Brahma Temple

Brahma Temple 7551′

Grand Canyon National Park 

Total Time: 19:16

Distance: 30.5 miles

Elevation Gain: 12,250′

Crux: Class 4 (multiple pitches)

Trailhead: South Kaibab, full services

---

---

---

Brahma Temple is one of the crown jewel summits of the Grand Canyon. One of the highest in the Bright Angel drainage and several miles off the North Rim, Brahma is one of the dominant features in Grand Canyon National Park and a coveted summit by GC climbers. First climbed in 1968, it sees only a handful ascents per year, many spending a night at Phantom Ranch or somewhere along the long and arduous approach. Even fewer make the push in a single day from the South Rim, being a roughly 30 mile roundtrip day with over 22,000′ of elevation change, which of course includes the painful 5,000′ ascent back to the South Rim to cap off the day. The approach consists of multiple pitches of class 4 climbing, many with fixed ropes shared for the approach of the more popular (and more difficult) Zoroaster Temple, holding some of the best backcountry rock climbing in the entire park. Brahma had been in the back of my mind for a while, but soloing multiple sections of class 4 gave me pause, and I instead spent the prior year focused on a collection of comparatively easier summits throughout the park (Huethewali and Fiske, Fossil Mountain, Saddle Mountain and Marion Point, Little Dragon, Oza Butte, Berry Butte, O’Neill Butte). But I felt like I hadn’t seriously challenged myself to a long day in the canyon since Cheops Pyramid and Plateau, and after finding a few trip reports of single day pushes, I decided it was time to give it a go. I slept off a Forest Road outside of Tusayan and woke up at 2:00 AM, driving into the park and parking at the picnic area just beyond the South Kaibab Trail turnoff (shuttle buses only on the side road to the trailhead). After organizing my gear and hiking the extra quarter mile of road to the trailhead, I was surprised to find a collection of other hikers on dawn patrol at the trailhead despite the early hour. I had forgotten this was prime time for rim-to-rim-to-rim hikers, with longer days but still reasonable temperatures in mid April. I joined the conga line of about 20 headlamps bobbing down the South Kaibab trailhead at a little after 3 AM, feeling a little less ridiculous for my early start with all the company. The groups began to spread out and thin 1.5 miles in at Cedar Ridge, and by Skeleton Point I was all alone on the trail, with only the occasional headlamp popping into view many switchbacks below or above as I descended. I could hear the roar of the Colorado below for the first time all day as I passed through the Tip-Off, quite deceptive considering another 1,600′ of descent to go to the river. I half jogged at times recognizing that these would be the easiest miles of the day, and hit the bridge over the Colorado River a few minutes under 2 hours from the trailhead. Hiking along the trail east of Bright Angel Creek, I wasted a little time looking for a potable water spicket, as I thought there was one outside the ranger station when it was in fact near the Canteen. I stopped in to use the pit toilet and topped up on 4.5 liters of water, and by the time I left the area the sun was just beginning to rise. I very briefly continued along the North Kaibab Trail past the ranch and turned east onto the Clear Creek Trail, the first time ever hiking on it.

I thought I might have some company on this stretch of trail given that Clear Creek is most well known for its’ large waterfall, most impressive in the spring from the snowmelt. But I was alone as I climbed the switchbacks through the Vishnu Group up to the Tonto Layer and Bright Angel Shale over the Colorado River. The trail was in decent shape, and after quickly climbing about 600′, it began to level out and traverse beneath a long stretch of Tapeats Sandstone cliffs for over a mile before reaching a weakness and hooking above to the Bright Angel Shale. From here Sumner Butte towered overhead with Zoroaster Temple not far to the northeast.

The next portion of the day, and the start of the adventurous portion of the approach, was to reach the Sumner-Zoroaster saddle via a steep class 4 gully. The gully and notch came into view as I was nearing Sumner Wash, and I veered off trail north to reach the base. I had heard this section was a bit of a slog, but actually found the rock in the wash fairly solid. A use-trail becomes more defined about 2/3 of the way to the base of the gully, but I missed it on the way in, working up a bit of loose scree before stumbling upon it about 50 yards from the class 4 pour over with a fixed rope.

For reference, the use trail stays west and slightly above the deepest portion of the wash for nearly the entire time. I was a bit nervous for the first bit of class 4 for the day as the beta I had sounded potentially confusing- basically climb a series of ledges to the right of the fixed rope for about 80-100′, then downclimb about 20′ back into the gully. In reality, it made perfect sense when I arrived with a pretty obvious class 3-4 line heading above and right of the fixed rope, and a short downclimb back into the gully. I don’t think it would really be possible to climb to high as the ledge quickly become class 5 above the point where one should downclimb, and the rope, use for rappelling this section on the return, serves as a good point of reference as to how high you should be going.

