One day, along the northern edge of the Primavera Forest, I noticed a narrow opening in a canyon wall. I stepped through and found a long passageway stretching before me. I soon discovered I was in a typical slot canyon, with vertical walls rising straight up some 70 meters, but in some places the walls were a mere two meters apart. It had a flat, unencumbered floor and I sauntered along easily, fascinated by long, shelf-like protuberances on both sides of the gully.
Well, that narrow canyon meandered this way and that and it took several return trips before I learned that it only came to an end after three kilometers. Topo maps identify this canyon as Arroyo El Carbón and you’ll find pictures and a description of it at ranchopint.com.Every time I visited this narrow canyon, I always wondered what it must be like during a storm. Well, slot canyons are famous for flash floods and surely there is nothing scarier than the thought of a wall of water bearing down upon you in such a confined place, washing you and your friends downstream in a jumble of tree trunks, boulders and chocolaty froth—with absolutely no place to go to escape the deluge.
Well, it just so happens that last Sunday I was two kilometers inside Arroyo El Carbón with a dozen enthusiastic members of Los Caminantes, an informal hiking group, when out of a cloudy sky a light rain began to fall.
At that point, my mind took me back 18 years to a cave on the banks of the Ferrería River near Chiquilistlán. After spending hours underground, I had exited the cave with two geologists who welcomed the idea of washing off the mud, sweat and guano in a tiny hot pool on the river’s edge.
There we were soaking in the soothing warm water when I asked my friends Yolanda and Gerardo: “Hey, what’s happening to the river? It doesn’t look the same!” Sure enough, the walls of the hot pool had been a meter above the water level just a few minutes earlier, but now the distance looked half that much.
“¡Un creciente! Flash flood!” we shouted simultaneously and we barely managed to pull on our clothes before the quickly rising river had entirely covered the hot pool, as if it had never existed. In a matter of minutes, we were clinging to a nearly vertical wall as the now chocolate-colored river lapped at our feet—and the amazing thing was that the sky above us was sunny and clear.
A few hours later, the water level dropped and we were able to reach the point where we had originally crossed the river. Now all we had to do was get to our car on the other side—of what was still a brown, raging torrent…which cascaded down a waterfall only a few meters away.
In my pack I had a 15-meter length of strong nylon webbing. As luck would have it, we now discovered that none of us was much of a swimmer. Then, somehow, I got elected to tie one end of the webbing to myself and to try reaching a big rock in the middle of the river while Gerardo, who is much heavier than I, would hold on to the other end to haul me back in case the river swept me away.
“If I get to the rock,” I told Yolanda, who was trembling, and not just from the cold, “we will stretch the line tight and you will hold on to it as you come over to me.”
“¡No puedo!” exclaimed Yolanda with big, saucer eyes, staring at the waterfall just beyond the rock. “You will do it because there’s no other choice,” I replied and into the river I plunged.
Well, it worked and we repeated the procedure from the rock to the opposite shore and were soon sharing among the three of us what dry clothes we managed to find in our gear.
That story had a happy ending, but in Arroyo El Carbón, my fellow hikers and I were astonished to see how much water was soon gushing down the canyon walls. What had started out as a mere drizzle was now a steady rain, but I had never imagined the Primavera’s canyons would flood so quickly, considering that the land is mostly jal, volcanic tuff which usually absorbs water like a sponge. Later geologist Chris Lloyd reminded me that the recent forest fire had created just the right conditions for this sort of an event.
All of a sudden, as we made our away along the Arroyo, we found ourselves in a wonderland of waterfalls, some shooting out like spray from a fire hose and others cascading down the smooth canyon wall like a sheet of glass. They were beautiful and my first reaction was to stop and take photos with my new waterproof camera. But soon the outpouring of all those falls had turned the canyon floor into an actual river and we ran for our lives.
I’m happy to say that everyone exited Arroyo El Carbón safely. I must also confess that the spectacular beauty I witnessed during the downpour seems to be luring me back to watch and photograph more of the Primavera Forest’s canyon cascades.
For a peek at this charming canyon in sunshine and in rain—and our daring escape— look for “Arroyo El Carbon Slot Canyon Jalisco” on YouTube.