If you plan on doing any serious or long-term Canyoneering, than you will need to buy yourself a wetsuit.  There are numerous sizes, colors, lengths, thickness, and types.

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As you have seen, Canyoneering typically contains some amount of water in a canyon.  Remember, canyons are the sewer systems of Mother Earth.  Water can be trapped in a canyon for months!  Some of those canyons depths may only see the sunlight for an hour a day or less.  In other words you can count on that water being cold!

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How a wetsuit works is by trapping a very thin later of water between your bare body and the neoprene.  Your body heat will warm up the layer keeping you "warm".  The form-fitting wetsuits work best as you want it skin-tight to maximize your warmth.  The looser it fits, the colder you will be.

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Types of wetsuits:  Full, Short or "Shortie", Farmer-John

Thickness (in milimeter): 2 mm to 7 mm.  (the thicker it is the more warmer you will be)

Colors: you name it, they have it.

Brand:  no particular brand is preferred.

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Typically, canyoneers wear full wetsuits that are in the 3 mm size.  I have been told by multiple women, that 5 mm wetsuits is especially preferred for a woman as they run colder than men.

 

I own multiple wetsuits as you can see above, but it usually just depend on the canyon on which one I bring.  If there is a lot of water, I bring my more durable one.  If there is just one or two swimmers, I'll bring the shortie and go back into dry clothes right after the swimming portions.  I have even heard of people using two wetsuits at the same time for additional warmth.  This would work but be VERY bulky and hard to manuever with, unless it was like a 1 or 2 mm size wetsuit.  But in that case, I would just turn to a DRYSUIT (see below for more info).  

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Additional tidbits about wetsuits:  1) When you get back from your canyon trips, please rinse them out throughly with clean water before you store them.  This will help alleviate the smell that they can trap with them.  There are neoprene cleaners on the market that do help with the cleaning and smell if normal tap water doesn't do the trick.  2) Neoprene sometimes have a marijuana-like smell to them and I would advise keeping them in the garage and not in the house.  My older brother when he would come to visit would often be like "are you guys doing marijuana here?"  "What? No!"  "Well, it smells just like it".  Apparently we got use to the smell after a year of them being in the basement. It did indeed smelled just like it if you were to leave the house for a few days!  So we moved them out to the garage and the smell is completely gone from the basement now.

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