The best walks and hikes in the Grapevine Mountains

Fall Canyon can be easily accessed in the Titus Canyon area, offering a walk along colorful walls of smooth granite. The trail goes through narrow parts, where you can see red, orange, and black colored twisting canyons. This can be a great option to avoid the crowds of other popular trails in Death Valley. There is a seasonal 20-foot waterfall flowing down the canyon during summer. The hike is not technical and it can be very enjoyable. The canyon can be shaded in parts, but it is good to bring sun protection and lots of water.

The trail up to Corkscrew Peak is a well maintained trail, that gives you great views of the canyons and cliffs in the area. The trail is popular, so there is a good chance you will see others out on the trail

The Keane Wonder Mine Trailhead is at the end of a 2.8-mile rugged dirt road. Death Valley National Park NPS recommends driving a high-clearance thick tired 4WD vehicle out here.

Massive sculptures are scattered around Rhyolite, Nevada, a popular destination because it turned into a ghost town. A group of Belgian artists created these sculptures and they are permanently placed here in the Mojave desert.

Corkscrew Peak has been given its name because, with a little bit of imagination, it resembles a corkscrew. It's not the highest mountain in the range but definitely one of the most recognizable peaks. The hike to the peak is popular because of its pleasant route, incredible views, and rugged canyons and cliffs on the way there.

The Ubehebe Crater system contains several volcanic craters, cinder cones and ash hills, all relics from an explosive steam eruption about 2,000 years ago, when rising magma met an underground lake. Ubehebe is by far the largest crater, 2,400 feet in diameter and 500 feet deep.

Death Valley became a place of legend for people traveling westward, for its extremes and its potential as a place to strike it rich. Today as a protected landscape the modern history is still visible when you visit the park. There are over 18,000 mining features, including structures such as the aerial tramway towers and terminals at the Keane Wonder Mine. These impressive pieces of our past inspire us to imagine one of many similar stories that took place across not only Death Valley, but much of the west. Claims were staked in December of 1903, and by 1907 the Keane Wonder Mine was in full operation. The ore buckets you can still observe along the mile-long aerial tramway would have transported 70 tons of gold ore a day during peak production. The extreme environmental conditions that are present in the park today were a factor in the lives of the workers at the mine. Summer temperatures that limit our daytime activities caused equipment to overheat. Reduced spring output made water less abundant and limited production. By 1912, the value of the Keane Wonder Mine ebbed with a lack of raw material to continue mining profitably, and by 1942 the last attempt to continue operations came to a close. From 2008 to 2017, the area was closed for structural stabilization, mine mitigation and soil sampling. The preserved structures at Keane Wonder inspire us to imagine the miners who walked these same trails in search of a different value in the landscape. Visitors can hike up the steep mile-long trail, climbing 1,500 feet in the Funeral Mountains. To find out more: https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/historyculture/keane-wonder-mine.htm

If you follow the canyon and a faint road, you will get from the lower Keane Wonder Mill to a line of tramway towers and finally to the actual mining area for harvesting gold.