While I was petroglpyh hunting on the Devils Garden Trail in Arches National Park, I found this sandstone crack in the ground far off from the trail.  I didn’t have a flashlight with me at the time and I couldn’t see the bottom of it no matter how hard I tried.  So, I marked it on a map and hoped one day I would return to descend into it.

For trail information regarding the Devils Garden Trail check out our post!

A few months later, my brother and I gathered all of our canyoneering gear and headed out on the Devils Garden trail.  It was a windy and cold morning when we hit the trailhead but once we got moving it was more tolerable.  It took us about 1.5 hrs to get to the Crackken and it was obvious that no one comes out this way.

We aren’t 100% sure but my brother and I figure that we are probably the first people to descend into the Crackken.  The entire crack is very narrow and makes rappelling difficult.  At its widest, it is probably less than 5 ft and this is at a weird angle too – it’s just overall tricky.  We found a nearby sturdy tree to use as an anchor, put on our harnesses, packed our ascending devices (to use later), and checked our equipment one last time before we rappelled.

Oh, we were trying to come up with clever names for this slot and we finally decided on the Crackken since it just sounded kinda cool I guess.

I was the first to descend.  Once I was about 5 feet down into the slot, I could quickly see that the bottom was closer than we suspected.   The bottom was about 16 ft below and there were enough ledges and footholds that you could downclimb this.  I wouldn’t recommend downclimbing this unless you have advanced level canyoneering and rock scrambling skills. 

This means you could potentially stem up the walls too.  I also don’t recommend you do this.  Overall, you will need advanced canyoneering skills to navigate this very tight slot canyon.

At the bottom, we quickly discovered that the crack is only about 100ft in length!  The deepest part was about 35 ft from the surface too.  It was wide enough for our bodies to fit through just fine but larger people should avoid this canyon.

It’s crazy how your mind plays tricks on you sometimes.  I kept thinking I was going to find some poor dead mule deer who wasn’t careful enough and fell into the canyon and starved to death.  Or, I imagined I would find some cougar who used it as its den and had a secret way of getting in and out.  But, after exploring the Crackken in its entirety, we found only leaves, some branches, and lots of sand.  It was still fun to finally get to explore and I would probably do it again in a few years.

We checked around for other ways into the crack but didn’t find any.  You must climb in and climb out from the top.  And that is basically all there is to do here in this slot – just a random and short canyon!