Lyell Butte 5362′ and Pattie Butte 5315′
Grand Canyon National Park
Total Time: 11:10
Distance: 13.0 miles
Elevation Gain: 5100′
Crux: Class 3
Trailhead: Shoshone Point, no services
A trip to the Grand Canyon was long overdue. My last trip was at the start of the pandemic with a 3 days R2R2R backpack, and I hadn’t bagged a summit since climbing Whites and Marsh Buttes with Carlos February of 2020. Granted, getting there is much harder now that I lived in California, but it was still a weak excuse. I was able to set aside a day during a weeklong trip to Arizona, and decided to try a double header of Pattie Butte and Lyell Butte below Shoshone Butte. I had attempted Pattie a few years prior via a bushwack from the South Kaibab thinking the route from Shoshone would have too much snow and ice, but bailed about a mile in finding the brush quite miserable. After spending the night in Flagstaff, I left for the canyon early, reaching the turn off for Shoshone Point while it was still dark. I walked along the fire road by headlamp, nearly walking directly into a large elk blocking the path. It was less than a flat mile to reach the rim, the overlook being the only place along the south rim (as far as I know) that allows weddings and private gatherings. The sun was just rising as I hit the rim, with magnificent early morning glow over the eastern canyon, dominated by Vishnu Temple to the northeast.
I walked about 50 yards back from the point to find a break in the Kaibab and headed down the steep talus slopes below. The Shoshone Point route would be easy to follow once I reached the Coconino, following the arete fairly directly off the rim, but the Kaibab was loose and fractured, and I was unsure of which gully to drop down. After finding the first gully ending in a 30′ drop, I worked to the south, and found an easier class 3 slab with a roughly 8′ downclimb to get through the first major obstacle.
I continued down the same drainage until I neared the top of the Coconino before traversing north below the point itself. The first bit of downclimbing was probably the trickiest spot, traversing from the west side of the ridge across slab back to the ridgeline proper. But most of it was straight forward, following the occasional cairn down slots and chimneys along the ridgeline on surprisingly solid rock.
As I neared the base of the Coconino, I followed ledges out right, downclimbing past a few trees to the base of the Coconino. I had four liters of water with me for the day, and I cached one at the base for the climb out. I decided to try for Lyell Butte first, it being the more difficult of the two. It had taken me about an hour to descend for Shoshone Point, although Lyell still looked a good ways away, with numerous Supai bands to get through. I dropped down slope, trending to the left to avoid the first set of Supai bands directly beneath my in the drainage.
I continued a slow descending traverse to the east, dropping through Supai bands when possible to avoid getting cliffed out and needing to backtrack further along. There were plenty of options with easy route finding, and I quickly reached the Redwall saddle immediately west of Lyell Butte.
Grand Canyon Summit Select rates Lyell Butte as fifth class, but I was assured by multiple people that there was nothing worse than some tougher third class. So with that in mind, I started up the slope, scrambling through the first few lower bands of Supai to the base of the western prow. I quickly reached the main band, about 40′ high and overhanging on most sides. My beta said to scramble up a third class shelf, scootch across a ledge and climb a chimney with a chokestone and large pine tree at the top. After a bit of searching, I found a sequence that matched the description on the NW face, and worked my way to the base of the chimney. But looking up, I quickly concluded it wasn’t hard third class, or even low fifth. I made a few moves to see if maybe there were some hidden holds, but the climbing was more like a 5.7 squeeze chimney, and with no rope, rock shoes, and the sandstone a bit damp from recent storms, it was an obvious no go.
I reversed my course, and decided that either I found the wrong chimney, or I needed to make my own route up. I traversed the base of the major Supai cliff band working to the north east and eventually rounded a corner to the northeast face of the butte. About half way across the face, I found another third class weakness and scrambled up to investigate. This similarly led to another ledge with some butt scooching and to the base of a chimney with several chokestones and a large pine at the top.
