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Grotto Canyon
NP2. Location/Access:(36o 35.126’N; 117o 05.928’W) Site NP2 can be reached by turning south on a dirt road that leaves the dune field 2.4 miles east of Stovepipe Wells. The gravel road ascends the alluvial fan for 1.9 miles whereupon it terminates at a dry fall. The road requires high clearance but four-wheel-drive would be best because the last portion of the route is in very loose stream bed gravels.
Best Time: Anytime, all year.
Geology: There are several things worth noting at the end of the road. Just before the end, at the GPS coordinates, there are some wonderful slickensides exposed on the east wall of the canyon. Slickensides are caused by fault motion and as is obvious, these are oriented roughly horizontally but with a slight dip down to the north. There is a fault mapped near this location in Wernicke, et. Al. (1993) but that fault is mapped as high angle with dip-slip motion. However, east of here a few miles lies the trace of the Death Valley-Furnace Creek fault zone which is dominantly lateral. Also, the main detachment surface on the other side of Tucki Mountain does not have this orientation either. So the explanation of these slickensides and their orientation awaits further study. Just beyond the end of the road there is a dry fall. These are quite common in smaller desert canyons near the hourglass constriction especially if there is also a change in bedrock over which the water flows.
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