Potholes, especially on the Colorado Plateau, can be deep. Very, very deep. Stack the odds in your favor by planning ahead and preparing well.

Purpose: To use thrown packs & bags to create enough counterweight to facilitate escape from a keeper pothole.

Application: Exceptionally deep potholes that will not yield to partner assists, traverses, or other less strenuous and less time consuming methods.

Step 1 - Getting Prepared: The first rule of pack tosses is Committment. Once you decide that this is to be your primary method of escape from the pothole, take the time and measures neccessary to assure victory. Don't bother throwing one or two bags and then testing to see if it works; you'll get cold, tired, and frustrated. Rather, throw four or five bags, sit on two floating packs, and have two people pushing you from behind while you ascend. There is no such thing as overkill when escaping very deep keeper potholes.

It's also important to remember that a pack-tossed anchor that fails while being ascended can be dangerous. You can become seriously injured or die. Wear your helmet and play smart.

Step 3 - Toss Again!
Don't settle for one bag. Fill up a second bag with sand (be careful - filling your bags with rocks will wear them out much quicker) and clip this bag to the 5mm cord as you would a pack to a zipline (such that it can run free along the line). It can be helpful to pull a large (50' or more) amount of slack out at the point where you've clipped the bag, as a tense line will interfere with your throwing arc. Throw this bag yonder. Continue to clip & throw bags until you have 30-50 lbs. of ballast over the lip of the pothole.

Ideally, the thrown bags will catch over the lip of another pothole or in a flared constriction, so that only one or two bags will be neccessary to anchor the escape line. In other circumstances (see photo) you may be able to get the bags into water in the next pothole such that the sand or other contents soak up water weight and increase the ballasting. This is called "teabagging".

In the least ideal scenarios, the exit side of the pothole will be long, flat, and featureless, or even slope back into the pothole. Tosses will still help in these circumstances, but you will need to toss many more packs to create a decent anchor. In most of these cases, you will need to employ other techniques as well, such as a Happy Hooker or partner assist from below.

Step 4 - Ascending the rope:
Once again, the key here is preparation. A Petzl Ascension will grip the 5mm adequately, but it won't grip much of anything if you drop it in the water. Make sure you have safety tethers clipped from both of your ascenders to your harness and that your footloops are set to a comfortable length. If you are also using a Happy Hooker or other hooking devices, attach these to your harness as well, or to a safety line being attended by your partners above. Have your supporters behind you ready with a second escape line in case you get cold or the anchors fail.

After attaching your ascenders, weight the rope delicately as you ascend. Try to use features in the rock or a partner assist to take as much weight as you can off of the pack toss line. In some cases, you may only be able to put 25-50 lbs. of weight on the tossed anchor, but this can be enough to allow you to climb the rest of the way.

A special note on drilled holes:
In the early days, nearly all keeper potholes were dispatched using non-destructive techniques. In more recent times, destructive techniques like drilling holes for bat hooking, or worse, chipping holds in the rock have pervaded the canyoneering world. We encourage everyone to aim high and use destructive techniques as a last resort only. Some impressively deep pothole problems (15' deep or greater) have been solved using nothing more than pack tosses. Besides demonstrating impressive style, you will also be preserving the canyons for everyones future enjoyment. Good luck!