Grapevine Canyon

Saturday we had another day of volunteering for the NPS. We were sent to Grapevine Canyon. This is a nearby location about 15 minutes from our RV park on the Nevada side of the river. We had visited the canyon one other time when we first arrived at Bullhead City and said we wanted to go back again so this volunteer gig was a perfect opportunity.

We first had to go to the ranger station at Katherine’s Landing to pick up a backpack full of handouts, a camera, a walkie talkie, and a government vehicle. Can you believe the U.S. Government would entrust us with one of their SUV’S?  

Can you believe this?

We drove the 30 minute drive up to the canyon which is located about 2 miles off the main road. The road to Grapevine is a dirt road that is also used as a back country pass over Spirit Mountain. The pass is called Christmas Tree Pass. Grapevine Canyon is at about 2500 feet elevation. The top of Christmas Tree Pass is much higher and has a pine forest at the higher elevation.

We arrived at the trailhead of Grapevine Canyon where there is designated parking and pit bathrooms.  There were two pickups there when we arrived. Victoria and I gathered our backpack, water and put on our layers of clothing and headed for the canyon entrance.

Part of our job here is too count the people we observe using the canyon. This helps the park service with maintaining the park and how to allocate there resources. It’s pretty neat to think we are helping in this. To count all the people the rangers gave us one of those clicker counters. Victoria was in charge of doing this.

Walking up the wash and the canyon enterance

The actual canyon is a short walk up a wash. The big draw to this canyon are ancient petroglyphs. These are drawings made by the native people hundreds of years ago. We were told these drawings don’t have any particular meaning. They are not a language but a type of art. There are many different types of drawings. Some are geometric shapes, some were animals, some were human stick figures and some not so human type figures. Can anyone say “E.T. phone home”

There are many different shapes on the rocks

I think this one is E.T.

Animal and human shapes

There is a trail that goes up into the canyon. It is not a far walk and many of the hikers walked up the trail. We stayed at the canyon opening handing out information.  There is a spring that creates a small creek along the trail. It easy to see why the native people used this area. They had a water source and protection from the elements and enemies by the canyon walls. This was and still is a special place to the native people, hence the mountains name. “Spirit Mountain”

We sent about four hours talking with people who came up into the canyon. I took a few pictures with park service camera and handed out literature. Victoria also visited with the canyon guests and clicked away with the counter to keep track of number of the people. We figured we would meet maybe 10-15 people while manning Grapevine. By the time we left Victoria had counted almost 90 people. That was in about a 4 hour period.

Canyon visitors



The rocks are huge, can you see Victoria?



We talked with people from all over. A lot of them had come from the Vegas area for the day. I guess you can’t spend all your time in the casinos. Many of them were RVer’s like us wintering in the area. A lot of them were from northern states and several from California. We were surprised at the amount of people and we think it is great that so many are out utilizing our great national parks.

Jr. Ranger

We spent about 4 hours up at Grapevine Canyon in the wind and sun. We drove the Ford Escape back to the ranger station, reported in and drove home. We were beat, but really enjoyed our day and being of service to others.

Check out the colar in this cactus