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| Hike & Climb | 1.00 Miles |
1 AEG |
| | Hike & Climb | 1.00 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| 1 ft AEG | | | | |
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| Second I • Trad • 5.5 Sandstone • 2 Pitches | | |
| Partners |
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[ show ]
| no partners | | | Pro: Single, light rack to a four, maybe a #5 if you want to protect the short OW finish. | I teamed up with a couple of absolute crushers in the Grand Canyon community to climb Angels Gate over the weekend. They do not use social media, or spray about their accolades on silly websites like me, so I will just share a couple of details from the trip and some nice pictures.
We hiked into the confluence of Clear Creek and its East Arm on Friday. At a little over 17 miles, it was a pretty long way out, but we were at the creek and to camp after only about 7.5 hours.
We left camp a little after 6:30 in the morning on Saturday. It is a pleasant and scenic hike up East Clear Creek and navigation is simple. Take the obvious weakness in the tapeats to bypass the impassable dry fall and then continue up stream to the obvious break in the redwall that will place one on the saddle between Wotans and Angels.
From the saddle one begins the puzzle that is the Supai. Ample cairns made finding our breaks and weaknesses in the Supai pretty obvious, however, the climbing was a little tricky in spots and there was enough exposure to keep one's attention.
The one pitch of technical climbing on the main summit is a little meh, but the summit views and the experience more than made up for it. We were back to the base of the climb by 12:30. I chose to hang around in the shade and rest while they climbed a few lesser known routes on the unnamed pinnacles informally referred to as the belly, toes and feet of Snoopy. After linking up again, we rapped down a far more direct route to reach the saddle of Angels and Wotans.
From the saddle I said goodbye to the team, as they were staying there for another night for an attempt on Dunn Butte the next day. I made it just about through the redwall before turning on my headlamp, luckily, the hike back to camp was pretty mild by Canyon standards and it took barely more than an hour and a half even in the dark.
The hike out was pretty standard. I did much better with energy and nutrition management than the week before and made it out with relative ease and a nice steady pace. The Grand Canyon was a ghost town on the way out. No campers at Clear Creek, one tent at Phantom and I had the Tip Off to myself. I guess, like flies, the wind has a tendency to keep the tourist down.
Final Notes:
This summit had been on my wish list for a long time, perhaps since the moment I knew it could be climbed. I had permits for it in the spring, but covid, so as with Chuar it was nice to finally tick this one off after an unexpected cancellation. And as luck would have it, the cancellation led to another set of partners and I could not be more grateful to have been able to team up with these two prolific members of the Canyon community for this one. |
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