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| Hike & Climb | 55.00 Miles |
20,000 AEG |
| | Hike & Climb | 55.00 Miles | 6 Days | | |
| 20,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | After my failed solo Vishnu attempt from South Kaibab 2 years ago (that turned into a Brahma summit) I have been determined to get back out and take another shot at that peak. I knew I didn't want to attempt it solo, and luckily for me I have been tackling quite a few peaks recently with my old PCT buddy Kyle Hoyt. I asked him if he wanted to tackle Vishnu and he was in!
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Now that I had a partner and knowing that some canyon peaks lie on the route we had an ambitious plan: Angels Gate, Vishnu, and a nice easy stroll up Hall Butte. As with all things in the Grand Canyon this is much easier said then done, and even going in I would have considered it a success if we even got one of these three peaks, with everything else an added bonus. We took enough food for 5 days, two 30m ropes, a single rack from 0.3-4", harnesses, and went as light as possible on everything else, even skipping taking a tent with no serious rain in the forecast, and brought waterproof groundsheets to use as emergency bivies in case of any rain, with the general plan to be just bailing in case of weather. Luckily for us it never was.
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Here's how it went:
Day 1 – 16.5 miles, +2500 -6200. SK to Clear Creek Camp. No hiccups here, but I was feeling a little beat having not carried a heavy pack for any serious mileage in quite some time. We planned to get hiking at first light and were in bed by 10pm. I inflated my sleeping pad, and tried to get some zzz's... Within twenty minutes I could feel hard ground - my inflatable had a hole! The whole trip was coming into question. I had nothing to repair it and there is just no way I could go five days sleeping like s---. I went and woke up Kyle and asked him if he had anything we might use to repair it. Luckily Kyle thinks of everything and had a small piece of tenacious tape that I could use. Quick side note if you ever need to do a field repair you don’t need a bathtub or to dunk it underwater. Simply inflate to the maximum and pour water over it and the leak will make a noise loud enough to identify. After about 20 minutes I had both holes (there were two) repaired and was getting some much needed rest.
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Day 2- 6.5 miles (all off trail) +4k -2200. The plan was to summit the Angel’s Gate and then make our way over to Vishnu Creek. Starting from Clear Creek camp we made quick work of east clear creek, the tapeats break, and the class 4 ascent of the Angels/Wotan saddle. This was all terrain I had done before and it turns out it’s much easier when you can hand off packs and trekking poles instead of hauling them all up behind you when solo! Angels Gate: we had little problem navigating the first 2 Supai layers. We knew the beta for the third layer was to contour around a big chunk of the mountain and found the chimney system we knew would get us up higher. After that began our route finding confusion. We walked a ledge system and came to what we thought was a dead end. There was a break in the ledge with a small bush and hundreds of feet of cliff straight down. We figured this couldn’t be the way so we back tracked to the top of the chimney. I thought we could get higher up the ledges and so I climbed up some supai slab and ran into the same problem… no where to go. We walked back to the first “dead end” and I spotted a cairn and the rest of the route. The problem was there was just no way either of us were going to solo across this treacherous section. So we roped up and slung a boulder to belay off of. I got in a single piece and found that this portion was not nearly as difficult as we thought. I was across! I made a quick anchor and brought Kyle over, leaving the piece for the return across. The rest of the ascent wasn’t too bad, although there were several exposed 10-15 ft class 4 sections. This route finding hiccup cost us quite a bit of time and without talking much about our plan just simply agreed to move as quickly and safely as possible. We got up to the very recognizable base of the climb which I lead in my approach shoes. I was happy to have brought plenty of gear to zip up the route although there was a short run out on the slab and the final off width was not protectable unless you bring a 5 or 6. I grunted my way up that section exhausted from the last two days and belayed Kyle who had no problem coming up behind me. 5.5 is a sandbag in my opinion and I would say this was easily 5.6-5.7 but no harder. From here we unroped and scrambled the rest of the way up the summit. We knew with it being late in the day and Kyle not having a headlamp that we needed to get down as soon as possible! We rapped the climbing pitch with our 2 30m ropes being just long enough. Fortunately on the descent we had daylight on our side for the harder supai band up top but had to navigate the lower sections in the dark. Kyle used his phone and I shone my head lamp for him wherever needed. There was one area we couldn’t find our way down but fortunately I did find some webbing so we just rappelled the 2nd Supai Band. Luckily I checked my phone for some GPS waypoints we made because we had completely forgotten about our trekking poles that we stashed. As luck would have it we were right next to them when I checked. We grabbed our poles and cowboy camped on top of the saddle, on a clear beautiful calm night with no wind and got some great sleep.
