Within the steep hills of a mountainous high desert, Portal canyon is a limestone canyon within the Virgin River Gorge, in between Utah and Nevada.

There are a number of canyons within this region that exist and portal canyon has been known to be one of the better ones but one that has a larger toll for admission with a 2500ft gain over a 2 mile distance.

Another canyon you pass along the way on this ascent is Cherry Canyon.

Cherry is another good canyon with half of the ascent of portal canyon. The cherry canyon approach is the4 same approach as you would do for Portal canyon.

The approach to portal was steep but I didn't find it too difficult as it was fairly straightforward and easy to follow to the top. 

Once we got to the top, the hills had some beautiful grasslands and rolling hills at the top.

Once we started our descent down into portal canyon, the walls closed up and the canyon stayed narrow for quite some time.

The walls continued to rise as we descended deeper into the canyon corridors. 

The raps were pretty straightforward but they did have some awkward starts to them.

As of when we went, we did not have to change any of the webbing but some of the anchors will need to be replaced very soon.

The canyon opened up towards the middle of the canyon and provided some dramatic views of the range and we could even see the road from this point. 

We found raps to be up to 200ft in length that included sloping drops but for more accurate information please turn to www.ropewiki.com for more information. 

Once we got into the middle section of portal, the canyon was more gorge like and boulder hopping continued until we got to the final segment of the canyon. 

We continued down the remaining drops until we rapped into the main wash of the gorge.

We took our harnesses off only to find that there was one more rap before exiting the technical portion of the canyon so leave your gear on until you go through the last rap. 

The deep limestone walls reminded me a lot of the grand canyon canyons that have the redwall limestone.

Portal also reminded me a bit of Zion especially with the opening into the middle portion of the canyon.

I really enjoyed this canyon and from car to car it was 7 1/2 hours for us.

You want to watch the virgin river levels and if it just rained, the chance to be stuck on the other side or get swept away by swift water is a real danger.

I highly recommend this canyon to anyone that wants to get away from zion for a day or spend a weekend in some limestone canyons.

I am looking forward to visiting some of the other canyons in this region.