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| Mecca Hills Ladder Canyon and Rope Canyon, CA | | -
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| | Mecca Hills Ladder Canyon and Rope Canyon, CA | | | |
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Mecca Hills Ladder Canyon and Rope Canyon, CA
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| Hiking | 7.70 Miles |
1,714 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.70 Miles | 4 Hrs 22 Mns | | 2.37 mph |
| 1,714 ft AEG | 1 Hour 7 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This was day two of a trip to Palm Springs with my brother to hike Cactus to Clouds, which we completed the day before. I'd been to Ladder Canyon a few years ago but didn't visit Rope Canyon on that trip, and my brother wanted to see this area, so I was up for a repeat. I was in a truck last time and didn't remember if the road to the trailhead was passable for a regular car, but we gave it a try, and the road was well-graded and fine for lower clearance.
There was no one else at the trailhead, and we headed into the canyon and took the first left to start the morning in Rope Canyon. After climbing over some rock piles, the canyon turned into a narrow slot that we squeezed through, then had to crawl under a few boulders before reaching the ropes. The first pair, one on top of the other, climbed 20+ feet through a narrow passage...we found it easier to take our packs off and hand them off to each other.
The canyon widened out and we climbed up one or two short ropes, then it narrowed again to a final rope ~20 feet high on a vertical wall. I went up first and pulled up our packs on the rope, then my brother followed. That was the last obstacle and led us out of the canyon and into the open again. We eventually picked up a use trail that led down into the middle of Ladder Canyon, and we climbed two ladders and followed the trail back out of the canyon again and passed the giant cairn and eventually the high point.
From there, I followed the same route as last time and looped back into Ladder Canyon clockwise. There's a tall ladder leading to a side canyon that I explored briefly last time, and we followed that, though the ladder had been replaced with a shorter one that was anchored at the top and hanging a few feet off the ground. Some of the ladders in that canyon had been replaced, too, and they weren't upgrades--we decided not to climb one that had some broken rungs, a few metal scraps at the base, and a smaller ladder jammed onto the top of a taller ladder...OSHA definitely doesn't inspect the work around here  .
We returned to the main route and turned into the middle section of Ladder Canyon that we'd bypassed earlier. There were some upgrades in that area, with taller ladders and better anchors than what I saw a few years ago. On our way out, active bees near one of the shorter ladders added some excitement and an incentive to move quickly. Surprisingly, we didn't see anyone until we were almost out of the canyon, and there were only two other vehicles at the trailhead when we finished...very different from last time, but that's the benefit of going in the middle of the week on a hot day.
Next, we drove to the Salton Sea and explored some of the oddities around Bombay Beach. I hadn't seen (or smelled) the Salton Sea up close, and that was...interesting. We decided not to take the time to drive to Salvation Mountain but got lunch in Indio on the way back to Palm Springs, then played some tennis in the evening. Another fun day, and nice to see Rope Canyon for the first time. |
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