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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
Another canyon you pass along the way on this ascent is Cherry Canyon.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
Once we got to the top, the hills had some beautiful grasslands and rolling hills at the top.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
Once we started our descent down into portal canyon, the walls closed up and the canyon stayed narrow for quite some time.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
The walls continued to rise as we descended deeper into the canyon corridors.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
The raps were pretty straightforward but they did have some awkward starts to them.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
We continued down the remaining drops until we rapped into the main wash of the gorge.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
The deep limestone walls reminded me a lot of the grand canyon canyons that have the redwall limestone.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
Portal also reminded me a bit of Zion especially with the opening into the middle portion of the canyon.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
I really enjoyed this canyon and from car to car it was 7 1/2 hours for us.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
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.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
I am looking forward to visiting some of the other canyons in this region.
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| Portal Canyon. Virgin River Gorge, AZ |
