Sunday, June 7, 2009

Crawdad Canyon - Canyoneering Outside Phoenix Arizona

Crawdad Canyon is my latest canyoneering trip that I found myself scrambling and swimming my way through. Crawdad Canyon is not the official name this canyon goes by though the group I go with switched the name to Crawdad to keep people away from the canyon that my trash it. It is disappointing to see the lack of respect some people have for beautiful places.

Crawdad Canyon starts slow with a dry drainage or entrance canyon until we run into a nicely flowing stream. I was pleasantly surprised with this canyon as I expect most scrambling with a few places where we would wade. Instead we spent the entire time in the water. There were numerous pools that required swimming and we spent the entire trip in a good flow of water. The flow also kept the water clean which was a nice change from the stagnant water you can find in some canyons.

Crawdad Canyon is not a technical canyon though it is well worth the effort. There are plenty of challenges throughout the canyon at a moderate level. There is nothing of exceptional technical ability though you will have your fair share of endurance as the canyon took close to 7 hours to get to our shuttle car.

Our groups given name of Crawdad Canyon is because of the thousands of crawdads and tadpoles that you find in the water. The whole canyon was streaming with wildlife from fish, snakes, butterflies, and even a havalina that we scarred up. I missed the wild pig as it was behind me which sucked.

If you want to find out where this canyon is you will have to email me using the contact form on the right hand nav and if you are lucky I will tell you. What I will say is that this canyon was a lot of fun and a great canyon to do on a hot day.