A few canyons in the Valley of Death

Death Valley Swaney Fest 2026 - Feb 13,14,15

Back to DV and Slabby for the yearly gathering of the clan! Joe Muir from Cedar City was my driver and rope sherpa for the weekend, and did a great job of both!

Thursday night we drove through a bit of rain to Las Vegas and bunked with TreC and Luuke. Peruvian food this time! Morning saw us driving north and west later than planned, and we arrived at the Natural Bridge Canyon parking lot 80 minutes late to meet Willie, who had left to find other peeps about 15 minutes earlier. Sigh... we grabbed some ropes and headed out for Nat Bridge Cyn, that I had remembered as being a half-day / half-climb canyon.

There is a reason my automatic answer to any question that starts "do you remember" is "NOPE!"

NATURAL BRIDGE CANYON

I must of done this miserable-even-by-DV-standards approach before, and promptly scrubbed it from my memory. We had a little bit of beta and made the best of it, but really, the climb is straight up the gravelly side of the mountain 3000 feet - mostly steep loose terrain. No fifth class moves, but just plain steep. And with a late start (11:30) we had to keep the hustle on.

3000 feet of steep mountainside is special!

Oh my stars! We finally topped out and found our way into the canyon. As promised, a fun canyon. Moderate downclimbs and many short rappels. Strangely, ALL the anchors were fairly new, and were 20th-century-style buried rocks with a cairn on top. With no one looking over our shoulders, we just inspected the webbing that showed (all good) and put our rope through the ring. (Shameful to admit). Eventually it got dark and between the two of us we had one phone light and one headlamp, slowing the pace. We eventually found the tourist endpoint with footprints everywhere, passed under the bridge and made it to the carpark.

Dinner at the Furnace Creek Pub was an excellent choice. Day1 done!

JUPITER OPTIMUS MAXIMUS CANYON

Jupiter seemed to be the "Canyon of the Day" and is relatively new, first descent perhaps October 2024. (I am disappointed that the first descenders are non-believers, and thus used the rather casual "Jupiter" rather than the well-deserved more-respectful "Jupiter Best and Greatest". But ALAS there are few followers of the old gods around these days.)

Pretty Good Flower Bloom, and Joe.

We talked our way onto the largish group the night before and hit the hay early. Got up refreshed, headed out... but had to run by the poop house for the morning ritual, thus ended up at the trailhead with our group out of sight. We hustled up the alluvium as fast as my reluctant knees would go, occasionally seeing people on the mountain above. We chased. Thankfully, today the climb was only 1500 feet and on friendly hiking surfaces. We sauntered over the pass and caught up with THE group at the first rappel.

It wasn't "our" group exactly, it was another group of 10 from Swaney Fest and they were happy to have us join them. Good thing that, as we did not have enough rope to do the canyon on our own! Me having minimal beta for this or any canyon in DV. ("Our" group had passed this group a few minutes before we arrived on the scene).

And we had a great day. Fun group (*thanks!*). Rappels, downclimbs, cairn anchors... the usual. DAV had a load cell; at one very suspect anchor (a short rappel from a small-boulder-pinch) that the previous group had allegedly rappelled from, we set up a test.

Admittedly, I have rappelled from worse. But only in dire straits. The sling pulled through at about 300 lbs. Eeeek. There were plenty of other (better) options around, and we easily built a cairn anchor - you know, what I call a "Modern Death Valley Style Inspectable Cairn Anchor". Truck!

A good time was had by all. A fun canyon, not too hard, ending in a dramatic 160 foot rap down a smooth wall. Mostly just a very fun group. Wish I had taken more pictures but I am very much out of the habit! We even got back to the cars before dark - plenty of time to head back to camp, clean up and get ready for the night's festivities.

Long rappel in Jupiter Optimus Maximus

SWANEY FEST

Yup. A whole lot of socializing. A Festivus Tree went in the fire! We gave some stuff away. I made Key Lime Pie River Style for the potluck and it went over well. Uh, I should say WE made Key Lime Pie.

ARACHNOPHOBIA CANYON

Sunday we hooked up with a big group for Aphobe. A bit of a car spot for that, so the three suspected slowpokes (ME, Karen, and Dani who had twisted her ankle on Friday) were dropped off to get a jump start. We headed up into the Badlands using three sets of hazy memories, a track from ropewiki and sniffing out footprints. Eventually we found ourselves climbing steep crappy scree following vague signs of traffic. 'Are we really going the right way?' well - 10 people are within sight below following us, so the answer is YES. We reached the top of a mountain. Yikes, we want to be way down there -> (At this point I realized I had a track on my phone for a different way...)

Important and hilarious to smell the flowers even on a long day. Especially on a long day.

We scraped our way down into Scorpion Wash, then left and up a rocky ridge over to Aphobe. Ah, now, finally, we could put on our gear and actually canyoneer! Rappel, etc. In the badlands, the rock is bad! Welded Tuff mostly, it seemed. Finally a beautiful long rappel! Fun stuff.

And flowers, there were quite a few flowers out. Not really a superbloom - more of a pretty-good-bloom. Not like I took a lot of pictures.

Back to camp at a reasonable hour. The next day had rain in the forecast, and my knees insisted it was time to head home. So we did.

A week later, my knees are still complaining. Grrrr. Death Valley! But another fun social weekend - Death Valley FEST!!

PICTURES!

Natural Bridge Canyon Trailhead, 11:30 am

As we work down the canyon, some nice evening light on the mountainside to the north. Still a long way to go.

Fully-masked suspected ICE Agent on rappel. We did have some suspiciously foreign-seeming participants, but the agent was apparently on vacation!

Are you an Alluvial Fan?

The FAST 2/3 of the Slow Crew.

Also known as Purple Scorpionweed. Best to not touch it.

I know it does not look it, but this is a steep descent on loose ball bearing gravel.

I am ALWAYS the critic - Adam set this rope length, and it is 6” SHORT!!!

Actually, it would have been helpful to have another 6 feet of length, so I could bottom belay outside the drop zone… always a good idea in DV. (And this rappel had an awkward start.)

Some rappel or other in Aphobe.

I know, looks like an Evening Primrose. But it is not. In the same family, but not in the genus.