The following seven rappels ranged from 30' up to 85' so we were able to use our second rope to belay on all the remaining waterfalls. At two points, there are unique double rappels where the waterfalls were cut into two segments. One was particularly interesting where there was an initial 60' drop into a large 30' diameter bowl and then a second 50' drop out of the bowl. On the fifth rappel, the bottom two-thirds was off an overhang which provided about 40' of a open rappel. Doing an open rappel with the figure eight worked fine and was even easier than being in contact with the rock slope. Doing all the rappels and lowering packs took time so by the time we were getting close to the bottom, it got dark. Doing the last two rappels in darkness went fine, helped by the light from an almost full moon. At 2,800' and almost to the mouth of the canyon, we could see the canyon opening up and knew we were almost out. At that point, a large secondary tributary comes in from the east. In the darkness we approached one last waterfall and Brian reported it was the "Granddaddy of them all" - a lot higher than any of the others in the canyon. We were not going to do that one in the darkness but fortunately, after climbing a small ridge off to the north, we discovered a beautiful, long scree slope all the way to the bottom of the canyon. Within 10 minutes we were at the bottom of that last waterfall and studying it from its base. Somewhere between 150' - 200' in height, it was an impressive rock face. The canyon was now easy to negotiate the rest of the way, being enlarged into a wide basin by the added erosion from water supplied from the secondary tributary. With the bright moon helping we did not even need flashlights to see the way. It was another hour of hiking down canyon and then two hours across the alluvial fan to get back to the Big 4 mine road. We arrived back at our shuttled vehicle parked at Lake Hill around 10:00p.m. and then drove back up to Towne Pass to pick up our second vehicle and to complete a pleasant traverse. We had seen no evidence of any previous descent through the canyon. It's a large, scenic canyon and interesting to find such an area in the desert where few, if any, people have climbed all the way through. Panamint Canyon is certainly not suffering from overuse.

-Steve-

Just a month later, on January 23-24, Steve & I repeated the descent of Panamint Canyon from Panamint Butte. We had up to a foot of snow on Panamint Butte but NO water, let alone snow, in Panamint Canyon. Alas, this wonderful trip must be done carrying water and 2 of us carrying two ropes each. The descent into the canyon from the peak and then again from the mouth of the canyon across the long alluvial fan to the Big Four mine road is open desert hiking requiring only perseverance and route finding skills. All the rope work is in the middle third of the hike and anchors are easy to find and very sound. The first rappel is at 4600 ft elevation and we placed an anchored register box at the top of the vertical, 115 ft

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