ADAM HAYDOCK

 Day two in Death valley and we had some great overnight weather with mild conditions and some fantastic caver cheer the night before. 

 A bit dehydrated from the previous nights festivities, we headed out to the car drop for Vinegaroon canyon and than drove up to the trail head for the canyons head wall.

 Vinegaroon is a very dry 3AII canyon that is located in the Badlands of Death Valley near Zabriske point and the painted desert.

 We hiked up to the ridge and the views were fantastic! The pastel colors and the layered strata made the desert looked like a Neapolitan ice cream and a painters palette of color splashed onto the terrain.

There were some interesting minerals on the ground including some selenite crystals and some fossils towards the top of the canyon. All kinds of igneous and metamorphic rocks were scattered abound in the wash.  We continued up to a ridge and followed the ridge to the drop point into Vinegaroon Canyon.

 After a few small down climbs we made it to the first rap. We past by some conglomerate stone and breccia along the way and at our first rap, the conglomerate stone greeted us with some light teal colors and pastels on the bottom.

 The first drop was around 85ft. in length and mostly free hanging. This was quite a unique drop with the mud and silt stone layers.

 We continued down through a small and short narrow slot than followed a wash down for about a mile until we got to the second rap of around 20ft.

 We worked our way through the badlands canyon which is a unique canyon in itself since this is all silt stone and mud stone layers, this is something that is not really found in many places.

 We continued around some more obstacles and came up on three more raps in consecutive order.

 They all appeared to be less than 40ft. in length and were straightforward drops. Please check with other beta sites like www.ropewiki.com with exact drop lengths to prepare for this canyon.

 Once we passed these raps we came up to a couple more down climbs and finally into a narrow dark corridor and the final rappel.

 This final rappel is around 20-30ft and has an interesting view through the narrow slot into the basin below.

 All of the drops were straightforward and the down climbs were easy for us.  I can see how the first down climb might be a challenge but there are a lot of foot holds and other options to rig to assist people down.

 I also recommend bringing some webbing as you might want to change out the webbing soon.  It is starting to look a bit crispy.

 What a great half day in Death Valley and a perfect Sunday to give us time to get back home.

 There are a few more canyons in this badlands area and I am looking forward to checking them out in the future.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The air temperature cooled off to around 37 degrees as we stepped out onto the concrete street of dantes view. The sun started to luster colors of purple red and orange on the eastern horizon as we started to gear up for the descent down Cerebrus canyon.  As we were getting ready, the second group showed up but they pulled into a spot about a 1/4 mile before Dantes view. .

Andy in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I checked my GPS and confirmed that we were in the wrong spot to head into the canyon, so we quickly got back into the car and headed over to the trail head as the second team was leaving for the canyon.

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Abby Wines and I arranged to connect teams together since we would both be in the North fork so I planned to have my team each carry a rope with them in their packs so we could keep leap frogging as we go.  Our head count went from 8 to 17 people, that's 17 people in Cerberus canyon!.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Cerebrus Canyon is one of the grand Death Valley classic routes which starts from the top of Dante's View and descends over 5000ft. into bad water basin.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Planning for this canyon is required as you will have to have a shuttle car staged at the bottom of the canyon and a choice between two forks, North and South fork.   Remember to pack extra webbing to replace anchors as the sun will bake the webbing crispy dry.

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We took the north fork approach and found 29 rappels including two 270ft rappels and a bunch of fun down climbs through out the day.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I recommend staging a car the night before so you do not have to stage the car the following morning.

Lyndsi in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

This will save you around 45 minutes of time and sunlight is precious when running Death Valley canyons since winter season doesn't offer a lot of sun for the day.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We headed off and caught up with the first group at the first drop.  We went down and started to leap frog each other as the other group brought a number of ropes as well.

Nick in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

17 people in the canyon would have taken a long time to get through if we did not all leap frog each other and continue to set more raps but we had some good flow until we got to the big drops.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The canyons North fork was interesting as it had some beautiful colors and the strata in the rock was quite impressive to see.

