Purgatory canyon is one of the many wonderful canyoneering routes in Death Valley and one of the best canyons on the Black Range.

One of the great aspects about these canyons in the Black Range, is that you can park your car at the top of Dante's View and park a shuttle at the bottom of the mountain to have a "top-down" route through the canyons on the black range.

For most of these canyons you can hike along the ridge and descend the canyon you will like to choose from and enjoy the ride down.

We had to camp pretty close to Dante's View and set up our shuttle cars the night before and with a group of ten people, it can be a bit of a firedrill to get everything set up. 

We got up at 5am and headed for the top of Dante's View.

Soon after we set out on the ridge of the black range to the tail of Purgatory Canyon.

The hike was straightforward and pretty easy in comparison to other canyons in Death Valley.

After going over a few hills, we made it to the tail end of Purgatory canyon.

Its all down hill from here. We have over 500 feet of elevation loss and the first 4th of the canyon was hiking down broken up scree piles to get to the technical section of the canyon.

We passed by some mining material where they use to mine from the hills which was interesting to see.

After a couple hours from the trailhead we got to the tail end of Purgatory canyon .

Now the fun begins!!!

We had around 19 rappels in the canyon which were up to 125ft in length.

one of the interesting features of this canyon is that ithas some really nice rock colors and marbleized minerals. 

The swirling rock reminded me of similar features I have found in caves where hydrothermal activity was occurring.

What is interesting is that this range appears to be volcanic in nature so I can only assume without a educated guess that these swirls are from hydrothermal activity within volcanic activity.

It also reminded me of Ben and Jerries ice cream which was also quite enjoyable to see.

There were a good amount of raps and down climbs.

The canyon also head great views of the valley floor and some more wonderful short narrow sections.

There were a lot of anchors that we had to re-build so that took a bit of time to do and we added a couple extra to help people get down quicker.

we also staggered more experienced people in the front middle and back and leap frogged each other so we could get the anchors and raps set up.

Everyone carried webbing and carried a rope which helped to keep the group moving.

we got out of the canyon in 10 hours and 45 minutes just after the sun set and got to the cars just as darkness set in.

The canyon doesn't really narrow all that much but the views and the beautiful rock make up for lack of narrows.

I highly recommend this canyon for the black range top down canyons and I think that this is a great trip to run for anyone looking to get some death valley canyoneering.

this blog is only for informational purposes and personal documentation and not to be used as official beta.  please refer to www.ropewiki.com for beta and questions to be answered on how to run this canyon.