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Jan 19, 2024 —
Wild Side Canyon (aka Emery Canyon) is a short technical route descending through the Black Canyon Wilderness, featuring a very scenic last rappel sequence. For the first time in a while, I was the one to excite Luke about an obscure Lake Mead gully canyon. It ended up being quite enjoyable, probably one of my overall favorites in the area despite its short length. We packed our PFDs and packrafts, both required for this route since the canyon exits into the Colorado River.
The route begins by descending the popular Gold Strike Canyon Hot Springs Trail, a graffiti-dominated tourist favorite that has seen better days. Of course, it's still gorgeous because everything in the Black Canyon is gorgeous. We took a right at the Telephone Canyon junction, heading south up its drainage. There are some obstacles within this portion of Telephone Canyon, but nothing exceeds Class 3. Once Telephone Canyon bent west, we left it and instead ascended a progressively steepening bouldery gully with some loose terrain and random spurts of Class 2/3.
We reached the top of the gully and were rewarded with some outstanding views down into the Black Canyon and toward Hoover Dam. We made an ascending Class 2 traverse beneath the sheer black cliffs and soon located the head of Wild Side Canyon. It seemed unlikely we'd be able to reach its depths without gear, but a convenient ramp led south, safely avoiding all cliffs and not exceeding Class 3. The loose terrain continued steeply past here, but still, we were able to keep the scrambling pretty tame. As the ground leveled out, we were dumped into the first section of narrows. A couple of down-climbs and a short rappel that's avoidable on the right already had us loving this little drainage. A second rappel dropped off a small cliff and then entered into deeper narrows. Though short-lived, the walls here were tall and beautiful.
Shortly after, we reached the top of rappel 3, the longest of about 120'. We built upon the current cairn anchor that was in place and took turns on this straightforward drop to the floor below. Some short nontechnical obstacles led to the two-tier rappel 4, the highlight of this canyon. The first part descends next to a gorgeous grotto complete with greenery blooming from the mineral-covered walls. The second tier is a very short drop into a small pool that Luke had kindly crossed first so the rest of us didn't have to. Wild Side Canyon had more delights in store past the grotto and pool, but first, we needed to get through a bit of light brush and a couple of nuisance rappels, 5 and 6.
We'd reached the last leg of Wild Side Canyon with rappel 6, a short drop into a trickling spring covered in greenery. This funneled into a relatively narrow canyon completely covered in mineral-slicked walls and water rivulets running through it. I was ridiculously impressed and took too many photos of this short section. A hairpin turn led to a slippery Class 3 downclimb. We'd reached the end of the technical portion and hiked through the remaining narrows to the Colorado River. Along the way, we passed a small grotto with a warm spring trickling water down, mimicking a shower. I'd been here in the past on a kayaking trip but didn't realize the beauties that were just above and felt silly for never going farther to check it out. Luke, who has run countless kayaking tours, also hadn't put in the minor effort. Somehow it had eluded all of us.
We loaded up our packrafts and paddled to the beach at the end of the Gold Strike Hot Springs Trail. From here, it was the standard popular hike up the bouldery canyon and back to the trailhead. I ran into an old friend Bo from NJ who was chilling in the hot springs - what were the chances? We made quick work getting back, all of us overly acquainted with this trail.
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Hire/refer me as a web developer or send me a few bucks if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing trip reports is unpaid. I really appreciate it!
