shout : into : the : wilderness
Tenaya Canyon
trail details
Type of Trip: Canyoneering
Where: Yosemite National Park
Permits Required: No
Miles: 14
Net Elevation Change: 3450 ft
Trailhead: Sunrise Lakes Trailhead
Cal Topo: https://caltopo.com/m/QN215TR
(Overlay of Garmin Track with what's on RopeWiki)
Description: Top down technical canyoneering route down Tenaya Canyon rated 3BIV on Rope Wiki
logistics & itinerary
Wilderness Area : Yosemite National Park
When did we do this route? August 2025
Transportation: We prepared a car shuttle with one car parked at Trailhead Parking in Yosemite Valley where you'll end the trip and drove the other car up to the start at Sunrise Lakes.
Water: We brought a water filter.
Leave-No-Trace: Follow Leave No Trace principles and pack out all of your trash.
Flora Considerations: There is poison oak along the exit trail. The exit trail is also a rough mix of scrambling and trail finding through brush at times.
Fauna Considerations: Rattlesnakes, black bears, and mountain lions can be found in this area.
Gear: Enough rope for a max rap of 70ft for the group and per person: climbing helmet, rappel device, 3 locking carabiners, 2 non-locking carabiners, prusik, personal anchoring system. The route is bolted. When we did this, we did not need wetsuits. This is a very long route with lots of scrambling. The average time on RopeWiki is 17 hours. It took us 28 hours in total and we ended bivouacking on the exit trail with emergency blankets. Be prepared to travel in the dark and spend the night.
Route Specific Considerations: THIS IS A TECHNICAL CANYON, NOT A HIKE.
This is a long Class 3 technical canyon with a lot of descent. You start at 8,000ft elevation and finish at 4,700ft elevation You should not jump from any rocks unless you know how deep the water is below you and that its safe to do so. Rescue will take a very long time should you injure yourself. The granite is slick when wet and a lot of areas in the creek are covered in algae. Rope Wiki is a good resource and sometimes has recent trip reports that mention conditions. This canyon doesn't have many trips reports.
Always check the weather before you go, canyons can flash flood if there is a thunderstorm upstream and water flows can surge if there were recent storms. The approach can be incredibly hot during the summer with little to no shade. You'll be in and out of the water once in the canyon proper, doing the rappels and even while on the exit trail. This route can be broken down into 4 main segments; approach, slab vs gully, rappels, exit.
Approach:
I recommend starting as early as you can given the length of the route and how rough the terrain is. We started at 6:30am, a bit later than we wanted. The approach is relatively straightforward as you follow the initial start of the Cloud's Rest Trailhead and then veer off-trail to continue following the creek. It wasn't hard to follow GPS until you arrive at the warning sign. The approach takes you through some beautiful granite bowls through relatively easy downslopes. There's a nice swimming hole at the bottom of the first bowl. Don't be fooled, this is the easiest terrain of the whole trip. Try to make good time through this section. Between miles 2.5 and 4.5 is some route finding through brush as you try and decide whether to follow the creek exactly or skirt along the granite to try and avoid it.
Slab vs Gully:
At the 4.5mi mark you'll see the "Lone Boulder" while standing in a huge boulder field and will need to decide if you want to go the slab route (down canyon left) or the gully route (down canyon right). The group needs to have consensus on what everyone is most comfortable doing. You don't want to be on a slab and freeze up or freak out. There are many reported deaths in this canyon, some of them from the slab. Slab route is supposedly faster and more direct. Our group opted for the gully route but it is substantially longer and involves some elevation gain. This isn't to say that the gully route is completely safe. It does involve traversing some no-fall slab zones and the gully itself involves downclimbing boulders that everyone will need to be comfortable with. The gully in punishing and slow going. Its not exactly a clear route as to which way you should go. You're route finding every move. It's also fully exposed once the sun crests the canyon. We didn't finish the gully section until around 1:00pm. It was still another mile of boulder field to meet up with where the slab route comes down. There is a nice swimming hole at this junction however we did not have the time to partake. Once the gully route joins back up with where the slab route ends, there is still another mile to go following the creek across rocks and dense brush and boulder fields until you reach the rappels.
Rappels:
We didn't hit the first rappel until about 4:00pm. From there it ended up being an hour per rappel. We also ended up with a bonus rappel in-between raps 1 and 2 since we mistook a boulder with a single link as the LeConte Boulder. The rappels were awesome. After trudging for hours in the hot sun, it was refreshing to do that first drop in on the first rappel into a fern lined water-way. The anchors are easy to find (for the most part) given the information on RopeWiki. Even still, travel was slow as we had to route find the safest way down the sections without rappels. It was hard to avoid getting wet on the actual LeConte Boulder rappel since the waterfall was still going. We didn't arrive at the last rappel until sunset and ended up completing it in the dark. We lucked out that the ambient air temperature stayed warm even after sunset.
Exit:
While the gully was more mental torment, the exit was probably the most annoying part of the whole trip and the part with the least available information online. The CalTopo on RopeWiki is not the actual track you need to follow. At a certain point the canyon will widen and flatten out. You continue to follow the creek but it'll become difficult as the creak branches and snakes across the valley. All the while you're alternating between rocky streambed and scrambling over boulders. Water will disappear and reappear. With the sun long since set, we meandered through the valley with only our headlamps. Being only able to see what's 10 feet in front of you while being attached by bugs for hours really wears on you. At a certain point (marked as Begin Cairns in my map), you'll get cliffed out if you try to continue following the creek. You'll find yourself on top a large boulder. Look downcanyon right and you'll see a scramble-able downclimb. Keep following that to the right and you'll find a cairn trail. If you found the cairn trail prior to this point, lucky you, we spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out which way to go.
Just because you found the cairn trail doesn't mean you're home free yet. This cairn trail winds up and over slopes, boulders, log jams and dense brush. Watch out for poison oak in this area. We continued following the cairns until about 1:00am and lost the trail. We circled back and tried to re-find it multiple times. At this point we just decided to give up and wait for daylight. Its at this point where my Garmin track ends as my watch ran out of battery. Our friend fortunately had the foresight to think this was a possibility so we all had emergency blankets that worked out pretty well. We slept for a few hours on the ground and woke up with sunrise. By 6:00am we were hunting around for the cairn trail again and that's when we spotted the missing cairn. On the ledge below where we spent the night was the next cairn. We were expected to downclimb a tree to get there. Obvious during the day, very hard to spot at night after 17 hours of constant movement. We downclimbed the tree and then continued along the cairn trail. More boulder hopping and steep dirt hillsides. We finally made it back to the car at 9:00am. Quite the adventure.
Like any wilderness trip, you accept a certain amount of risk when going into the wilderness and especially while canyoneering. You are responsible for assessing how comfortable you feel with that risk and understanding your own physical abilities and technical know-how.
#California #YosemiteNP #Canyoneering