In the fall of 2012, we had a nice trip into Death Valley National Park to one of our favorite slots: Grotto Canyon, located in the north end of the Panamint Mountain range. Enjoy the photos, though they do not begin to capture the essence of Grotto Canyon's maze of smooth, twisty passages - wish you could see some of the video we took during this hike-and-climb.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
The lonely trailhead.
The mouth of Grotto Canyon: Death Valley's climbing paradise, and you usually have it all to your self.
Lots of fun dry fall climbs.
There's no end to the amazing hard rock narrows.
Its best to bring a small group and a rope to make it up the falls. Most exposed falls can be circumvented with amazing canyon rim hike-a-rounds, like the one below:
You get to squeeze through endless narrow passages.
Up high in the canyon, we enjoyed fine sunset views of the Death Valley (aka Mesquite) San Dunes.
Tim and Andrew poses near the finish of a great day of Grotto Canyon mash-ups.
Couldn't do a posting without a nice farewell-until-next-time, happy-trails, sunset-shot!
Hope you enjoyed these wonderful photos from an unforgettable outing - our 4th one to Grotto Canyon. Some day we hope to have climbed all of the main and side canyons here. On this climb/hike, we were only able to cover most of the main canyon and the revered 3rd side canyon. In the process, we discovered an arch that we were not aware of in the park before - arches are rare in the hard rock of Death Valley National Park. I found a link to a
very nice description of Grotto Canyon that you might enjoy. Note that the tattered, faded, tiny sign leading drivers off of Highway 190 onto the dirt road to the Grotto Canyon trailhead is now COMPLETELY GONE! So you'll just have to find the road without the aid of the sign.
