Some may have heard this already, but 7 people from California and Nevada were killed Monday, when a flash flood struck Keyhole Canyon in Utah's Zion National Park.

They were identified today:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...918-story.html

This strikes close to home as we usually travel to Zion once a year to canyoneer, although we didn't make the trip this year.

The canyoneering community is usually quick to point out mistakes when canyoneers are injured or killed, but have been remarkably quiet so far.......I think it is taking time to sink in.

My condolences to families and friends of the victims.....we are all hurting.

FWIW, dlofting, there has been a fair amount of discussion about this event on sites like Canyoncollective. Much of the discussion, of course, deals with the inexperience of the people killed, the fact that the flash flood potential was rated as moderate, and the fact that the party was not aware of the storm as it came up from the south (the Clear Creek drainage is east-west oriented, and the topography to the south somewhat concealed the weather change.)

A week after this however, another canyoneer was killed when he rapped off the end of his rope in "Not Imlay". A lot of us knew Louis Johnson, and he was experienced (100+ descents) and had done the (somewhat obscure) canyon before. That one has floored a lot of us, and led to a protracted discussion on what happened in the lead up. At this point, the thought is that for some reason, Louis set up a double strand rappel to an intermediate ledge on a drop of around 90m. His rope came up 2.5m short, and he attempted to make the angled ledge off the end. Unfortunately, he appears to have rolled off the ledge and into the remainder of the drop. Why the double strand and why no transition back to ascent are two questions we don't really have answers for, but the result was the same.