Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I want to thank Scott Swaney for pioneering this first descent 4 years ago for the community to enjoy. Heart of stone canyon is a very remote Death Valley canyon  that is located in the cottonwood mountains.

Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The road to Heart of Stone is the same road to take to the racetrack playa but at teakettle junction we turn left and head for the plateau over 6000ft of elevation. 

Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The road progressively becomes more sinister as the high clearance road turns into a 4x4 gauntlet of sharp rocks and obstacles for jeeps to get around. 

Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Continuing the meander around the foothill dirt road takes us to the trail head but even Death Valley in December with a elevation plain of over 6000ft renders snow conditions and frigid cold temperatures. 

Heart of Stone canyon was originally found by Scott Swaney and our group is the second group to descend this limestone canyon.

second half of Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We were expecting to change some of the anchors, if not all of them, as well as rebuild the deadmen anchors in place.

Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The road to the trailhead was not as bad as we thought but there are indeed some sections where you will want high clearance. 

Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

A 4x4 is preferred but the roads can be negotiated with a Subaru AWD like car.

Chefs in the kitchen Heart of Stone Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We got to the trailhead and found some Rhine snow on the ground.  Unfortunately, Jerry caught a large log that slammed into the passenger door and deployed the airbags along the way! 

It was quite startling and loud but we were OK, I thought a massive boulder hit the car.

We finally made it to the trailhead and everyone was already there waiting for us.

We set up camp in the snow and headed for sleep as the morning rise would be in the dark hours and an early start meant that we would get into the canyon and out with the more of a chance of sunlight.

We hiked the mildly steep 4.4 mile track following the ridge line and negotiating over rolling hills until we got to the drop in point and the tail of Heart of stone canyon.

The canyon itself was all limestone and quite interesting for death valley standards.

We had a fantastic view from above before dropping into heart of stone which was also nice to see. 

once we got into the canyon the walls started to narrow and continued to rise as we approached the first couple drops.

Of course I was on the look out for caves but most of the limestone appeared to be quite broken and might be be conducive for going cave passages.

After a nice narrow section of down climbs we we back int he open with our largest drop in the canyon.  a 125footer. We brought a 140ft rope and replaced the anchor with a knot chock

We backed it up with the pull side as a re-belay and meat anchor.

The anchor worked well and everyone was able to make it to the bottom with no issues. 

We continued down the wash and found that the canyon narrows and slowly deepened again into some nice deep corridors similar to the red wall limestone layer in the grand canyon.

We found a series of down climbs and drops up to 100ft in the lower section.

The lower section of the canyon was indeed beautiful and had a lot of nice meandering canyon passage.

We continued to work through the canyon and found the last bit of canyon to be the most interesting part.

This section had some great deep narrow corridors, stained walls, and a interesting boulder keyed into the walls at the end of the canyon. 

The hue of light coming through the canyon was a beautiful ending to a great death valley canyon.

We all came down without any issues and headed to for the exit after 9 raps and changing just about all of the anchors.

We headed out and enjoyed looking at the canyon from below where the limestone escarpment dominated the landscape.

We noticed psycho and tin man canyon canyon on the hike back but decided to leave the area and head for the racetrack playa instead.

We got back to the car 7 1/2 hours from starting which was a lot quicker than we thought. We figured that we were going to be walking back in the dark but had enough time to strike camp and head to the racetrack.

I highly recommend this canyon! I would say it is my top three favorite death valley canyons.  This posting is for documenting what this group and only this group found in this canyon. Please refer to www.ropewiki.com for accurate beta and trip descriptions before heading to this canyon.