Dropping back into the gully, a bit of loose scree got me to a second, shorter section of class 4 with another fixed rope, this one with butterfly knots every few feet. An exposed bypass and traverse to the left of the rope got me above this second obstacle, and I continued up the now class 2 scree through one more short class 3 section to the top of the Muav Limestone and Redwall Formation. This was my first time in the sun all day and I cached one liter of water and took a short break, examining the ridge to Sumner to the west and seeing Brahma for the first time all day to the east.

It didn’t look too far, but I knew there was a lot of class 3 and 4 between me and the summit, and it would still take many more hours from the top of the Redwall. The next obstacle was to traverse through the Supai bands of the western arm of Zoroaster Temple. A thin use trail with the occasional cairn wove up and along the northernwestern side of the Supai cliffs, with numerous class 2 and 3 options to work up the varying ledges. Several of the layers required some solid class 3 stemming between the main cliff face and adjacent boulders and slabs.

The last class 3 obstacle was probably the highest, a roughly 20′ crack to work up to a long plateau halfway up the Supai group. Zoroaster was now almost directly overhead, with only the second half of the Supai band between myself and the Hermit Shale saddle between Brahma and Zoroaster. This would also be the technical crux of the day. A well defined trail headed across the thin plateau and traversed just north of the upper Supai cliff band with serious exposure below. This section was almost completely flat until reaching a large Supai bay/ amphitheater directly below the North Face of Zoroaster. A few cairns marked the turn off, and after a few class 2-3 moves up the initial ledges, I encountered the first class 4 pitch of this section, made obvious with the fixed rope.

It was about 10′ of steep sandstone slab with a nice crack on the right for holds. I climbed up without hesitation and continued past on the use trail. There was reportedly a second set of fixed ropes on a lower angeled class 3 slab, but that rope was gone and clearly unnecessary as I scrambled up the slab to the final section of class 4, reported to have turned back a handful of climbers even this deep into the day. There was both a rappel rope and a knotted rope hanging down the ~12′ crack. For my first try, I tried to utilize some steps to the right and then traverse over at the top. Unfortunately the traverse was a bit too thin to do safely with the ropes out of the reach to clip in.

I put on my harness and downclimbed to the rope and clipped into one of the loops before ungracefully pulling myself up to the top of the pitch. I can say confidently that this was the technical crux of the day. From above this pitch, I continued along the use trail not really paying attention to where it was heading. What I should have done as cut east once I had cleared the upper cliff bands to traverse to the Brahma-Zoroaster Saddle. But by the time I realized this use trail was heading to the base of Zoroaster and not the saddle, I was in fairly steep and loose terrain and traversing over would have been doable, but pretty sketchy over the loose terrain and likely not much faster at this point. So I climbed an extra 100-200′ to the base of Zoroaster and was very surprised to find a collection of packs and water at the base. I had assumed I would be alone all day, but there were a group of climbers above on Screaming Sky Crack, one of the tougher routes established on Zoroaster. Dropping down to the saddle, I could see them working on the final pitch to the summit, and I sat down to apply some sunscreen, have a snack, and cache a second bottle of water.

It was 10:15 at this point taking a bit over 7 hours from the trailhead. Not exactly record breaking pace, but there were definitely some spots where I wasted time being unfamiliar with the route. Brahma Temple was directly overhead and I thought I could summit in about an hour, which would put me on pace for a 16-17 hour day, which I thought was pretty respectable. The issue was that the route up Brahma ascends the NW Face, which meant a long traverse along the base of the Coconino Cliffs for almost a mile until I could start working my way up. My work cut out for me, I started up towards Brahma, cutting off the connecting ridgeline to work through some Coconino Talus and some very loose Hermit Shale to the base. As I rounded the corner along the west face, a good use trail materialized that was quite easy to follow, although it did still have multiple sections of loose hermit shale traverses to contend with.

Hugging the cliff base meant many ups and downs along the way, which was burning more and more time and wearing me down. After about a mile, a small cairn marked the ascent route (really indistinguishable from the other cairns along the same trail), though it was really the first time there was any real reasonable option to ascend. I had read that this face had some class 4, but as I climbed, I found nothing harder than exposed class 3, and much of the more difficult spots could be avoided with some route finding and creativity. I made little effort to avoid any scrambling and enjoyed working up the broad sandstone gully, really a series of three gullies stacked next to each other options to go from one to the other.

I had probably climbed about 500′ when I started to bonk for the first time all day, the sustained scrambling for 8 hours really taking it’s toll. The slope seemed to go on forever, and it wasn’t clear when I should start cutting back south towards the summit with multiple layers of cliff bands with questionable routes through. I decided to basically take this gully all the way to the ridgeline and was surprised the find the summit was still at least a quarter mile south, with a whole additional rock layer (Toroweap) to work up.

