Burro Wash - Take Two

Went and hit Burro Wash over the weekend. Didn't have a camera, so refer to the previous TR (posted by Shane) for some good shots. In my group were Mike (Kyrell) and a noob named Adam. Our overall opinion of this canyon was...not that great, well, at least not worth the 3 hour car shuttle required to do it.

There are 4 rappels in this canyon, but only 1 of them is mandatory, in fact, rap 1 is so easily bypassed that I couldn't believe it was actually considered a legitimate rap at all. We all bypassed it in about 2 minutes by rim-walking right.

Rappel 2 is just 20 feet.

Rappels 3 and 4 are both bypassable by rimwalking left. Considering that it was late in the day, there was limited light, and there was a very cool breeze in the canyon all day that day, AND there was a considerable amount of water at the bottom of raps 3 and 4, AND we didn't wear wetsuits, we opted to bypass raps 3 and 4.

There is some pretty good downclimbing in Burro, and there are several sections of narrows, but nothing too tight.



Since Burro wasn't worth the effort, we decided to skip doing Cottonwood Wash (adjacent to Burro Wash) which we had previously planned on doing.

If ya wanna expend a great deal of effort to do a mediocre slot canyon - go do Burro Wash. (I can't believe I'm actually giving a slot canyon a bad review, this is a first for me :roll: ).

If you did the walk around of 3 and 4 you missed a lot of good canyon. There is a big punch packed in a short section. Also lots of water.

My preferred method of doing Cottonwood is from the bottom. Hike up to the dryfall, back track 1/4 mile and exit out to the south and get above the big dryfalls and hike to the top of the canyon. Then come back down and rap the dryfalls.

I enjoy Burro, but have learned to work the shuttles into the normal traveling schedule. In other words. We camp at the bottom trailhead of Burro and drive to the top in the morning. Complete the canyon and pick up the car on top on the way home that afternoon. This results in the shuttle requiring only about 1 hour to clean up.