Every Trail Tells a Story
Fall Canyon
A quieter, roadless canyon next door to busy Titus.
Narrow passages of polished rock and soaring walls.
A dramatic dry fall that challenges or rewards, depending on your choice.
Hike through a dramatic gash in the Grapevine Mountains among soaring walls and the polished rock of a narrows. With its colorful, contorted rock walls, Fall Canyon ranks among the most magnificent canyons in the park. Depending on the angle of the sun and what it illuminates, the canyon’s rock displays hues of red, brown, sepia, and umber.
Fall Canyon shares a trailhead with Titus Canyon, one of Death Valley’s marquee canyons, but also one accessible to vehicles. In the eyes of many hikers, a roadless canyon is automatically more revered than one open to vehicle travel; thus Fall Canyon will rate higher than far better-known Titus Canyon.
Though Fall Canyon has grown in popularity, it still delivers a kind of solitude you rarely get in Titus. The canyon floor is wash-bottom hiking: loose soil, gravel, and small rocks that slow your stride. No built roadbed here, no tire tracks – just the satisfying crunch of boots on gravel.
The canyon’s name is well-earned. At the three-mile mark, you run smack into a 20-foot-high dry waterfall. For many hikers, this makes a perfect turnaround point – impressive, photogenic, and a bit humbling. But for the sure-footed and rock-savvy, there’s a bypass. Cairns mark a scramble route up the south wall and onto a short use trail, which traverses above the obstacle and rejoins the canyon. The bypass is not for the faint of heart, but it does deliver you into the most dramatic stretch of Fall Canyon.
Beyond the fall, the canyon walls pinch tighter, twisting into a corridor of polished, shadowed rock. It’s a world where the sun barely touches the canyon floor, and the silence is broken only by the faint drip of water in wetter seasons – or the sound of your own breathing. Many hikers stop here, wander a little farther, and feel as though they’ve entered a secret chamber cut from stone.
The lower part of Titus Canyon Road is two-way and leads to the trailhead. From its junction with Highway 190, drive north on the road toward Scotty’s Castle 14.3 miles to the turnoff for Titus Canyon. Follow Titus Canyon Road 2.7 miles east to a parking area at the mouth of Titus Canyon.
From the parking area, head north on an unsigned path (don’t trek into Titus Canyon). The trail dips and rises, traveling over low ridges and into shallow washes until it reaches the main Fall Canyon Wash a bit more than 0.5 mile from the trailhead.
Not long after you probe the mouth of the canyon, the trail fades away and the canyon walls, from a hiker’s point of view, seem to vault higher and higher. At 1.3 miles, the canyon walls narrow to about 20 feet.
Gaze upward at the colorful walls and continue as the canyon widens then narrows again at the 2.5-mile mark. This particular narrows is so narrow that the canyon floor is in nearly perpetual shade – a welcome respite on a hot afternoon.
Three miles out, stand face to rock face with the high dry fall. To bypass the fall, retrace your steps 300 feet or so down the wash and look for rock cairns on the canyon’s south wall. Carefully ascend the short rock pitch up to the use trail that continues along the canyon wall to the right of the fall.
Just beyond the fall the canyon is a very narrow world of polished rock. You can wander 0.3 mile or so farther through the rock passageway – a dramatic conclusion to this splendid hike.