https://ropewiki.com/Burrly_Canyon
https://ropewiki.com/Swurrly_Canyon
Group members: Austin Farnworth, Jared Wall, Elsie Cluff, Amanda Cluff, Thomas Cluff, Sam Cluff
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