Deimos Canyon, Death Valley

I’ve been following the Canyon Collective for many, many months and decided it’s time to contribute something. My Los Angeles canyoneering group of five go on two annual, early season trips to Death Valley (we’ve done about dozen different canyons there now). Our last adventure, last week, was to Deimos Canyon, a place that to my knowledge isn’t visited that often. With good reason. The approach will filter out most people with its 3,000′ climb in two miles. But once you’re inside the steep canyon, which isn’t much more than a ragged knife slice in the rock, you realize how the effort to get there is worth all the sweat. This is an amazing place with weird rock, lots of challenging down-climbs and overhangs, and what others have called “rabbit holes.” These are mostly huge boulders that fell from who-knows-where, wedged between the narrow walls and left a hole to crawl through. It took us 14 hours to get through the canyon; we hit the last two rappels with headlamps on. Highly recommended.