Thornton Ck, North Cascades NP, WA

One rather exciting canyon. Essentially a huge granite chute, thornton gets steeper the lower you enter. Since the middle and lower sections had been done, we hiked up higher to add an extra 4hr section; Upper Thornton. Still plenty of canyon upstream, so it might end up being Middle Thornton. The whole thing would probably take upwards of 10hrs even with previous knowledge and established anchors..

HEAPS of water, couple of the most scary raps of my life. One was directly down the center of a nasty chute, with no way to traverse or deviate around the flow. The landing was good, so the last part was more of a slide than a rap. The other scary was a delicate traverse through one waterfall to reach a deviation block. One false move would have seen you slip into a death hydraulic on the other side of the canyon!!

Super good fun though ;0) Check out the video at www.canyoningvideos.com under 'canyoning video of the week'