SUMMARY
This is a short trip report describing a canyoneering trip to Death Valley in February 2009. Death Valley National Park has many canyons suitable for canyoneering. Thanks to Craig Taylor for helping with this report.

Six of us met at the Texas Spring Campground at Furnace Creek on the evening of Sunday, February 8. Participants were Ron Bartell, Craig Taylor, Jeff Fisher, Ron Hudson, Bill Wolverton, and Rich Henke. Upon arrival, we learned that a storm on Saturday had closed almost all the roads in the park including the roads to Badwater and Dante's View, which we needed to access many of the canyons. The Park Service had no estimate for when the roads would be cleared and things did not look promising. The forecast for Monday was a 50% chance of rain. This wasn't the Death Valley trip we planned! On Monday and Tuesday, we explored several shorter canyons off the Chloride City Road and did not get rained on. The Badwater road opened on Wednesday allowing us to pursue our original objectives - the canyons that descend from the vicinity of Dante's View to the valley floor around Badwater.

The canyons descended in order were (1) Monarch, (2) Keane, (3) Coffin, (4) Bad, (5) Styx, and (6) Cerberus. They are described below. The length, elevation drop, and our time required (car to car) are approximate. All the canyons except Coffin required lengthy car shuttles. The flooding did not cause any damage to the anchors in the canyons and there were no pools. We found all anchors intact over the 6-day trip and only did minor modifications to a couple of them.

The canyons are described in the Brennen website.
http://www.dankat.com/swhikes/content.htm

Information about Abysmal, Cerberus, Hades, and Styx can be found on Tom's website. The link below is a photo/trip report that occurred in February 2008. Note that there is also a link to Ram's daily diary, which he wrote last year for these 4 canyons.
http://canyoneeringusa.com/rave/0802death/index.htm

PHOTOS
A selected set of my photos can be found at: http://adventureplus.smugmug.com

CANYON DETAILS
(1) Monarch Canyon (2/9/2009)
Length - 6 miles, elevation drop - 1500 ft, time required - 5 hrs. 45 min.
This canyon starts 2 miles in on the Chloride City Road (turn-off is 3.4 miles NE of Hells Gate) and ends at the point where the Beatty cutoff road meets Highway 374 to Beatty. It was a pleasant walk down an interesting canyon past the ruins of the Indian Mine. There were 2 rappels although the first could be bypassed. The second was 180 feet through a moving stream. We placed a new anchor lower down which shortened the rappel and also provided easier retrieval. We did a lot of sightseeing. This canyon could be descended very quickly.
(2) KEANE CANYON (2/10/2009)
Length - 9 miles, elevation drop - 4000 ft, time required - 8 hrs. 25 min.
Just south of Monarch, Keane Canyon traversed through some of the most interesting mining areas in Death Valley. We accessed the start from a dirt road just outside the park off of highway 374 that goes to Chloride City. We finished in the valley below where the closed Keane Wonder Mine road meets the Beatty Cutoff road. We did 6 rappels and a number of downclimbs. There were numerous mining sites including Chloride City, the Big Bell Mine, the Keane Wonder Mine, and the Keane Wonder Mill. The rappels were up to 120 feet in length. They did not pose any problems and some could be bypassed. We found one anchor tied to a huge bolder on a rocky slope that could be easily moved by hand. We slide the boulder down into soft dirt where it provided a much better anchor. Note that the descent of this canyon is prohibited due to possible lead/mercury contamination of the tailings. We did not learn of this until later. This canyon is off limits until the site is cleaned up.
(3) COFFIN CANYON (2/11/2009)
Length - 6 miles, elevation drop - 1600 feet, time required - 7 hrs.
The Badwater road opened allowing us to do Coffin from the bottom. After leaving cars at the south side of the Coffin alluvial fan, we hiked up the left side of the Copper Canyon fan heading southeast. We started climbing at the first possible gully and followed ridges between Copper and Coffin until we reached a saddle at about 1400 feet, which separates the Coffin and Copper drainages. We then dropped into Coffin and reached the first rappel at about 800 feet. Note that the Copper Canyon drainage is closed to hiking, but the ranger I talked to said that the route we followed was outside the closed area. Our excitement for the day was rappel number 2, which was 190 feet long. We discovered at the trailhead that we had left our long rope in camp and our two longest ropes combined were only 200 feet long. We were able to get 5 people down by tying two 100-foot ropes together, having people tie in below the knot, lowering them 100 feet and then having them rappel the remaining 90 feet. So after 5 people were down, Ron Bartell dropped the ropes down and hiked back out the way we had come in. The remainder of the canyon was routine. The last rappel passed through sea level. We would have finished the canyon in less time but the tricky lowering exercise required lots of time.
(4) BAD CANYON (2/12/2009)
Length - 6.4 miles, elevation drop - 6000 feet, time required - 9 hrs. 3 min.
Ron Bartell returned home so there were 5 of us on this descent. For the next 3 days, we would descend canyons starting from Dante's View, a spectacular viewpoint at an elevation of 5475 feet, which looks directly down at Badwater, which is below sea level (-270 feet). For Bad Canyon, we traversed north to Dante's Peak at 5704 feet before descending, giving us almost 6000 feet of descent! We used Brennen's instructions to access upper Bad Canyon. The Hades fault, which separates Bad Canyon from Hades Canyon was very obvious. We did 8 rappels including one of 180 feet. Our excitement of the day (no, we didn't forget the rope again) was that we couldn't pull our double rope rappel on the 6th rappel, a 150-foot drop from an anchor 25 feet back from the lip. Bill Wolverton had to jumar back up to release it. For long rappels like this, it is certainly less problematic to rappel single strand with a biner block and to keep the other end of the rope or pull cord well away from the rappel. Our waiting car was at the Badwater parking lot.
(5) STYX CANYON (2/13/2009)
Length - 5.3 miles, elevation drop - 5500 feet, time required - 7 hrs. 50 min.
Another 8 AM start from Dante's View. For canyons to the South, you park 200 feet below Dante's View at a small parking lot just below the last steep part of the access road. We followed ridges toward upper Coffin Canyon which is also the approach used for Styx. Unfortunately, we followed a ridge too far west so we had to drop down and climb back up to get on route. We finally reached upper Coffin and followed it until we reached an obvious canyon to the right which led to the saddle separating Styx from Coffin, We did 11 rappels in Styx plus many challenging downclimbs. They went quickly since everyone in our group was a rockclimber. As long as a group has one rockclimber, it is feasible to do a quick belay for the non-climbers and then the last person can downclimb with a spot from below. The cold storm had left a lot of ice in this canyon. The last rappel was through a natural arch formed by a huge boulder.
(6) CERBERUS CANYON (2/14/2009)
Length - 4.3 miles, elevation drop - 5500 feet, time required 11 hrs. 30 min.
While I took a day off to rest my legs, Ron, Craig, and Jeff descended Cerebrus. Bill had left for home the previous evening. Cerberus is a bigger challenge according to Brennen, having 24 rappels and an estimated completion time of 12 1/2 hours. I drove the group to Dante's View and they were hiking by 6 AM. The descent went well - the anchors were in place and everything worked. The canyon was the wettest of the canyons and damp the entire way. There were 3 rappels between 200 and 300 feet requiring a 300-foot rope. The most dramatic point was when they reached a 500-foot drop off. A 150-foot rappel led to a ledge and a downclimb and shorter rappels below but the entire 500 feet of exposure was visible when starting off. There was 1/2 hour of daylight left when they reached the car.