It’s Death Valley Season! In early December ’25 I got back out to Death Valley for a small group trip with some besties and high value canyons. The day after Fossil Snail Canyon (EPIC), we descended 6,000 ft down Typhon (South Middle Fork). Typhon (South Fork) (3A IV 24r 185ft) was the first big Dante’s Death Valley canyon I did and remember it feeling kinda intimidating at the time three years ago. Now with my seasoned Death Valley crew, we had a great outing with amazing views of Badwater holding an abnormally large lake.
Approach
We did the car shuttle the night before so it was nicer for everyone heading out together in the morning. Given we have so much more experience, we didn’t do the pre-dawn start and caught an awesome sunrise looking into Badwater (-281 ft) from Dante’s view (5,575 ft).
It was a fun and cool temp hike along the ridge to our drop in on a very well defined trail. After about an hour we got off trail and onto a ridge to find our specific fork drop in.
Maybe because of the recent rain, the descent was much more enjoyable than normally with more give to the dirt so it didn’t feel like you were trying to just survive descending steep concrete with gravel on top. We still had to space out for rock fall, but there was less slippage. Bad news was there was a lot of canyon nettle thriving which can be pretty painful getting off the rope when it adheres to the rope like velcro using its tiny, thin spines.
Descent
We bypassed several potential dryfall rappels since it was a big day, getting through the super low quality rock section before reaching the less steep hiking after about 1.5-2 hrs of decent (10am). Like most of these Death Valley canyons there were a lot of cool different aspects of the canyon from wide open views, shallow more canyon-y water cuts. One of the most fun aspects of the Dante’s canyons is you go through so many different rock layers with the 6,000 ft of descent.
Despite a lot of down climbing and some fun slides, we still hit a high number of rappels (25). It felt like we were making great progress, but I was surprised when we hooked up with other forks and saw we still had around 9 rappels left. Since it was 2pm and last light is around 4:30p we kicked it into gear to get out without headlamps (which we succeeded in!).
This trip was all about getting back to the cozy, close friend vibes of our original trips out here. Which were simpler and amazing so we invited more and more people we wanted to share with. It was a great group size (6) and so much more chill / manageable with picking canyons, experience level, group dinner, etc.
Many fun trip sayings and time out joking with friends. Back to the basics!!
Summary
- Approach: 1.25 hrs (Start: 6:45am)
- Canyon: 9 hrs (fork confluence @ 2pm)
- Exit: 20min (Car: 5:20pm)
Rappels (24 rappels, 6+ optional)
- R1 – 70′ off large blocks with slug chockstone
- R2 – 185′ off large cairn fiddle
- RO3 (Rappel Optional) – 25′ (Optional: walk far left)
- R4 – 35′ off cairn
- RO5 – 45′ (Optional: bypass right)
- Canyon gets slotty
- RO6 – 20′ runnel slot (bypassable)
- R7 – 50′ off cairn
- R8 – 30′ off awkward boulder chock
- R9 – 130′ off large boulder pinch ( could be broken in two) (noon)
- RO10 – 15′ off meat, (downclimbable)
- R11 – 15′ off chock
- R12 – 70′ off chocked rock
- R13 – 60′ off cairn
- Cool white smooth marble section
- R14 – 50′ cairn down pour over
- RO15 – 20′ cairn into ravine or downclimb (This is Middle + Middle South confluence, 2pm)
- R16 – 30′ off cairn
- R17 – 40′ off pinch into slot
- R18 – 150′ awkward exposed start off chock to less than vertical rappel (can be intimidating)
- R19 – 100′ off mega cairn to 20 ft down climb
- R20 – 185’ huge boulder three tiered (could be broken up)
- R21 – 40′ off cairn
- RO22 – 20′ (Optional: bypass right)
- R23 – 25′ off cairn
- R24 – 40′ off rock chock
- R25 – 30′ off rock chocks
- R26 – 40′ off boulder
- R27 – 25′ off boulder pinch
- R28 – 20′ off boulder pinch
- R29 – 30′ off boulder pinch
- R30 – 40′ rappel down an otherwise steep down climb from small rock chockstone (probably optional)