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Day 3 – 4 miles. +500, -1700. We were moving by 5:30am with the goal of traversing over to the Hall saddle, getting down into Vishnu Creek, dropping off our stuff for camp and pushing for a summit. The traverse over to Hall was slow. It took us almost two hours to get over there and we had no route finding issues at all. We took 5 at the saddle and drank the last of our water from Clear Creek which we were rationing since we hadn’t intended on dry camping the night before. From the Hall Saddle it took us a minute to try and find the descent which wasn’t immediately obvious but we found a navigable way down we knew must have been the route. The descent down Hall is very loose and steep, with pretty much zero scrambling. All just loose steep walking. About 2/3 of the way down Kyle found an unmarked spring which we referred to as “Hoyt Spring” and we chilled here and enjoyed some much needed water on a warm sunny morning. We talked about it quite a bit and both of us agreed that a Vishnu summit push might be a little too ambitious for today. We agreed that what we could at the very least push for the saddle if we wanted to. After we got to Vishnu Creek we gave it more thought and realized the smartest decision would be to just rest up and get a nice early start and push for Vishnu the next morning from here instead of worrying about getting our gear up to that saddle. We were done for the day by 1pm and enjoyed a nice afternoon of stretching, rest, refueling and even took the time to wash and dry some clothes in Vishnu Creek. We camped next to an unmarked spring pretty close to the big X in Vishnu Canyon on USGS maps.
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Day 4 – 6.5 miles. +3700, -3700. We were again moving before 6am in the dark, knowing our nice easy route towards the Vishnu Freya saddle. The beta for the redwall here that we had found from some blogs online was to use a downward sloping ledge to access the cliffed out redwall gully from its side. We found a line we thought would work and went for it. This was again some very loose and steep terrain but worked. The redwall break went quick and before we knew it we were at the saddle! We stashed a liter of water here and began the route up Vishnu. We got to the Supai weakness that led to the Coconino notch and switched over into our harnesses. We roped up for this which probably wasn’t necessary as it was just some stiff 4th class but we had all the gear so why not! The route up the Coco went really well with no route finding struggles until the Kaibab. We zipped right past the final gully that ascends the Kaibab and had to slightly backtrack but this really didn’t cost us any time. Before we knew it we were staring at the summit cap! It was pretty cold and windy up here so we layered up and got the harnesses back on. We slung a large boulder to belay off of and I led the short 20 ft pitch to the summit. Easy 5th climbing that’s got some serious exposure. We really soaked in this summit and enjoyed about 30 minutes up there signing in, looking through the register and snapping some mandatory summit photos. We rapped the summit pitch and the Supai on the way down. If anyone reads this and is heading up please bring some webbing for the Supai rappel as it’s in rough shape. Nothing much to say about the descent other than I smashed my left foot which made the last two days absolutely miserable hiking out. We were in headlamps by the time we got back to camp for a full 13 hour day from Vishnu Creek camp.
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Days 5 and 6. 24.2 miles +8700 -5400. The highlight of the return was a trip up to Hall Butte from that saddle. Hall has one of the best views in that area of the Canyon. One of the summit register sign ins mentioned that 22 named summits can be seen from Hall! Not much else can be said about the return as it was just retracing our footsteps from the way up. I took about 2000mg of IB profin these days to keep my foot in check which was just absolutely excruciating. One notable thing was the ranger at phantom ranch threatening to ticket us for overstaying our permit by one day. Even though I explained to him what had happened. I get they deal with some people gaming the system but this clearly wasn’t the case with us and definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. All in all this was by far my favorite and most successful trip in the canyon! So stoked to have these two awesome summits checked off the list. It will definitely be quite some time before heading back in! |
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