formidable. Fortunately, unlike, Beveridge Canyon, the canyon bottom is a little wider so we could frequently skirt the brush. Also, the remnants of an old mining trail could be followed along some stretches where it was out of the brush and was still intact. This old trail came in from above where we had intersected the canyon bottom - my guess is that at some point it turned northward and connected up with the Pat Keyes trail to the north which comes up out of Owens Valley to the north of Mt. Inyo. We discovered that the miners had put in a fairly well constructed trail the entire length of the canyon bottom. At each of the eight waterfalls we encountered, homemade wire and wood ladders existed - six were still attached to the rock faces while the remains of two had fallen to the bottom of the cliff faces. The intact ladders were of no help since they were not safe to use and in fact created some problems when they tangled up our rappelling ropes. Another difference from Beveridge was that the brush consisted more of several types of trees which seemed to have pushed out the wild roses, gooseberries and scrub brush that had made Beveridge so difficult. Interestingly, Keynot Canyon was the most brush free - probably resulting from the least amount of water flow between these three adjacent Inyo canyons. On Saturday, we made it 800 vertical feet down canyon to 5,200' where the "ruin" shown on the new 7.5 Mew York Butte map turned out to be a 5 stamp mill, a partially intact cabin, and several foundations. A good trail headed north up towards the ridge at that point. Sunday, we were able to descend to 3,800' with the brush only a moderate problem and six rappels. We passed an intact cabin at about 4,700' which showed evidence of use from the early 1960's and some supplies for beekeeping. Why someone had gone into this isolated area and harvested honey was another one of those mysteries of the desert. Between the six waterfalls and route finding through the brush, we ended up only making it down to 3,800' and camped at the base of the sixth waterfall - the largest in the canyon at 150'. It was impressive and after tying ropes together, we still could not tell for sure if the 165' of 9mm double line was reaching the bottom. I belayed Desert Survivor Doug Kari over the side and about a third of the way down he confirmed there was about 15' of rope on the ground. On several of the waterfalls we had to go down through the water, there was some thick mud accumulations on the rock on two rappels which made the rappelling rather messy, and at two sites we came down into pools of water which were several feet deep. Raving to drop into knee deep water with leather boots made for some soggy walking afterwards. On Monday there were two more waterfalls but they were wider and did not exceed 80' and we could stay out of the water on each. It was just several hours of hiking down the canyon and out to the cars around noon which were parked at the roadhead at 1,600'. The canyon is certainly impressive with its ruggedness, waterfalls, old wire ladders, historic artifacts, stream and riparian vegetation. Imagining the miners using those homemade wire ladders over 80'to 150' high waterfalls made you appreciate what they had to go through to mine in an isolated canyon. The

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