Death Valley 2022/23

[Beardilocks]

Finally back at it after a bit of time off.  Mostly dealing with weather and the like.  Northern DV got up to 4" of rain which took out North Hwy again.  NPS says it could be easily be weeks before it's open again.  AAAAAAAARGH!

I was camped down in the south end of the park and only got a bit of wind.  Well, a lot of wind.  But it's just... constantly been windy this winter here.  

I met back up with Brice a few days ago to knock off a few pins we had in our respective maps around Stovepipe Wells.  The first was just a canyon that I always thought looked interesting when driving by and and some interesting features on satellite.  It's the first major canyon NE of Mosaic (which is to say on the SPW side of the Mosaic Canyon Rd).  

Pretty deep wash coming out of the canyon for the small-ish area it drains.


We hiked the ridgeline to see what dangers awaited in the canyon below.  We assumed we hit an impassible dryfall early so we were looking both at obstacles and potential bypasses.  


This dryfall looked huge and completely impassible.


Looking back at SPW.


It was a really interesting canyon with lots of easy to moderate obstacles.  






Then we came to the seemingly impassible fall we had seen from above.  MUCH less imposing from ground level.  But still about 20-25ft high.  Trickiest part was that it had water flowing down it.  Not a difficult climb but definitely a bit of exposure.


Another "stop and think about it climb".  We each chose a different side and both made it.


Lots of fun shorter climbs.




We stopped at this fall.  It looked climbable, but it looked like the narrows ended here and at some point you're just climbing the mountain.


Heading back down the 20-25ft chute.


All in all an interesting short canyon that sees virtually zero traffic despite it being in such a busy area.  Definitely worth the walk in.