Montezuma Canyon

Montezuma is easily one of the best canyons in the Ticaboo Mesa area, with fun down-climbing, deep dark narrows, some potholes, and an epic 270 foot rappel at the end of the canyon. Competent groups can easily do this canyon in one day, leaving time to do neighboring canyons, such as Euphrates or Tripoli. The canyon can be broken down into two sections, upper and lower. Upper Montezuma is narrow and shallow, with lots of stemming and down-climbing. All water in the upper section can be avoided by those with solid stemming skills, even right after floods. After the upper section ends, escape is possible on both sides of the canyon before the canyon deepens. The lower section is extremely beautiful, with a double arch room, dark twisty narrows, and a pothole or two depending on water levels. A wet-suit will be needed in the lower section if the air temperature is low, though due to the short nature of the swims, one forego the wet-suit in warm weather. With a 60 foot rope and pull cord, you should reach the bottom of all rappels in the this section, excluding the final rappel. The final rappel can be done off of a carin or dead-man anchor, using the rocks in the final staging area, and is roughly 270 feet, mostly free-hanging.

The approach is very easy and straightforward. You enter the canyon within a hundred yards of exiting the vehicle.

This would be a bad canyon to do if it is raining. I did notice one place to get out in an emergency at the location marked below. The canyon is a mix of V shaped sections that shred your shoes, easy stemming and galumphing to deep dark narrow sections requiring significant effort to tote your pack along. This canyon requires advanced anchor skills including building cairns in the water, meat anchors, deadman anchors, sand traps, and even a possible water anchor could come in handy. 37.656182,-110.556149

Shortcut exit We scoped out this exit and used it on a recent descent of the canyon. It allows you to easily see all of the beautiful sections of the canyon, do some ascending, and have time to easily do Euphrates or Tripoli after. Rig an ascent line from a flake (37.6515182, -110.5574946) or whatever else you deem suitable. Our party used webbing around the flake with a santrap backup. Go down the low angle slab to a Crack where you can see an open shallow portion of the canyon. At least 120' of rope is necessary if anchoring off the flake. The drop into the canyon once at the bottom of the slab is only about 15' to 20' and will deposit you just before the 2nd rappel. We stashed a 300' rope here in case we wanted to do the full route, but we used it to rig a descent/ascent line for rappels 2 and 3 allowing us to see the rest of the canyon up to rap 4. We then exited up our ascent line to the rim and went to the mouth of Euphrates. We rigged the ascent line and stashed the 300' rope the night before and it took us about 1.5 hours round trip with trying to figure out a good spot. Took us about 4.5 hours to descend the canyon, ascend the drops and escape line and hike to the mouth of euphrates.