Rainbow Canyon

We went on another canyoneering adventure the other day through Rainbow Canyon. It was a shorter one with only four rappels but one rappel was 170 feet long! The canyon was full of color and there was a nice collection of petroglyphs at the beginning of the canyon.






Heading toward the start of the canyon.




Checking out the first rappel which was ~70 ft.


Going down!





Funny story...I was so excited for the first rappel which took longer than normal to get set up, I forgot my backpack at the top when I came down! Oops! Good thing I was not the last one down. The guy we were with lowered it down for me.
The second rappel was 170 feet! The two ropes we had with us were 200 feet each. You have to have a double strand of rope so when the last person comes down you can pull on one strand of rope and get the whole rope back. So we had to tie both ropes together for this rappel.



Checking the webbing for nicks or cuts.



170 ft!!! Woo-hoo!






~
The third rappel, 90 ft., was right after the 170 ft. one. We went right over one of the gorgeous red and orange bands.






The last rappel was only 20 ft.



Colorful rocks and vertical rock layers.


The most difficult part of the day was climbing out of the canyon. We chose to climb out instead of continue walking to the valley because the walk would still be another 8+ miles over annoyingly rough, rocky terrain. Although the climb out was extremely steep and contained tons of loose rock (it was like a rocky sand dune...one step up, half a step down), it was much quicker than finishing the canyon.





Looking back down into the canyon.

We climbed out very close to where we left the car. Good for us!



That is the back side (western side) of Telescope Peak and the Panamint Valley below it.