Ice Box Canyon (In Its Entirety), Red Rock Canyon NCA, NV

Is it "Ice Box" or "Icebox"? USGS and Red Rock Canyon NCA say different things. What do you think? Please comment down below.

Ice Box Canyon is a popular hike in Red Rock Canyon NCA. The hiking trail takes hikers from the scenic loop parking lot into the mouth of the canyon and to the 160' tall seasonal waterfall. However, that's not the entire canyon. The entire canyon starts about a mile and over 2000' of elevation gain way back in the sandstone bluff, between North Peak and Bridge Mountain Peak where limestone and sandstone meet.

There's not much media available deep into Ice Box Canyon, because it is not commonly traveled. While the 160' Ice Box waterfall is commonly rappelled, canyoneerers usually take the "sneak routes" scrambling up to top of the fall from Ice Box Canyon trail, and cuts into the canyon right atop the fall. A few of us were curious what the entire Ice Box Canyon looks like, fortunately there's beta/records available regard the traverse, so we packed up ropes and gears and went for it.

We hiked around up and back to the start of the canyon and quickly found out why people don't do this-- the start of the canyon is rather steep and slabby, then you get to the part with trees, then you are bush-whacking while continue to steep downclimb. The first quarter mile was slow-going. But then the canyon got milder and prettier with beautiful view behind us with water stream and small ponds here and there. Most of the time we were able to see Red Rock Canyon scenic loop down and in front of us. We were able to pick up pace as canyon goes on. The canyon has about 6-ish rappels and we handlined one and skipped another by climbing around. When we got to the big rappel, there were some hikers below cheering for us as we rappel down one by one.

We hiked from Ice Box Canyon trail back to Willow parking lot where we started in the morning. With semi-casual but healthy pace, we were able to finish the loop in around 8.5 hours. We got some gnarly and beautiful footage for y'all to enjoy so you don't have to do it to see it haha!

Created with the #GoPro App on my iPhone.