Marble Canyon

In the Southern Cottonwoods is one of the most significant canyons in the Death Valley area. Marble Canyon is a deep canyon that for centuries was the main thoroughfare from the comfortable summer retreats of Hunter Mountain to the sweltering desert below. Marble Canyon shows evidence of use by natives (The Timbsha-Shoshone) and more recent miners. Petroglyphs litter the lower narrows of the canyon and also are marks left by their modern counterparts telling directions and leaving evidence of past existence.
These lowest narrows (said to be the second narrows, which I don't personally agree with. The first narrows start from the time one exits the car just about up to the magnificent bathtub.) are not of Marble, and no marble can be found until the third narrows, much further up canyon. I find this canyon remarkable because it is one of those rare major canyons with no significant dry falls in the canyon bottom, excepting the unclimbable boulder jam just upstream of the bathtub. The third and fourth narrows are both made of marble, striped and banded. In the upper forks of the canyon lies Goldbelt, a gold and talc ghost town dating until as recently as the mid 50s. The story of Goldbelt will be covered in a later post most likely.

The parking for Marble Canyon is rather unassuming and dull, in stark
contrast to what lies upstream.

Here is how the canyon starts shortly after
 the parking lot. It remains about ten meters wide
 for about three quarters of a mile until the walls open up.

The first major fork of Marble Canyon, splitting off to the north shortly after the second narrows, is rather undocumented and the narrows are quite out of the way. I have not read a detailed report of these narrows but they certainly pique my interest. The next major fork is Dead Horse Canyon, a canyon that forms the link of the loop between neighboring Cottonwood Canyon and Marble Canyon, the most popular backpacking route in the park. Dead Horse Canyon is so named because of the bones of wild horses and bighorn sheep found in this canyon. Wild horses are found throughout this region of the Cottonwood Mountains, called the Panamint Plateau, the wide flats below Panamint Butte. They are not native but are feral, left over from the various prospectors and miners of the region. I have not heard of them elsewhere in the Cottonwoods, although they are found over in Amargosa and Greenwater Valleys. There is abundant water in this canyon, at least three springs and a waterfall, all in rapid succession. Upper Marble Canyon also has many springs, about six, all unlabeled on the Topo map. Overall, Marble Canyon is a very wonderful canyon to explore, even though the hike is rather steep with deep gravel and sand most of the way.

Some really neat rock formations on the walls.

Canyon looks like this most of the way from the end
of the lower narrows.

Approaching my favorite formation in the canyon, the personally named "Devil's Bathtub."

It's probably fifty feet tall and has really cool natural acoustics.

Below the tub

This picture shows scale for the bathtub. It was taken from just
 below the boulder jam chockstone fall that is the only obstacle in the
canyon. The chockstone in the top is a large chunk of pure granite,
a raw chunk of the granitic pluton that created Hunter Mountain.

Looking above the fall.

More cool rock walls near the tub.

The Tub, showing the fall.

I'll get into the inscriptions in the rock before the narrows. They are all unique and some of the designs are not seen in other sites.

A. F. E.

1906

HON

Dec. '75 (Assuming 1875, though 1975 is equally likely)

C. D. Ruiz

Rhyolite

T.E. Oct. 13, 1906

I've always liked this one, probably because it tells where they
 are from and coincides with Mr. A.F.E.

Waters

5 Miles

One of my favorite inscriptions in the canyon. This has two possibilities. The first spring is Dead Horse Canyon, two miles away, but the first spring in Marble Canyon is about four miles away. Five miles from this inscription leads to the largest spring in the main Marble Canyon, however it passes several smaller springs. I think its most likely this person misjudged distance.

Next is a mix of pictures from subsequent days when we hiked this canyon as an overnight to Dead Horse and back, day hiking to the fourth narrows.

The second narrows are very tight all the way up,
 and the tall walls snake through rock, stained
with red and orange streaks.

The more noticeable glyphs are faded due to being touched
 by careless people. I nearly missed this one because of this.

More faded glyphs.

Author picture in Second Narrows.

One of my favorite shots. A lot of these can be found on my
 Panoramio page and Google Earth, Death Valley Dunning.

More cool rock walls in the narrows. This one is a quartz intrusion.

  

The rock almost looks blue in this picture, although the one below
 more accurately shows the color.

A great display of the red stains.

Scale.

This short break is in the middle of the narrows.

The next pictures of the petroglyphs are not in the second narrows, but in a constriction somewhere in the Marble Canyon basin. I will not say exactly where, but they are the largest cluster of art in the canyon.

I really like this panel, and this picture was my desktop for a while.

If you can spot them, there is a panel way at the top. Close up below.

I couldn't even climb half way up this high.

These designs are faded on the wall

Back to the main canyon just past the main fork. More pictures of this area follow at the end of the report.

Desert Gold flowers in the wash, we seem to have just missed the main bloom of the year, and these shriveled flowers were among the few we saw.

This is the beginning of the third narrows, the striped zebra marble passageway.

The zebra marble is a short passage, only a single turn of the canyon, but it is followed by this steep and dramatic straight section of the canyon. The wall on the left is nearly perfectly flat for the bottom hundred feet or so.

You can clearly see the foothills in the gravel, which was why progress was so slow.

There was little interest in the canyon between the straight section and the Dead horse Fork, so I don't have any of that area.

Upon entering Dead Horse Canyon we were greeted by these bleached bones in the sand, a chilling reminder of the harshness of the desert.

Looking down Dead Horse canyon from the spring. Great evening light and wonderful weather.

The next morning I climbed above the wash to watch the sun rise over the tranquil canyon, the still morning air of the desert has a unique calm about it, and the stir of the high winds that night left a stark contrast to this cold morning in these isolated desert mountains.

This triangle of rock always reminded me of a cathedral of rock, and just beyond it lies the fantastic fourth narrows.

First look at the rock that makes up much of the fourth narrows.

The marble here is banded between cement grey dolomite.

The serpentine narrows eventually spat us out into this grand amphitheater, a quarter mile from where we entered the whimsical realm of marble narrows.

Heading back down.

This quartz intrusion was in a waterfall in a side canyon we explored that had may dry falls and was great fun to scramble up.

Passing the third narrows again.

Interesting glyph. I was never quite certain of its authenticity.

View up the smooth walls of the straight section.

At the major fork of the canyon, this inscription pointed the correct way up the canyon, to the left, to Goldbelt the ghost town mentioned earlier.

 This is one of my favorite scale shots. It shows the upstream end of the second narrows dwarfed by the colossus of stone behind it, the stratified library of ages standing behind a serpentine maze of rock so mystifying it is difficult to describe.

View of the tub from the top of the waterfall

Back up canyon from the parking spot.

Overall, Marble Canyon is doubtless one of Death Valley's Greatest Treasures. I have always felt that the sites the Park Service advertises are fitting of what generally lies in the stark mountains, and yet that the very best is out there, unadvertised, discoered only by those willing to find a side of nature that is not developed or mapped, but in the case of Marble Canyon, this fine example of a phenomenal canyon is one of the most heavily traveled backcountry locations in the park, but it is still possible to find solitude and peace in the vast echo chambers of natural rock.