Eric Allix Rogers
@ericallixrogers
Architecture, interesting & historic places, Chicago, exploring cities by bike & transit. Mostly photos. Views my own. He/him. 🚲 🏙️ 🚆 🐱 🏳️🌈 📷
Merry Christmas! Christkindlmarket has been moved to Federal Plaza, and also July.
Ending this thread with what I thought would be the most exciting photos of the day: magnificent mushrooms!
Moral of the story: canyons are awesome and scary. Make sure you know how you're getting out at all times. Just don't go in if there's any significant rainfall coming, especially since weather is less predictable and forecasts are less reliable these days.
We spent the next two hours checking to see if the waterfall was letting up, which it was; hunting for robust walking sticks; and monitoring the water level until we felt it had dropped enough to give us a good shot to at crossing with sticks as braces.
In hindsight, the moment we noticed this waterfall form upstream, about 45 minutes into a storm we thought was going to pass much more quickly, we should have booked it out in spite of the continuing rain. The water rose very quickly after that.
After a rainstorm, water in a canyon rises gradually, then suddenly.
The 5-hour Illinois Canyon deluxe experience was a bit much, but there are worse places to be stranded. The ephemeral waterfalls were still going as we finally left.
The next crossing was worse. It was possible to shimmy across a fallen tree to clear the strongest and deepest part of the current, though it ruined a pair of shorts. The first two photos show the fallen tree in dry conditions before; the last two were taken looking back after crossing.
These two photos, taken an hour apart, dramatize the problem. The fallen tree visible in both helps show how high the water rose during the storm. We waited a couple of hours for it to recede enough to try crossing the fast-moving water with the help of walking sticks.
Not necessarily what you want to see when looking towards the exit.