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.
Camping
We base camped at Mesquite Springs Campground since it was harder to find a dispersed campground area off dirt roads or get outside the park in this area. The campsite was FCFS, had bathrooms and no cellular service but everyone was able to use the new Apple Satellite messaging to great effect.
Approach
As normal for judging canyons from the road, I mistook where our canyon entrance was and got draw too far right via a wash system so we lost some time reaching the mountain base and then having to traverse two ridge lines to get into the proper wash. It’s always surprising how we can gain 1,000 ft over a long (1.5 mile) Alluvial Fan approach before even starting the ascent up canyon.
Gaining the ridge was normal with some instability to gain before getting on decent rock. We followed the ridge line up and saw many cool features such as heavily featured sandy looking formations and large huecos.
Eventually we found our descend and went down into the canyon just before the first rappel. So I climbed back up so we could rap the cool runnel and explore the cool network of watercourses above it.
Descent
First rappel (50ft) was down a cool, smooth, double fluted drop with a few holes that looked filled with caulk from quartz inclusions. The previous party’s anchor was a good rock chock with a metal chain link on the end? They must have had really small ropes because I don’t know how a rope would have been pulled through this attachment point for recovery.
A short while down we hit a 20ft rappel (R2) off an equalized knot chock and a threaded hole. It was a pretty cool setup.
Then we used a quick meat-anchor to get some members of the party down three down climbable 15-20ft sections. One notable short slide was through a boulder carved out through the middle. We also started our theme of the trip, “trying to crawl or climb through the various holes we found.” 😆
After some walking we had a 90ft rappel (R3) off some boulders that I LAPAR’d as my first fiddlestick and then an optional 30ft rappel off another boulder fiddle.
The canyon went well and we had one more 50ft rappel (R4) off a pinch followed by a long walk where I thought we were done for the day and took off my harness prematurely before being surprised by the final 50ft rappel (R5) at the mouth from a chocked pinch.
It was a fun day, a great warm up and I had so much fun in the canyon with my friends cracking jokes about how many rocks existed in Death Valley and being a newly minted “Truck Guy”.
Technical Details
- R1 – 50ft off rock chock
- R2 – 20ft off equalized knot chock / threaded hole
- Three downclimbable optional rappels (15-20ft)
- R3 – 90ft fiddle’d off boulders
- Optional rappel (30ft)
- R4 – 50ft off pinch
- R5 – 50ft off chocked pinch
Summary
- Approach: 1:45 hrs (2.3 mi, 2200 ft)
- Descent: 3 hrs
- Exit: 1.25 hrs
- Total: 6 hrs
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