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| Ladder Canyon - Painted Canyon Loop, CA | |
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| | Ladder Canyon - Painted Canyon Loop, CA | | | |
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Ladder Canyon - Painted Canyon Loop, CA
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| Hiking | 5.36 Miles |
1,003 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.36 Miles | 2 Hrs 49 Mns | | 2.26 mph |
| 1,003 ft AEG | 27 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | This was our first hike on a multi-day trip to Southern California during Thanksgiving week. We were looking for a short hike to fit in on a day of driving, and this worked nicely. We had some nice views of the Eagletails and Kofa Mountains on the way to California along I-10. Ladder Canyon is a popular hike, and we expected it could be busy with this being a holiday week, and it was--there were 10-15 other vehicles parked at the trailhead when we arrived.
Around a half mile in, we took the left turn to hike Ladder Canyon clockwise. There was quite a bit of graffiti at the intersection... @TboneKathy previously hiked here in the spring of 2020, and most of the graffiti was new, which is unfortunate. Someone even spray painted over the "beautiful rock carving of an eagle" mentioned in the Ladder Canyon guide...graffiti on top of graffiti.
It seems there have been additional ladders added since the guide was published in 2011--we climbed two ladders (up one, then down one) before reaching the round chamber with the third, referred to as ladder 2 in the guide, which was the tallest in that part of the canyon. I could see where kids or shorter people could feel a little uncomfortable climbing off the tops of some of the ladders where the top rungs require a long step up onto the next ledge...that was definitely the case with that third ladder.
The slot canyon narrowed, and we climbed a few more ladders before it opened up again and the trail led us up above the canyon, where we had nice views of the Salton Sea and Mecca Wilderness. There are multiple paths through Ladder Canyon--we didn't stay on the the route I'd downloaded the whole time, though they eventually converged again. And map at the trailhead, which didn't have much detail, showed a few different routes in both Ladder and Painted Canyon.
We dropped back down into Painted Canyon for the return hike, and I ventured into one of the side canyons along the way--presumably one of those alternate routes. There was a random ladder laying flat on a hillside near the entrance to that canyon, and I had to climb up the tallest ladder of the day to access the canyon and continue. That one was the only ladder we saw that was anchored to the wall. I climbed two more ladders in the side canyon before turning back around...not sure where it led, but it probably looped back and rejoined Painted Canyon somewhere.
We climbed down two final ladders in Painted Canyon before finishing off the loop. It wasn't a long or difficult hike, but it's a cool slot canyon with a nice variety in scenery, and the ladders make it a unique spot. The AEG, and probably the mileage, are probably a bit overstated due to the GPS signal getting lost multiple times in the narrower parts of the canyon. We saw quite a few people, though not as many as I'd expected based on the number of cars in the lot, and we had fantastic weather--right around 80°. |
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