Another canyon? Always! A hike in Grapevine Canyon, NV

It's nice not to have to drive and rest up a bit more from the backpacking trip, and we take it easy for much of the day.

The drive from Boulder City to Laughlin was particularly uninspiring: miles and miles of flat, arid country with dry shrubs as far as the eye could see, interrupted at times by solar farms that stretch for kilometres on end and transform this desert into a glittering futuristic landscape, the town of Searchlight on a rise about halfway. It's the kind of country that makes you just want to be done with it. The road climbs almost imperceptibly but steadily, apparent in the temperature dropping a degree every twenty minutes or so.

Close to Laughlin, NV, and its 'twin' Bullhead City, AZ on the other side of the Colorado, the scenery changes dramatically: rugged mountains surround us, a landscape dominated by huge boulders heaped to peaks, colours ranging from the palest yellow to desert wind-darkened rock. The descent to Laughlin is spectacular, the Colorado valley waiting like a promise at the bottom.

The town of Laughlin exists solely because of gambling, with one hotel-casino after the other along the 'strip', a miniature Las Vegas: even driving at 40km/h it takes no more than a few minutes to traverse it. This is where we have landed, found cheap and adequate accommodation and are happy to be in warm weather at last.

While most people come here to either gamble or just stop on the way to somewhere else the area offers some great hiking opportunities, too, and by mid-afternoon we are ready to explore one of them, Grapevine Canyon.

We drive back up the highway where we came from for a few miles and turn off at the sign to Christmas Tree Pass, follow the dusty washboard road for a couple of miles more and turn left when we see the sign for Grapevine Canyon, the trailhead parking lot already visible. Only one other car is parked, and four people just return from their walk. We ask them about the hike: they only came to look at the petroglyphs at the entrance to the canyon, one of the earliest and largest sites in southern Nevada.

It is a quarter to four, three hours until sunset. The description of the hike should maybe have deterred me; while it is rated as moderate at the AllTrails website, descriptions suggest that it is more on the difficult side, at least in a few places. Well, we'll see. I read 'canyon' and was hooked.  

After a quarter mile we arrive at the petroglyphs, and they are indeed remarkable both in scope and in detail. We keep hiking up the canyon, however, not sure what will expect us or how far we will get. We have decided to hike for an hour and a half at most to have enough daylight left to hike out again. 

The trail, not marked as such but easy enough to find because of footprints in the loose sand, leads up the canyon between huge rocks, higher peaks towering in the distance. It's not a difficult hike as long as one doesn't get hooked by one of the many cholla cacti along the way or any of the other spiky shrubs that line the dry riverbed. Almost unnoticeably we gain some altitude. After about half an hour we arrive at the first obstacle. The trail leads upward towards a dry waterfall and sand turns to rock; it leads around a few huge boulders – and suddenly ends at a wall of conglomerate rock. Instructions on AllTrails were to stay to the left of the canyon, but this looks forbidding! How am I to get up, and, even more scary, down on the way back? Well, step by step, as for the last hike, but on rock that is so rough that I regret not taking gloves as someone in the comments to this hike had suggested. I make it (Johann has no such qualms and always encourages me with the words, 'you'll be so proud of yourself ...'), and soon the trail is as safe and easy to hike as it had been before the wall. For a few minutes the thought of having to go down that way keeps me from fully enjoying it, but I resolutely put it aside: I will worry about it when the time comes.

I don't have to wait long for the reward for not giving up: spanning the canyon wall to wall is a tangle of vines with green leaves. This must be the grape vines the canyon is named for, and they stay with us for quite a while, joined soon by willow thickets and even sizeable poplars, considering the arid climate. While we don't see running water there must be more moisture available to make this possible; maybe summer storms replenish the creek. 

It is pleasant to walk now, even with more and more of the canyon in the shade it is not too cold. Birdsong sounds from the shrubbery, and I catch a glimpse of black and white. Later, I am able to see it more closely: a glossy black, medium sized bird with a handsome crest and a longer tail, its wingtips flashing white in flight, the phainopepla. Vultures circle high above us; this is their habitat, for sure.

We reach a second dry waterfall, a big rounded hump made of the same rough rock, not quite as steep so that I can walk on it without having to hang on to anything. And still the trail leads on and up, the canyon narrowing slightly. At one point there is a choice of hiking on the sandy trail or exploring a small slot canyon—no question where my choice lies. It is just wide enough for one person and at the end not even that wide anymore so that we need to climb out.

Finally we can go no further without climbing. It is cool here, and we have arrived at the place described as the 'bathtubs' in the comments to the hike. No soaking tired limbs now, of course, since they are dry, but I can see that the name is quite appropriate.

Johann decides to climb up to the next ridge to see if he can spot the Colorado River, but this is more of a scramble than I feel comfortable with. I sit on a rock and let my surroundings come close: tiny yellow daisy-like flowers dotting the gravelly surface, a type of euphorbia with pale yellow flowers in a shadier area, barrel cacti all over the hillsides, probably my favourite type of cactus. It is quiet here, the wind and some birdsong the only sound. I am reading 'One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Search for Silence in a Noisy World' by Gordon Hempton on this trip, and this has made me aware that I don't 'hear' many sounds anymore that are actually noise intrusions, or should be: jets at high altitude are probably the most prominent of them. I'm trying to pay more attention to this, try to ensure that when I think 'quiet' it is indeed real quiet. Here, too, the contrails of jets appear regularly above me, and when I strain my ears I believe I hear a faint hum, though not always. Not enough, in any case, to mar my sense of solitude, and that is enough for me right now.

I still try not to think too much of the climb down the rock, but of course this comes ever closer as we start on the way back. 

The first of the dry waterfalls is as easy to traverse as it was on the way up, and when we reach the second one we have obviously chosen the wrong branch of the trails and arrive at a place that we truly couldn't overcome without some climbing gear. We track back and get to the right spot, and Johann is down in no time. I watch, still apprehensively, but when my turn comes I remember where I held on on the way up, and once again it isn't as bad as I had feared. Still, I'm glad and very much relieved that it lies behind me and I can once again fully enjoy the landscape.

We spend a bit more time at the petroglyphs than we did on the hike in, climb up the hill to find more scattered on rocks further up. This truly must have been a special place for the early inhabitants of this area as well, and now that we hiked up into the canyon with its relative lushness in this arid area it's easy to see why: food, water and shelter were all available here, and I can't imagine that they, too, weren't as much taken with the beauty of this place as I am now – without jet noise at that.

                                ~~~~~~~~~~~

Our motel room in Yuma has very poor internet, and I'm in the office now, without a chair - not ideal for trying to finish a blog post. I will post this the way it is and add the rest of the photos when I get a chance, which might not be for another five days or so since I'm not sure about internet where we go next. 

We'll see what we find in and around Gila Bend today before heading to the Phoenix area tomorrow evening to visit friends. 

                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's five days later, and a lot has happened since I wrote this. We're in Globe, AZ now, with good wifi at the Belle Aire motel, so I should be able to catch up and finally could add the photos to this post.