Overview

The Lower Mosaic Canyon Trail is short hike that runs up into the Death Valley Wilderness Area following a gravel wash through a narrow canyon with water-polished walls made of white marble and blue-gray conglomerate rocks. The water-polished conglomerate rocks look like mosaic tiles grouted onto the canyon wall, hence the name of the canyon. After only a few minutes of walking, hikers enter a narrow slot that is only 2-3 feet wide in places, but the canyon generally feels open and airy. The best water-polished marble in the entire canyon is located between 0.21 and 0.27 miles from the trailhead. For details of continuing up this geologically interesting canyon to a pour-over, see the Upper Mosaic Canyon Trail.

Best of the Canyon one-way distance: 0.27 miles. Net elevation gain: 180 ft.

Top of the Lower Narrows one-way distance: 0.56. Net elevation gain: 270 ft.

Link to map.

Watch Out

Other than the standard warnings about hiking in the desert, ...this hike is pretty safe, but stay out of the canyon if it is raining or threatens to rain because of flashflood dangers. There are several small scramble-ups in the narrows that are fairly easy to pass, but the rock is water-polished, slick, and covered with dust and gravel, so the risk of slipping is greater than usual (speaking from experience).

While hiking, please respect the land and the other people out there, and please try to Leave No Trace of your passage. Also, this is a short hike, so just take what you need of the 10 Essentials.

Getting to the Trailhead

Mosaic Canyon is located in Death Valley National Park, about 3.5 hours northwest of Las Vegas.

From town, drive out to Death Valley. From the Furnace Creek Visitor Center (Table 1, Site 0712), drive north on Highway 190 for 24 miles to Stovepipe Wells (Site 0751). Continue west on Highway 190 for another 0.25 miles to Mosaic Canyon Road (Site 0750), a graded dirt road just west of Stovepipe Wells Campground. Turn south (left) onto Mosaic Canyon Road, and drive for 2.3 miles to the end of the road at the edge of the mountains (Site 0749). Park here; this is the Mosaic Canyon Trailhead.

The Hike

From the trailhead (Table 2, Waypoint 01), Mosaic Canyon Trail runs south and up the wash towards the mouth of Mosaic Canyon. The trail starts at the top of an enormous alluvial fan that stretches all the way to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, which can be seen in the distance below.

Initially, the wash runs between 15-ft-tall alluvial walls with the dark gray-and-brown cliffs of Tucki Mountain towering above them.

At about 0.09 miles from the trailhead (Wpt. 02), the trail passes the alluvial cliffs and gets into bedrock at the mouth of Mosaic Canyon. At that point, the rock walls at the edge of the wash are white. This is water-polished marble (metamorphosed limestone). The white marble is exposed on the edges of the wash because it is water polished; above the wash, a thick patina of desert varnish darkens the marble.

The vegetation in this area is sparse, as usual for this desert, and dominated by creosote bush. Higher up Mosaic Canyon, the vegetation is more diverse and includes pygmy cedar, ephedra, a couple of other shrubs, and many little annuals when there has been enough rain.

Continuing up Mosaic Canyon, at about 0.15 miles out, the trail arrives at the bottom of the Lower Narrows. Here, the east (left) side of the canyon is mostly white, water-polished marble, but the west (right) side is layered: the base layer is marble, but that is overlain by a cobbly conglomerate, which in turn is overlain by more-recent, finer-grained conglomerate alluvial materials.

Scrambling up the winding narrows, the rock is water-sculpted and water-polished, and there are many examples of the marble-and-conglomerate mosaic in the walls of the canyon. Here, long ago, the bedrock was crushed into small pieces, perhaps as a result of earthquake activity or maybe it was just gravel in the bottom of the wash, and then dissolved limestone filled in the spaces around the rubble and solidified to form solid rock (much like concrete with gravel mixed in).

Later, the wash cut down through the rock, exposing the mosaic appearance. There are places along the edge of the wash where either the infilling process was not complete or the infill material has eroded away, revealing the 3-dimensional nature of the original rubble.

At about 0.24 miles out, the trail passes the remains of iron stairs (Wpt. 03) that were built to bypass an obstacle that no longer exists. It is interesting to see the old-time workmanship demonstrated here.

Shortly, the canyon jogs right (west) and the route ascends a pour-over cascade (Wpt. 04) where it is easier to stay to the right all the way through as the canyon bends back to the east. For hikers not going to Upper Mosaic Canyon, this is a good place to stop because this is the end of the best of the Lower Narrows.

Some hikers might want to continue another 0.28 miles through an interesting narrow-ish canyon to where Mosaic Canyon widens abruptly (Wpt. 05). This truly is the end of the best of the Lower Narrows.

Rest here in the narrows and relax for a spell, then follow your footprints back down through the narrows to the trailhead (Wpt. 01).