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| Hike & Climb | 42.00 Miles |
13,500 AEG |
| | Hike & Climb | 42.00 Miles | 4 Days | | |
| 13,500 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | After every successful canyon summit one’s mind immediately thinks: What next! After success with Vishnu and Angel’s Gate with my buddy Kyle Hoyt, it was Osiris Temple, with just one entry on Peakbagger and 1000 feet of prominence that piqued my interest. I began by looking at possibilities for approaches and ideas on Caltopo. I have zero rafting experience, and do everything in my power to avoid if possible. It did look to me however, that there was perennial water below Dragon Spring, and in Crystal Creek. That would mean that a camp below the redwall west of the Ra/Osiris saddle could be a nice setup if that redwall indeed goes. This idea had an added bonus, in that we could bag Shiva Temple as well, which is a summit neither of us had and another 1k prominence GC summit.
Day 1: Tiyo Point trailhead to Shiva Temple summit, camp at saddle. 12 mi +2500
After a last minute detour to buy a bmx bicycle helmet in Page (I forgot my climbing helmet in Tucson!) I was off to meet Kyle at the North Rim. I picked him up near Jacob Lake and we drove the 4x4 road to Tiyo Point. Not a bad drive and the Ranger easily handled some of the rougher areas. We followed the Tiyo point trail and blew right past the Shiva Junction. Not a good start… We did some cross country through the forest to reconnect without having to backtrack but it did cause some unnecessary ups and downs which felt all too heavy with our 4 day packs loaded with 2 30m ropes, a small rack of gear and food/water/bivy. We made it to the saddle around 4pm and quickly dropped our packs and headed for Shiva. We had zero beta on Shiva- we had honestly completely overlooked it since all of our focus was on Osiris and Ra, and we figured that Shiva got enough traffic to easily route find our way to the summit. This cost us a bit of time, as we hit the initial cliffs and side skirted all the way around to the right and didn’t see any path or cairns. We headed left and found the correct route but again, tried to ascend too quickly and couldn’t find any good paths up (the correct route contours back almost the whole way to the ridge) We navigated through the coco scrambling easily enough, and once the true summit came into view we realized we were definitely going to be coming down in the dark. We logged in (last entry Lee Chandler 2022), walked to the true highpoint, and turned on headlamps for our descent. It was a little confusing coming down, and we did have some route finding issues but all went well and we were cowboy camped and in bed by 9pm and ready for a nice easy second day.
Day 2 – Descend Shiva NR saddle, camp at junction with Redwall route past the Dragon/Crystal confluence. 6mi, -3200 ft.
There was surprisingly a decently cairned route to get down into Dragon creek. This didn’t take much time and we enjoyed the morning shade. It quickly began heating up however, and the last few miles to Dragon Spring were brutal with the October heat wave. Made even more brutal was getting cliffed out and realized we missed a work around. We enjoyed a nice break at Dragon Spring which is quite the oasis. Didn’t bother treating any of the pristine water and rehydrated. It had been a water rationed two days and it felt amazing to drink up to our hearts content. After that, we made our way to the junction with the redwall route and set up camp there, but not before enjoying some of the small pools near the dragon/crystal confluence. We got to bed early, since we knew we had a long day in store.
Day 3: Camp at Junction -> Osiris -> Tower of Ra -> Back to camp. 10.3mi +5300, -5300. Well, here we go. Alpine start towards the redwall. Saw a huge scorpion, plenty of frogs and a black widow on the approach. The beta we had for the redwall was a paragraph from an out of print book and a picture of the 1890 Kane route by Butchart that’s floating around online. What could go wrong? The redwall is series of confusing layers of scree and choss. There are no cairns, some class 4 in rotten rock, and extremely steep terrain where one slip could be disastrous. For me, navigating the redwall was definitely the crux of the day both mentally and physically. Towards the top of the redwall, we cheated towards the base of Osiris and stashed gear here. The only beta we had for Osiris was that it went at class 3, and that the Supai break required a contour. We contoured ¾ of the way around the mountain, looking up at cliff bands just a little too steep to scramble. Eventually, it does indeed ease. The contouring did get very thin at times right on exposed cliffs (classic grand canyon catwalk). The upper supai breaks by their easiest lines were all class 4. If a C3 line does exist we didn’t find it. Once above the Supai it is just a short hike to this seldom visited peak. By our count we were the 16th party to summit the peak. Supposedly Kane reached the summit of this peak on his 1890 trek, but the first ascent after him in 1960 mentioned seeing no trace of humans, or any cairn or object left to signify an ascent which was interesting.
Tower of Ra: After Osiris, we began our trek towards Ra. I was rapidly depleting my 5 liters of water that I brought because of this nice heat wave. We grabbed our 2 30m ropes and light rack that we stashed at the saddle and headed for Ra. From the saddle, we aimed to traverse the base of the supai cliffs. We found a nice 5.6 crack to climb and I quickly led a pitch and brought Kyle up behind. The lower bands might be traversable but they looked to get thin in spots which is why we decided to go up first. We worked around to the opposite side and found the only line that looked doable. I was exhausted and out of water and there was a small bit of shade in the chimney near the base of the climb that I used to drop my pack for a minute. Kyle on the other hand, was chomping at the bit to summit and started right on up. We had enough rope to Rap these pitches and gear as well to protect (which was the original plan) but Kyle made it up in no time and shouted down something unintelligible to me to which I responded “YO!” as in Yo what the hell did you just say? That was the last I heard of him, so I figured it was time for me to head on up. I later on found out he said “hey you coming up?” and he thought I said “NO!”…  Make no mistake about it, this is an intense scramble. It is about 80 feet of vertical on great rock. It is solid class 5 scrambling so come prepared with your mental game. That being said it is my favorite GC scramble to date and one of my favorite all time, right up there were with Babo, 14er traverses, and wham ridge. The summit is a massive football field. There were very few signatures in the registry. I think I counted 8 names that predated myself and Kyle. As was the theme of the day, we enjoyed the summit for about 5 seconds, and than began our descent. We downclimbed the Ra scramble. In the redwall I rappelled a few of the choss scrambles. Kyle downclimbed everything. We made it back to the upper pourover at the base of the redwall just as it was getting dark enough for headlamps. I had a liter of water that I stashed here, and we sat, finally able to breath for a second- and enjoy what we just did. We hiked the last few miles back to the junction with Crystal creek and then enjoyed a nice dinner and a short night of rest.
Day 4: Hike out. 13.5 mi. +5400. Brutal hike out in the heat wave. Return to vehicle by 5:30pm. Bagged NK Plateau highpoint on our drive out and got a nice meal at Cliff Dwellers which Kyle was kind enough to treat me to. All in all, another successful, memorable trip into some rarely visited places of the canyon, and fortunate enough to successfully summit these rarely climbed peaks!
Now to figure out… What’s Next! |
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