Today we hiked into Bluejohn Canyon. This is the place that Aron Ralston was trapped and had to amputate his own arm [as in the book he wrote "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" that was made into the movie "127 Hours"]. This is a difficult canyon to reach. If you don't have equipment to rappel it is even trickier to find a way to get down into the canyon. There is no trail or particular place to start from. It only gets visited by about 100 people per year. I had to study and print some Google earth pictures of the area and take some gps readings so that we could plan how we would pick our way for 2 miles across the desert and miss other steep canyons and ravines using my Garmin to navigate. My Wife and I, my Son and Step Son, and my Parents all were able to make it across the desert and to the bottom of the canyon. My dad is 80 years old and my mother is 72. They keep themselves very fit. We then hiked for 1 1/2 miles up Bluejohn canyon through some of the most beautiful slot canyon I have been in. Most of it is from 1 foot to 10 or 12 feet wide at the bottom with 200 foot walls going straight up on either side. The coolest stretch had walls about 15 feet wide at the bottom but narrowed to only about a foot or two high overhead. We must of hit it at just the right time of day when there was a thin stream of light making it in that caused an orange glow to the walls inside. It looked like a cathedral. We eventually had to turn back when we got to where rock climbing gear was necessary. When we got back to where we had climbed down into the canyon, my son and step son and I went another 2 1/2 miles down the canyon to the spot where he was actually trapped. We had to do some rock climbing to reach these parts and had to hope we would all be able to climb back out. I had a climbing rope but no harnesses or other rock climbing gear. The last section of the canyon got very narrow and tight just before the place he was trapped. It was hard just imagining what had happened in that spot. As we went farther down canyon, it continued to narrow to the point were it got completely dark. I had one small flashlight to share between us. There were a number of spots to climb down in the dark that were very tight and tricky and for about a 100 yards you felt like you were just squeezing through a cave. Then it starts to get light and you come right out of the hole onto a 15 foot wide shelf 60 feet up from the valley floor. Very dramatic entrance to the much larger canyon. At this point the only way down is to rappel so we headed back at that point. It was a very exhausting 12 miles with all of the rock climbing and a lot of hiking through sand. We were pretty beat by the time we returned to the jeep just as it was getting dark. My wife and parents were able to follow the tracks we had made while hiking in that morning [ours were the only tracks out there] and got back ahead of us. It was an awesome adventure and we got a lot of great photos. Picking our way across the desert 
My wife and sons down in the bottom of Bluejohn Canyon 
My Mom and Dad under a log wedged into place by flash floods 
Over a mile of the hike is slot canyon like this 
This was like a cathedral with the walls closed in high overhead with a sliver of sun coming in. 
Gorgeous color with the sun just sneaking in. 
The trapped S-Log at the head of the final section of slot canyon. This was a 15 foot drop down in and just a short distance before the spot Aron Ralston was trapped. 
This is the boulder that trapped his arm. 
Climbing down in the complete darkness just past the accident sight with just one small light between us. Of course the flash makes it look like broad daylight.
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