Kamikaze Canyon is a remote death valley canyon in the west face of the cottonwood range. Access to this canyon is down the racetrack playa road and across the alluvial fan to bottom of the range.I want to thank Scott Swaney for pioneering this first descent and providing the beta for the second descent.

This is a second descent canyon as the last group led by Scott Swaney was here over 5 years ago.  All of the anchors had to be re-built.

We headed out into the desert around 0830 and made our steep ascent, 2300ft. to the top of the second escarpment of the ridge to gain the canyon access.

The steep hikes in Death valley are pretty common when accessing canyons and this ascent was no exception. Heart of stone was rather straightforward and easy compared to the usual ascents.

Once we got to the top we had a fantastic view of the sierras and Whitney from our first drop, which was around 170ft and just about all free hanging.

We re-rigged the drop and continued on the leap from and keep everyone building anchors as they continued to rap down through the canyon.

We encountered some down climbs, some were spicier than others and around 8-9 drops but the canyon surprisingly narrowed up which provided some interesting colors and an array of  scenic value.

The canyon looked like it had some deep grooves in the face but we were presently surprised to see it narrow up.

My battery was running low on my main camera so I decided to bring just the I phone and give it a whirl.

with a few meanderings the canyon opened back up and we were on the alluvial fan once again.

Leviathan canyon feeds right into the same drainage but we did not have enough time to get leviathan.

We hiked back to the cars and rounded off the trip at around 6 hours from start to finish.

There are some more interesting looking canyons on the west face that we will have to come back to and visit in the near future.

The canyon was a surprise as we were not expecting much and I would give it a 3 out of five stars.  Its worth a drop.

Its a great way to wrap up canyons for the region as to stick around and grab some of the less visited routes.

This posting is for the team members experience and for personal reference.  This should not be used to any official beta purposes. Please refer to www.ropewiki.com for more information on this and other canyons.