Justin and Adam in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The raps in the North fork were pretty good as well, so the enjoyment of rappelling through different types of metamorphic layers with the view of telescope peak and bad water basin made this a fantastic day.

Justin in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

There were a couple sections that narrowed up a bit but I found the North fork, and most of the canyon to be more gorge like and open than anything else.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We all worked our way down the raps and eventually got to the first 270ft drop.

Nick setting up a anchor in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

This one was broken up into two 30ft drops followed by a 210 ft drop.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

This is where we found a bottle neck in our pace but it worked out great as we just socialized and had lunch while we waited our turns to take a ride down the mountain

Joy, Andy, Nick, Abby in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We had to rebuild two anchors and we inspected the pitons with webbing on the 210ft of this 270ft sequence and found that it worked out best for us to pull from the top instead of managing from the 210ft. rap station

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Once we got down we continued on and found some more raps before running out of ropes. 

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

This slowed us down a bit since we could not keep setting up raps but that was fine since we were still bottle necked at the top of the 270ft drop.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I wanted to stay in site of the big drop in case the rope got stuck and they needed extra help so as the group came down the corridor, they continued on when more ropes showed up.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I was happy to see the rope fall once the pull was complete so Heather and I continued to work our way down to the second 270ft. drop.

heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

This is where we slowed down a considerable amount of time as we were here for over an hour.

Lauren and Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The sun was starting to set over the horizon and we had about another hour and a half of sunlight to go.

polished stone in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

This drop was also pretty nice as it was a straight shot down and the last 50 ft. was free hanging.

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

There was also a cave in the wall but the mud stone silt stone layer gave away to an obvious impression that the cave would not go anywhere.

The D in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We continued to rap down and only had three more raps to go with the sun light diminishing. 

Lori in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We set off for the the final drops and found that one of the team members wanted to build an anchor and another built an anchor around a horn in the back of the drop.

Lori in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

One of the team members burned his hand a bit as he was descending but other than that, we did not have any other injuries in our group of 17 people.

That is quite impressive and a good sign that we had a good group and we all worked well together.

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We got to the last rap and the sun was just setting over the horizon.  We still had some good sunlight coming through but we were running out fast.

Justin in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

one by one, we roped down and out of the canyon without incident in 11 hours from when we started

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I think that this I a good time since we were a group of 17 people and we worked through 29 raps and about a mile of descent.

Adam Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The canyon is great because you are .2 miles from the first rap from the trailhead, you get great views and you get some big drops.

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I think that this is one of my favorite canyons in Death Valley as of now but I still got quite a few more to catch up on.

A 270ft drop in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The conditions were perfect outside and I couldn't imagine how hot it must be to do this route in the summer. I have a feeling that it would be deadly.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We hiked back to the cars as the darkness set in and we all gathered to enjoy a bit of a celebratory achievement as we waited for the moon to rise over the mountain.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We could see two head lamps in the mountain which must have been people canyoneering and working their way down the mountain.

Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Unfortunately they ran out of sunlight and must have had a bottom up approach.

Shane rapping down the 270ft drop as Abby belays at the bottom in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

The Black range is home to Cerberus canyon and about 10 other canyons that start from dante's view and end in the badwater basin area.

Shane rappels past a cave in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

There are another 20 canyons within the black range are loop trips so you have to hike up the mountain and gain the ridge before descending down into the canyon.

Heather in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

We all had a freaking blast coming down this route as it was very little effort and a lot of reward as well as canyon raps for 11 hours!

Heather, Adam, Daniel, Abby, and Shane in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

we went back to Furnace creek and enjoyed some great laughes and ended the night with a good time!

Heather at the last rap in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

I am looking forward to running more of these death valley canyons and some first descents with Scott swaney.

Just some of the group of 17 coming through Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.

Andy and Daniel looking over the playa in Cerebrus canyon. Death Valley National Park, California.