Thimble Canyon trip report

Note the hand line

THIMBLE CANYON is what I call a short technical canyon north of Oatman, Az. It's near Thimble Butte. Here's how we did it. At mp 38 on old 66 is where Navajo Rd joins in. We went west on that for about 3 miles to the end. The last 2 miles are 4wd. Near the end is a nasty down hill. And right at that is the best camp spot. From the end of the road at the mouth, we went up canyon for nearly half an air mile on a burro trail to a main fork where the narrows start. The GPS reading at that fork is N35 03294, W114 18219. Next we went up the left fork using a trail on the left bank. We followed that drainage as it curved right and paralleled the narrows. At 03277, 18461 is where we dropped in. There is one bolt and a ladder. Right away we entered the narrows and encountered another ladder in a dark hole. That ladder is dangerous as it's really 2 ladders tied together. But there are new double bolts there to rap off of. After that comes a nice section then 3 raps near the end. The first 2 are short and the last is 90 feet and double bolted. 3 hours, 500 gain. To sum up, if we don't use the ladders,  there are 4 short raps and then the 90 foot one at the end, all bolted. A 100 foot rope and pull cord are all we need for this. Webbing won't be needed unless bolts are missing. Knotted hand lines were at every rappel, and the 90 footer had one going only half way down. But we didn't see any corpses at the bottom. We stayed dry.