HADES CANYON, DANTES VARIATION. DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK
December 12, 2020
All Photos by Project Cave and Cave Photographer: Irina Tabarana
Death Valley Canyoneering is always a great winter option when every other canyon or region around a radius of hundreds of miles is snow covered or eliminated by lack of access.
The black range provides a great canyon option for big views and a relatively easy approach as long as you select the canyon with the shuttle.
Hades Canyon in particular starts at the top of Dantes View.
You literally get out of your car and start heading down to badwater basin.
The black range canyons start to all blend in together, especially when you have done over 10 of these canyons on this range alone.
What I found of particular interest is that we encountered a lot of big raps over 150 feet in length and less than 200 ft in length.
there were some raps that appeared to be broken up into shorter raps which made the count around 30 raps.
we were still lucky to find some excellent drops and some nice interesting hydrothermal activity within the rock itself.
The colorful array within the strata was nice and I think this canyon was better than I thought it would be.
We were a group of 10 and we finished the canyon, car to car,
in 9 1/2 hours.
for official beta on Hades canyon, visit rope wiki for more information.
I think this is one of my favorite canyons in the black range area for its numerous large drops and some sections of scenic colorful rock.
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