I started up and found this to be much more in the realm of hard third class, with a nice flake on the left for my feet and the numerous chokestone making good hands. A cairn at the top indicated this was probably the actual route I had been looking for. From there it was easy class 3 scrambling up a few more shorter Supai bands up to the broad summit with a massive cairn. I signed into the copper register, the peak typically seeing an ascent every 2-3 years, although I was the second for 2021. I took some photos of the canyon, appreciative of the clouds providing some shade for the humid fall day.
It had taken me less than 4 hours from the start, and I felt pretty good about going for Pattie Butte. The question was how to get over there. Newton Butte, rated 5.7, was directly between Lyell and Pattie. To get around it, I could either reverse my approach, climbing back up towards Shoshone Point through the Supai and drop back down on the west side of the saddle between Newton and the rim, OR traverse the Redwall around Newton to the north. Since the top of the Redwall tends to be one of the flatter layers and adding a few rounds of Supai scrambling could eat up a lot of time, I decided on the traverse. I reversed the route off Lyell Butte, dropping through the Supai to the top of the Redwall pretty quickly. Admittedly, the top of the Redwall was not as flat as it looked from above, with numerous small drainages to cross and a good amount of stiff brush and catclaw. But I made steady progress, particularly when crossing some of the longer arms jutting off of Newton Butte which held a good deal less brush.
Although I had hoped to get from the summit of Pattie from Lyell in 3 hours, the clouds parted and temperatures rose, dropping my speed. In addition, there were some deeper drainages that I needed to cross on the north side of Newton, nothing harder than class 2 but with some extra ups and downs that I wasn’t accounting for. So it was over 3 hours when I reached the base of Pattie Butte, the summit only a few hundred feet above.
I started up the talus slopes, sticking to the southwest face and working through the lower Supai bands with easy class 2. A little over halfway up was the crux of the day, a 20′ third class wide crack that breached the main cliff band. There were plenty of rocks wedged in the crack so crack climbing technique was not required, but it was quite steep.
From there I moved around to the northeast side, breaching a few final Supai bands up to the summit. It had only taken me about 20 minutes from the base, and I signed into the register, one of the last entries being from Carlos Danel who lugged a set of deer antlers to the top on his visit.
After a short break, I scrambled back down to the base, trying to scout on my line back to the base of the Coconino to get back to the rim. There were some huge Supai bands to the west of Newton Butte, although it look like there were some nice breaks heading directly up the ridge off Newton. So I stuck to that line, finding nice class 3 working up through the lower bands to the base of the main 40′ band just below the Newton-Rim saddle. This had some large overhanging spots, and I took shelter in one of the deeper caves out of the sun to recharge before the slog up to the rim.
Unfortunately I was running low on water, more than halfway through my third liter with the cached fourth at the base of the Coconino looking too far for comfort. I wasn’t in any real danger, there were actually a few pools of standing water from the recent storm if I was in a pinch. But I was definitely feeling the heat and dehydration as I scrambled through the final bit of class 3 and up to the saddle just south of Newton. I decided to take a direct line towards the rim, which results in a bit of unnecessary scrambling, with a few more pockets of Supai along the ridge that could have easily been avoided by staying to the right or left. It was about 3 PM when I made it back to my cached liter of water at the base of the Coconino, and I took a final break, drinking about half before starting the scramble back up to the rim. I more or less followed the same route, although took some minor variations here and there as I ascended back to the base of the Kaibab.
The final Kaibab layers were as loose as I remembered and I was feeling pretty worked when I topped out back onto the rim… directly into a wedding reception. A bride and groom were taking photos and I tried to slink away in the background, absolutely filthy and my pants tattered from catclaw and the rough rock. I quickly hiked past, heading down the road and passing a number of elk, including a large male with an impressive rack.
There were actually about 15 elk at the trailhead, making it a bit difficult to leave with cars stopping in the middle of the road for pictures of the large animals bugling in rut. I hopped in my car and quickly got past the tourists, heading back to Flagstaff for dinner and a visit with a few JMT friends.