Lower Telephone Canyon

A short hike on the west side of Death Valley National Park. Telephone Canyon was the stage route (and telephone route!) between the mining towns of Rhyolite Nevada and Skidoo Calfornia back around 1906.

Telephone Arch is small but unusual, given the kind of rock and soil here.

There was a stage stop at the spring in the canyon, but the spring dried up many years ago. Here is what's left of the arrastre, a horizontally-oriented water wheel.

Other than that, it's a nice desert wash but nothing really out of the ordinary. One side canyon has a short section of narrows that are pretty, one side wash turns into a slot that ends in a 25-foot dryfall grotto with nearly vertical walls. I couldn't get the whole thing in one picture, so here are my hiking poles and the bottom half of the fall.

I went up a couple of miles and turned back around, though there is a lot more of the same going all the up to the Skidoo area, 8 miles and 3000 vertical feet from the entrance to Telephone Canyon.

Lower Telephone Canyon at EveryTrail