How Not 2 Canyon

You gotta lean back a little in order for the abs to show. All right, hi. Welcome to Washington State. I'm actually in Washington State. I'm not making it up this time. I'm here with Brent Roth and he is going to make sure I don't die in order to... Why are you doing this? I don't really know yet. I'm gonna say that there's gonna be a lot of entertainment value for me. So I think he wants to keep people who want to try this safe. And I want to expose the world who hasn't seen the coolest sport you've never heard of. Oh wait, that's slacklining. The second coolest sport you've never heard of, doing canyons, is for slow hikers who want to justify doing a 25-minute downhill hike in four hours. It's for climbers who don't want to go uphill. And it's camers who don't want to use headlamps. How are you, Batman? I'm doing outstanding. What are you setting up here? So we're going to set this rappel up in a releasable system. And Ryan is going to set rope length for the first time in his life. You mean I'm going to be the guy hanging from it and you're going to lower me until it's... Until you say stop. And then you'll finish rappelling off the end of your rope into that pool of water. So let's see here. Okay. Good. I don't know where the end of that rope is. But I don't want you to deal with a big ball of mess of rope in that pool of water. So we want this to be specifically set at a good length. So I'm going to use this figure eight and tie it in a method that is a releasable block system. I feel better knowing Batman's holding me. I'm going to put a carabiner there to secure the end of it. I'm going to hold and put another one here back to the anchor. Yep, just so nobody grabs the wrong line and goes down. This is now set as a block. Ryan's ready to go on rappel. Want to set it in there for me since I'm holding the phone? Sure. You're going to want to step over the rope and then get it on your right side. Gotcha. Okay. You remember your whistle signals? Yeah. One means stop. Yep. Two means I'm off rope. I'm off the rope. Three means more rope. Lower rope. Like give me rope. Yep. Four means you have way too much ******* rope. Yep. I'm not going to do anything about that until you get off. Until I get off. Yeah. So your rope length is set short. Remember that. Yeah. So don't rappel off the end of it without doing it on purpose. Right. So you're going to go down until you can see it and then you're going to give me three whistle blasts and I'm going to lower it and you're going to give me one whistle blast when it's set to the lake, which should be just above the water. Oh, I hope you make it, Ryan. I hope I see you down there alive. Whatever you do, don't set it too long. We got there a half hitch and an overhand. I got a slippery half hitch backed up with an overhand. Slippery half hitch. I'll go ahead and secure this. All righty. Got the rope length set. Nice job, Captain. So when we're canyoning, there's a very specific reason we don't like a lot of extra rope down in a pool of water. Why? Well, it becomes a giant tangled mess. And if I got to go swim in a giant tangled mess, that's not going to be pleasant. So you're doing this demonstration to show people how not to do it. Yes. If you drown while doing this demonstration. Pull on the end of the rope. Oh, OK. Go for it. We brought our rescue guy. Rescue Joe. This is what you don't want to have happen to you. Can we go now? So after years of trying to learn things on my own, I finally get to go with experts who want me to do this wrong to be a good example, a good bad example to you guys. So we have a double rope set up here like a climbing rappel where it's in the middle marker area. And I'm going to rappel double stranded like you see a lot of climbers do, which does make me feel happy because this is a system I understand. However, you have to throw the whole rope in the water, which now turns it into a wash machine, tangling up your rope. And if you get stuck in the waterfall and the water, especially it's a backpack, it'll invert you. And now you're drowning on the rope and you have this and this attached to a rope that's in the water. So you don't exactly get to swim away. But they want me to do it anyways. After all of that made sense for me not to want to. You're welcome. I'm stuck, I'm really stuck. Oh my God, that really sucks. So I was legitimately stuck on rope upside down and that was so difficult that I couldn't get out of it until I dumped my pack. And luckily was able to turn around to get back to my blocking device and stand back up before I could eat food. So if the water was just a little bit stronger than that, which is not that strong, I would have been stuck there until somebody came and got me. Not a fun experience. Thanks for doing that for me. Anytime. Another thing that I want to, why I don't want to use this is that when I propel down into a boiling swimming pool of water, I want to be able to get off my rope and swim away. This is going to take a lot of work to get off of while I'm getting tundered in the white stuff. Show us why not to do it. Oh, I'm just afraid you're going to have to do it. You, you don't enjoy doing this at all. No. Most people, you know, hate their jobs. I don't even get paid for this and I hate it. Yeah, I can see that. Brian, what just happened? I, uh, I know what a turd feels like when they get flushed. I didn't have any fun. It wasn't beautiful at all. You know, it's actually really neat. Very different environment. I've looked at waterfalls. Didn't know people actually want to repel in them. There was plenty of places to repel to avoid that. Definitely don't go on your own. Go with somebody who knows what they're doing. First couple of times, finding your way and stuff, knowing we can jump into stuff. It's super, super nice to have a guide with you. Should I put my Batman t-shirt on? It's nice and dry. You forgot it yesterday. Fuck off. So now we all know you have fake abs underneath this. All right, um, I forget what video we're doing the ending of. We just came back from where I went canyoning and it was an adventure and it's pretty hard to cover everything I learned in one video. But we have some things in there of don't throw ropes all the way into the water and kind of like a retrievable system for repelling. And what else did we learn in this video? Well, what what it's like for your first experience in a canyon. The equipment we use and why we use it and makes your life a lot more comfortable so you can actually enjoy what you're doing instead of worrying about dying from hypothermia. Having the right gear was super nice. So like splurged on the shoes. I got to use this new wetsuit. It was really, really nice having the right gear. But yeah, there's a lot of ways to die in there even if your gear doesn't fail. So I would take that sport pretty serious. I guess you should take all extreme sports pretty serious. Except for that whole slacklining thing. I still don't know about that. It doesn't look that serious? No. Like I wouldn't want to go read a guidebook and watch a YouTube video and try to go down a canyon my first time or my 10th time. It's nice. He's developed that route. He put bolts in. He knows which pools you can jump into. You don't jump into stuff if you don't know that area. You have to have a first person go down and scout it out. And I kind of want your guys' feedback. This is our first time not to canyon video and I want to know what you want to see as far as gear tested. There's a lot of techniques that float out there. That was pretty good. Not everything floats. Dyneema ropes. Dyneema core technosheath ropes don't float. But there are some that do. Some custom ropes he was telling me about. So we're going to cover gear. We're also thinking about covering just safety tips, technique, what gear to wear, things like that. And he's going to help me. We're going to try long distance collaborations. Might send him with some line scale threes to play with. And then I would break test stuff back in the lab. And maybe even do the lab. So what else do you want people to know? Oh man, the list is long. But I really want to know what you guys want to know. Post it in the comments below. And Ryan and I will figure out how to deliver what you guys are interested in. There's lots of things that I want you to know. But it's only valid if you're interested. So if you want to have a long life in enjoying this sport and activity, there's a lot of resources out there. Highly recommend looking into it. And we'll just continue this thing for as long as you're interested. We're opening the conversation with this video. 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