Grotto Canyon is a death valley canyon located near mosaic canyon and near the town of stovepipe well in Death Valley.

Grotto canyon is located in the Tucki Mountain Range just south of Stovepipe wells.

There are a lot of Forks to Grotto canyons drainage's but after a bit of research, we found that the layer fork route had some interesting rock features so we decided on the Layer fork.

I have been through mosaic canyon and felt like Grotto canyon would be a good visit utilizing a technical descent.

There is a traditional non technical hike up grotto canyon from the mouth of grotto

It appears that you can get quite high into the canyon from the bottom but you will not be able to get up the technical portions of the canyon .

I was surprised to see the narrow corridors within Grotto layer fork, the strata layers, and the amount of narrow passage in grotto canyon. 

Typically there is not a lot of narrow corridors through Death Valley canyons but grotto is one of the few exceptions.

The road leading to the mouth of grotto was not as bad as we thought.

We were all able to make it to the trailhead in a Subaru Forrester, outback, and a jeep

It did get a bit wash board like and we were driving on the wash but we were all able to drive right up to the trailhead.

You will need to have a high clearance AWD or better to make it to the trailhead.

Once at the trailhead, we hiked up to the ridge on the left and basically followed this ridge for some ways to a point where we had a go right and hike a steep slope to the top of one of the mountains.

There were sections where the hike was a bit steep and slightly exposed but other sections were quite flat.

We passed by some interesting gastropod fossils and other Mississippian era fossils. 

Once we got to the top, we started to make our descent into grotto VIA a sneak route that cut out a third of the highest peak hiking. 

This sneak route should become the regular route since above this sneak there is just more ascent and more non technical wash hiking.

We went down a steep and down climb route which had one rap for safety.

This brought us to the wash of the Layer fork Grotto Canyon .

The first was was really interesting as it had some nice layering along the walls and was tiered.

We did not keep track but there might have been around 15 raps that were less than 200ft in length.

Unfortunately, we managed to stick a rope on one of the drops. 

I climbed back up so I was in between the group and James and Mark Arnold both worked on un sticking the rope.

Mark ended up climbing the rope and was able to find a keyhole where he could crawl through and get to the top and unstick the carabiner lodged into the v slot.

Mark was the rope hero for this canyon and Lauren was the recognized for her perseverance.

We eventually made it into the main fork and out in about 8 1/2 hours which was great time with sticking a rope and taking our time to get to the canyon. 

The weather was a beautiful 72 degrees and some clouds came through but it made for a fantastic day!

At our time in the canyon, the webbing appeared to be in decent shape so we did not change any of the anchors.

For accurate beta, please refer to ropewiki.com for more information.

  This website is used for personal and documentation purposes and is not to be used for obtaining beta or accurate information on how to descend this or another canyons.

I really enjoyed this canyon and although the hike is long, It is well worth the drop through this canyon .