Dang Spiders!!!!!!!!!

My husband Moydie and I love the outdoors, but especially we love the San Rafael Swell.  There are so many cool canyons and hikes there that every weekend that we can we're there camping and exploring.  This summer has been epic so far and we've been blessed to have been able to go on so many adventures already and it's only June! 
My husband Moydie is a canyoneer.  I'm sort of a canyoneer.
This past weekend we went out to the Swell to beast the North Fork of Iron Wash Canyon.  Moydie researched this canyon for like two weeks straight so we knew exactly what to expect, more or less.  We were plenty prepared and we felt really good.
The hike to the entry part of the canyon was long, but very scenic as one of the landmarks was an old oil rig.

So after having fun with the old oil rig, we finally made our way to the canyon entry point.  We climbed down very skillfully and we were in a super cool canyon.  We were having a great time and nothing was very technical yet.  Until we found a medium sized pot hole which could easily be climbed down and up out of.  It was a little slow going on my part, but we made it down and I felt very accomplished.  Then we reached a dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon . . .

 

 

 This dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon was a little awkward to go through because you know, you're shimmying slanted lol.  Moydie's shoulders barely fit in between the canyon walls.  So it was tight.  I had previously learned I was slightly claustrophobic when we first got married and tried to share a one man tent with Moydie.  Bad idea.  So since I have this slight claustrophobia, I was trying to stay as calm as I could through this dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon.  I was doing just fine, coming right behind Moydie when all of a sudden I looked ahead and I started to wonder how far this went.  So I stopped and I asked Moydie how far this goes like this and he thought it could go for as far as 700 meters!!! What?! I was little scared of that, but I just paused for a breath and I told myself it would be fine, when all of a sudden I saw a huge daddy long leg.  It didn't scare me at first because I knew they were harmless, but I was already a little creeped out by the dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon so I yelled for Moydie to come get it.  Moydie shimmys his way back to me and looks at it when all of a sudden I see three, four, five more come out of an overhanging in the rock above us.  I took a sharp intake of breath and frantically started backing up out of the dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon.  I went a ways, then paused as I looked at Moydie to take a deep breath and relax, when all of a sudden he looks at the spiders and looks back at me panicked.  This time we booked our way out of the dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon.  

Hey, this is Moydie.  I'm stepping in here for a minute, because Lindsey didn't see what I saw, and I wanted to tell it myself.  As Linds said before, we had entered a narrow, dark, slanted slot.  The going was slow and tiring, since you had to lay on the left wall and scoot yourself along by pushing against the opposite wall (or ceiling, depending upon how you look at it).  Like I said, it was dark.  But there was enough light to see the gorgeous sculpted walls you can only find in a sandstone slot canyon.  We had already passed a few technical obstacles with no trouble, and I was in high spirits.  That being said, there's always a slight uneasiness the first time in a new technical canyon.  You're buried deep in the bowels of the earth with no way out but ahead.  Technical canyons can rarely be reversed without leaving fixed ropes behind you.  Even if you're confident that you can make it through, it's still sobering knowing that your choices are either to complete the canyon descent, or quite possibly die there.  When Lindsey asked me how long the slot was, I could hear the worry in her voice.  I started moving back to her when she pointed out the spiders.  At first, I just told her it was a harmless Daddy Long-legs and moved on.  Then I saw...IT.  It was a patch of spiders about the area of a doormat.  I don't mean there were "many" spiders, or even "lots and lots" of spiders.  There was a thick shag-carpet of spiders.  There were spiders crawling over spiders.  There were spiders two or three inches deep, all sitting in a huge mass under a tiny ledge.  I'm no more squeamish about spiders than most guys.  Maybe less so, in fact.  I know Daddy Long-legs' are harmless things, and I could probably handle a dozen of them crawling on me without feeling much unease.  But this was beyond me.  You only see things like this in nightmares and horror movies.  I never would have believed it was real if I hadn't seen it.  And just a moment before, I had crawled within inches of it without even knowing. 

CREEPY!!! AND FREAKIN' SCARY, RIGHT?! 

So that was what he saw before he looked back at me with a panicked look on his face.  I felt like we were in a horror movie . . . seriously.  I'm very lucky I didn't have nightmares last night, but I think I was just way too exhausted.  When we had gotten out of the dark, tiny, slanted, slot canyon we felt a lot more at ease and he told me that there were more spiders than I was probably thinking.  So I was just thinking about 50 or so spiders in a clump.  When we got out of the whole canyon and were lounging in the shade of a cliff eating lunch, he finally told me the truth that there were not hundreds, but probably thousands of those daddy long legs.  Shiver, shiver! Oh my gosh!! Even now when I think of that, I totally get creeped out and I just think how thankful I am for us being safe from feeling those tens of thousands of legs all over our bodies . . .