Luckily the steepness eased at the ridge and with a bit more scrambling up a series of short class 2-3 cracks I topped out on the summit. I’ve stood on about 20 Grand Canyon summits so far, and nothing has come close to this one. I felt like I was in the dead center of the canyon, with Wotan’s Throne and Angel’s Gate to the east, Oza Butte and the North Rim to the north, Zoroaster Temple directly to the south (and the South Kaibab Trailhead looking painfully far) and Buddha and Isis Temple to the west. It had taken me roughly 9 hours to summit with the traverse to the NW Face and subsequent 1000′ of scrambling taking longer than I had expected. But even with my day only half over, I couldn’t help but bask in the views for a bit longer than I should have before finally starting down.

Thanks to the long rest on the summit and a wonderful thing called gravity, I was hoping to make up some time on the 1000′ of descent to the base of the Coconino. While the northwest face certainly was faster on the descent, the traverse back to the Brahma-Zoroaster was just as tedious on the way in, and in the end I was probably just as behind schedule as I was on the summit. The climbers on Zoroaster were nowhere in sight already on their way out, and I collected my cached water bottle at the saddle and started on the loose traverse across the hermit shale to the top of the class 4 approach pitches.

I didn’t exactly find a trail like I was hoping, mostly just the occasional animal prints to faintly lead the way, but there were only a few really loose spots and I was able to work across without incident. I still had my harness on from the ascent, and after double checking the anchor, rappelled down the two fixed ropes to begin the long redwall traverse. At the base of the first rappel there were some hanging fern gardens within the sandstone cracks, which I had completely missed on the way in, focused on the class 4 climbing.

Crossing the plateau to work down the series of class 3 cracks, I had a hard time remembering where I had come up. But in a scrambling rhythm, I just went down what ever looked like it would go and took a very different combination of cracks and ledges back down to the Sumner-Zoroaster saddle. I found my final cached water bottle where I left it at the saddle, unfortunately warm but just enough to get me back to Phantom Ranch. Dropping into the crack down in Sumner wash, I came to the upper section of fixed rope, knotted with multiple butterflies preventing a rappel (or at least a quick one). So instead I down-climbed the steeper section of crack and clipped into various places on the rope for catastrophe protection with some stemming to get me to the base. The lower fixed rope was knotless and I wasted no time starting my final rappel, easily the longest of the day and probably at least 60′, dropping me into the upper scree of Sumner wash.

I took of my harness with all technical challenges behind me for the day, and a mile of tedious cross country through the wash to get me back to solid trail all the way back to the trailhead. I was able to follow the use trail much more judiciously on the return, but it did kind of fizzle out in the grasses about 2/3 of the way back to the trail. Reaching the trail, I started to jog a bit, knowing this was my last easy mileage of the day back to Phantom Ranch, with nothing but grinding uphill back to the rim once I started across the Colorado. This part was exposed and I was running low on the 4.5 liters of water I had brought with me, but after working down the final set of switchbacks, I reached Phantom Ranch at roughly 5 PM. I had resigned myself to finishing in the dark long ago, so after filling up my waters, I took off my shoes and soaked my feet in Bright Angel Creek, and some impressive blisters forming on my fourth and fifth toes bilaterally. It was really hard to force myself to leave the riverbed, particularly with campers making dinner across the way. Mountainhouse never smelled so good.

It was around 5:45 PM when I started across the bridge over the Colorado River, focused only on reaching the Tip-Off and trying not to think about all the hiking beyond that. The trail weaved in and out of the setting sun, and I was consistently able to move faster in the stretches in the shade. I had it in my mind that the Tip-Off was only 1000′ above the river, but it was about 1,600′ above Phantom Ranch. The sun had nearly set when I finally did reach the Tip Off at 7PM.

I had originally planned on a short break, but in the interest of utilizing as much light left as possible, I continued past and started up the switchbacks to Skeleton Point. This section has historically always been the worst for me, the midway point of the trail with a series of steep switchbacks working up through the Muav Limestone and Redwall. I stopped shortly before the halfway mileage sign to put on my headlamp, and was pleased to see a number of other lights bobbing along the trail, a few R2R2Rers rolling in late, making me again feel a little less foolish for my choices. For whatever reason, I reached Skeleton Point without losing steam and hiked along the gloriously long flat stretch between Skeleton Point to the base of O’Neill Butte’s north face. Although it was pitch black at this point, I could make out the outline of O’Neill in the stars and Milky Way, and a few switchbacks later I reached Cedar Ridge, now with only 1.5 miles to go. I took one final break as a reward and to eat the last GU I had in my pack, then started up the steep but graded switchbacks, past ‘Ooh Ahh Point’ to the final switchbacks below the rim. I topped out at about 10PM, taking 19 hours total with a couple generous breaks and some wasted time in route finding. Not record breaking, but a nice baseline if I ever have enough skill to go back for Zoroaster Temple someday. The painful part of the 10PM finish meant all the restaurants in the park had just closed, but driving into Tusayan, I found the Plaza Bonita Mexican restaurant open and had a massive steak burrito and beer for reward. I could barely keep my eyes open as I drove down the dirt road north of Tusayan after dinner, and passed out in the back of my car at the first legal pull off I found, sleeping until 8AM the next day.