Canyoneer Death Pit Canyon Lake Mead National Recreation Area, NV

Oct 28, 2023 — Death Pit Canyon is a short canyon draining into the Colorado River within the Black Canyon Wilderness. Although there are some nice feaures and an impressive pothole obstacle, it's otherwise just a short and scenic drainage that twists through the Black Canyon's volcanic wonderland. Another canyon outing planned by the ever-psyched Luke, we were joined today by Aaron and Alec for another nice day into this lesser-visited Lake Mead NRA technical route. Our group started from Canyon Point Overlook, accessible by any vehicle until the last quarter mile when it becomes rocky and might deter some passenger car drivers.

After gearing up with the required packrafts, PFDs, and mine and Luke's shared, though unpopular, preference of carrying too much rope we started down from Canyon Point Overlook. If descending directly from the parking area, the slope is covered in loose boulders and broken glass. To make the descent a bit more pleasant, instead head north until a ribbed slope juts out. There's a social trail that leads down more safely. Once we reached the drainage below, the route-finding around here is straightforward. Either stick to the rockier bottom of the drainage or locate a social trail just south of it. Following this drainage ultimately leads to Weeping Springs Canyon, but that wasn't on the agenda today, so just before reaching the head of that canyon we took a gully/slope north into mellow desert terrain above.

Some nice walking through the desert led us down a gentle slope and into the head of Death Pit Canyon, where a brief walk along gravel and exposed slickrock took us to the top of the first 20-foot obtacle. This drop is avoidable by just scrambling around it, but the subsequent rappel was into the Death Pit. We figured Aaron, who had never rappeled before, should probably get at least a single warm-up rap before plunging 80 feet into a pothole obstacle. We built a cairn anchor and took turns on this trivial rappel to teach him the ropes, reaching the rim overlooking the featured "death pit" obstacle below, though we couldn't quite see it until getting on rappel. A massive cairn anchor was already in place, so we recycled the rocks and rebuilt it, adding more large boulders.

I headed down first, and when the pothole came into view I was surprised at just how big it was. It's rare in comparison to this area's conventional drops, so I became pretty excited to tackle it. Rather than descend into its depths and toss a potshot, I inched down the rope until I was roughly level with the pothole's rim. From here I locked off and traversed the face using great holds, reaching the rim safely. Had I slipped, the pendulum effect wouldn't have been too bad. Rappel 2 was just below (60ft), but we chose to combine the rappels into one drop. I came off rappel and lingered on the large ledge next to the Death Pit to make sure everyone could get through the Death Pit traverse moves without issue.

Once down from the two-tiered Death Pit rappel, we continued down the wash to another long rappel, dropping 180' from a large boulder anchor. Beginning on chunky blocks and ledges, this was a less-daunting cliff than it appeared from above. After some more descending through the wash with some short down-climbing obstaacles, we reached the final section of narrows. Within were a couple of rappels between 30-40 feet, quite pretty, but too short-lived. We emerged into the sunlight on the west bank of the Colorado River.

We chose to packraft to Crane's Nest Wash a few miles away, but I would have preferred to ascend via Bighorn Canyon since I prefer loops to shuttles, so my attached map reflects the loop rather than a shuttle. I didn't include photos of Bighorn Canyon here since I just wrote up a recent outing through that canyon a few weeks priot. You can see a detailed exit description with lots of photos of Bighorn Canyon from our Buzzard Canyon descent.