New to Reno in 2023, I attempted this hiking route up the Long Valley Creek river canyon towards the Lagomarisino Petroglyph site at 39.44359, -119.57045 at the end of November. From the hiking stats (10mi, 600ft), I thought it would be a straightforward thing but was turned back by underestimating how long navigating the terrain would take and how filled in the canyon could be with brush and trees. Armed with that knowledge and more scratch-resistant clothing in 2024 we did a successful hike up this very wilderness-feel river canyon with loads of cool natural features and many pieces of rock art.
There is a group of canyons that drop into Fall Canyon from a multi-descent day Scott Swaney did in 2014 descending several canyons. Crater of Doom (3A III 6r 120 ft) was the furthest in and provided an adventurous approach with some rock band traversing to end it out. The canyon itself was short like many in the Grapevine Mountains. The descent was straightforward with some fun down climbs, but I was kinda disappointed there was no scary looking crater given the name.
There are three Red Wall Canyon descents: Main (1r 20ft) , West (5r 200ft), Northwest Fork (5r 150ft), We chose the option with the most rappels (it listed 10 at the time): Red Wall Canyon (West Fork) (3A III 5-9r 200ft). It had an approach with one short spicy, loose gulley in the beginning. A mostly straightforward decent with a couple longer drops. One of the best, most beautiful exits I’ve done in Death Valley hiking out Red Wall Canyon.
This trip we decided to check out the Grapevine Mountain range which is a zone I haven’t spend time around in Death Valley because it’s in the North near the Scotty’s Castle section of the park. It feels like when storms hit, it also gets maintenance last since it no longer has a heavily visited roadside attraction like the Badwater area. One of the canyons I had always been interested in from its picture of smooth runnels was Goblin Canyon (3A III 5-9r 80ft). I found canyons in this zone to have a characteristic of mostly decent rock with some sections of chossy hardpack with longer approaches and relatively short technical sections. Goblin delivered both a fun medium sized canyon and a bunch of fun runnels to descend.
Of the few thousand people who live on Haida Gwaii, 1,000 live in the town of Daajing Giids near Robertson’s Island where I stayed on my visit. As I said introducing my kayaking trip here, it feels like the inner corridor of Alaska: mostly undisturbed nature with bountiful resources (at least in these ‘warm’ summer months) punctuated by small communities. As in many small communities, you more easily know your neighbors, they are more willing you help you out, people have to work together to get things done themselves and gossip abounds.
Three 1-2 hrs flights followed by a bus, ferry, friend’s car, friend’s boat and finally a friend’s ATV to help carry our bags, we finally arrived at Sadie’s mom’s place on Robertson Island near the village of Daajing Giids on the Haida Gwaii archipelago in British Colombia, Canada. It feels like the inner corridor of Alaska: ocean surrounding heavily forested misty mountains where there is little development and abundant bald eagles. Our first goal is to explore indigenous cultural sites and nature of Gwaii Haanas National Reserve in the South via eight-day ocean kayak trip guided by Green Coast Kayaking totaling 45 nautical miles.
This last week we drove out to Zion for a “Surprise, Rad Outdoor Girls Trip” for my partner Sadie. We joked about how she was like our dog Piton when he gets in the car, “No idea where they are going, but stoked for the adventure”. Things kicked off to a good start when ten minutes after we arrived at our basecamp in Virgin, her sisters unexpectedly (for her) walked through the door. I haven’t seen someone this surprised in a while where it hits multiple times. First confusion, then some realization, then back to disbelief. Very fun! After a couple days, the sisters left for home and our canyon friends showed up. Throughout the week we’ll have added two more canyon descents to our dog’s tick-list, descended four ourselves, gotten great views on a multi-pitch and had hundreds of laughs.
Excited to get back to South America and traveling instead of just vacation, Sadie and I took off to Colombia for three weeks. We spent about a week in Medellín, Minca (North Coast) and Salento (Central Coffee Region) respectively. The big thing to know is that Colombia is pretty safe now (aside from a couple specific regions) with a very active tourist industry that seems likely to keep it that way. If you follow basic traveler safety tips for any foreigner who is rich by local standards, you’ll have a fine time.
View of Tolima in the clouds with Finca La Playa in foreground
One of the things we were most excited about in Colombia was a summit attempt on a 17,000+ ft glaciated volcano in the Northern Andes: Nevado del Tolima. The ascent is pretty non-technical and guides don’t require any previous mountaineering knowledge or fitness restriction. There are multiple guide services and itinerary for this trek between 3-5 days, some with a stop over to a natural hot springs, some extending to hit the two other nearby glaciated peaks. We booked a guide for four days with SAWA Travel with 12,000 ft of gain and picked up one extra person on the itinerary for a little lower cost (still $450 pp). We wanted to use a guide to help us navigate logistics, local weather and contribute to the local economy. I think a guide is required to attempt the summit, but I’m not sure.
There is a lot of interesting story about finding this canyon, our guide, getting to San Carlos and about the area. However, if you are here just to know about the canyoneering descent, I’ll get right to that and talk about the rest later. We descended the La Chorrera – Inferior (lower) section of this canyon with many 100+ ft less-than-vertical rappels often involving (but not through) flowing water during what seemed like low-flow conditions (it hadn’t rained in a couple weeks). It was a great, non-touristy canyoneering experience guided by Manuel of Eco Guías Colombia who provided gear and wetsuits (one fit me at 6’6”!) and was exactly the authentic canyoneering experience I was looking for.
