Overview

This is a nice, 1-mile hike down a rugged canyon to a spring in the Death Valley Wilderness Area. The route passes several pour-overs, some interesting geology, and an old stamp mill and other mining structures along the way. The hike starts from the road to Chloride City and simply runs down Monarch Canyon to the spring. There is a pretty little side canyon to explore. Don't plan to drink water from the spring.

Link to trailhead access map or hiking map.

Watch Out

Other than the standard warnings about hiking in the desert, there are no particular dangers on this route. The pour-overs are easy to pass, but be careful. Stay off the stamp mill and the other mining structures, and it is never safe to enter old mines.

While hiking, please respect the land and the other people out there, and try to Leave No Trace of your passage. Also, although this hike is short, the area is remote, so be sure to bring the 10 Essentials.

Getting to the Trailhead

This hike is located in Death Valley National Park, about 3.5 hours northwest of Las Vegas.

From town, drive out to Death Valley. From the Furnace Creek Visitor Center (Table 1, Site 712), drive north on Highway 190 for 10.6 miles to the Beatty Cutoff (Site 742). Turn northeast (right) towards Beatty, and drive for 9.9 miles to the Hell's Gate parking area (Site 769), which is at the Y-intersection with the Daylight Pass Road (Hwy 374).

From Hell's Gate, drive east towards Beatty for another 3.3 miles to the second dirt road on the south (right) side of the highway (Site 753). This is the road to Chloride City, but the turnoff is marked by one sign that simply reads: "High Clearance 4x4 Recommended." If you are coming from Beatty, the turnoff is 2.7 miles west of Daylight Pass.

From the pavement, the graded road runs south, up a valley, over a saddle, and down the other side to Monarch Wash (Site 857). The wash is 2.2 miles from the pavement, and it takes about 10 minutes to get there. To this point, the road is well-graded except for some rocky spots, and a 2WD vehicle should be fine if the road is dry.

The road forks at the wash. The fork to the west (right) leads down Monarch Canyon. The other road leads to Chloride City and is said to be a rough 4WD road.

Drive down the canyon for about 0.5 miles to the end of the road (Site 725). Don't drive too far or you will go over a pour-over. Just before the end of the road, there is a sharp curve to the right with a few rocks in the road. If your vehicle is not 4WD, inspect the road before driving over the rocks. The road was fine for a 2WD vehicle when I was there, but it looks like people get stuck here. Going downhill in a sandy wash is always easier than going downhill. This rocky spot is less than a 1-minute walk from the end of the road, so if it looks bad, back up and park; it isn't worth the risk of getting stuck this close to the trailhead and this far from help.

The Hike

From the trailhead (Table 2, Waypoint 1), look over the edge of the pour-over and enjoy the view. There is some interesting folding and banding in the walls of the canyon below the pour-over.

An old miner's trail leads around the pour-over and steeply down the south side of the canyon. The miners did some nice rockwork shoring up the edge of the trail. The miner's trail starts out wide enough for a vehicle, but it quickly gets narrower and narrower, and then it ends just above the bottom of the canyon; something must have washed away since the end of the mining era. Scramble down the last few feet of cliff to the bottom of the wash.

The miner's trail ends just above a short pour-over formed by a layer of reddish, nicely polished, conglomerate rock. There is a seep just above the pour-over, and this spot is choked with reeds and rabbitbrush. A trail runs around the pour-over on the north side of the canyon.

Beyond the seep, the wash is well vegetated with lots of rabbitbrush, some Paperbag bush, Encelia, bursage, and a little Thamnosma. For the most part, the bottom of the canyon is an open wash that makes for easy walking. The sides of the canyon are steep hillsides and cliffs with a bit of desert fir and barrel cactus.

Below the mill, the canyon jogs to the south and there is more water-polished conglomerate rock in the wash. Around the corner, the remains of more mining activity (Wpt. 3) sit a bench on the south side of the wash. A short miner's trail leads onto the bench where construction materials are scattered about. These include several bundles of 1x4s (some of which are 12-ft long) 2x4s, 1x12s, some pipes, and even a broken porcelain toilet. It is hard to tell, but it looks as if someone intended to build a house here.

At the next bend in the canyon (to the west), the wash is choked with reeds, rabbitbrush, saltbush, and a few other species. The vegetation hides Monarch Spring (Wpt. 4), but you can follow animal trails into the bush to find the water, which runs near the southeast side of the canyon. There is also a miner's cabin or a storeroom (not a shaft) in a hole on the hillside just beyond the spring. It looks like a shallow rock shelter that someone closed off with a wooden wall. The door is missing, but there are vents with screen in the wall above door. There is some broken plate glass, so perhaps there was a window in the door. Inside, tables or benches were built around the edges where a person of small stature could have slept.

Below the spring, the canyon is choked with reeds for the next 100 yards to another bend. It looks as if you would have to crash though the vegetation to hike farther down the canyon, but I stopped at the spring.

Return to the trailhead by hiking back up the canyon.

On the way out, bypass the miner's trail below the trailhead and hike up to the base of the pour-over. There is more interesting geology along the wash and some amazing folding and faulting in the walls of the canyon below the pour-over. From the pour-over, you can scramble directly up the hillside to the south rather than backtracking to the miner's trail.

Back at the trailhead, a side canyon enters the main canyon from the south. This is a pretty little canyon with more amazing geology. The rim of the canyon is capped by a layer of white rock, and below the cap are layers of contorted sedimentary and conglomerate rock. It takes only about 15 minutes to hike up the canyon through the contorted rock to where progress is blocked by the wall of white rock that forms an amphitheater. There are some polished scramble-ups and a couple of pour-overs to climb over or around before getting into the amphitheater. This short side trip added a nice finishing touch to my hike.