Whites Butte 4860′ and Marsh Butte 4721′
Grand Canyon National Park
Total Time: 16:09
Distance: 23.4
Elevation Gain: 9150′
Crux: Class 4
Pitches: 1
Companions: Carlos Danel
Trailhead: Hermits Rest, full services
I have not done many Redwall summits in the canyon. Although multiple summits had involved crossing through the layer at some point along the route, Cheops Pyramid and Plateau were the only two that came to mind where the Redwall was the final obstacle that defined the summit rocks. To be honest, Marsh Butte hadn’t really been on my radar until Carlos suggest we try and add it on with Whites Butte, which would need to be directly passed for a summit attempt of Marsh. A brief look at the stats made it seem tough but doable- mileage in the mid 20s and below 10k of elevation gain, less than Brahma or Zoroaster in a day. But I hadn’t done anything close to that since breaking my ankle, and pulling it off would be a real test in how far my stamina had fallen in a year. I slept outside of Tusayan the night before and awoke at 4 AM, arriving at the Hermits Rest trailhead by 5. Carlos met me about 15 minutes later, and after a bit of gear organization we were off. A storm had rolled through Northern AZ a few days prior, but nearly all of it had melted with only a single patch of ice to cross as we dropped off the rim into the darkness. The early miles went fast as we dropped through the Kaibab and Coconino, descending nearly 1,500′ in under two miles. I would be cursing every step on the return, again in darkness. We passed a number of junctions early on- the Hobart trail, the Hermit Trail leading to Cope Butte, and the Dripping Springs trail all within a mile of one another. The path narrowed to single track as we started on the Boucher Trail and miles of traverse above the Supai. Partway through this relatively flat section of trail the sun came up, and we ditched our headlamps as we rounded the trail beneath Yuma Point.
The low sun illuminated both Whites Butte and Marsh Butte, our first view of the days objectives. I was hoping Marsh Butte would look a little closer than it did. And a little less vertical. The trail finally began to drop through the Supai in the last bay before Whites Butte, dropping us down to just above the Redwall with easy hiking to Whites Saddle.
The route up Whites climbed the south slopes more or less directly, traversing on the east side for the first major Supai band and working up weakness on the southwest slopes for the upper bands. We were quickly at the summit, taking less than 15 minutes from the saddle. Despite being on of the easiest canyon summits there was no summit register, and I left one of Art Christiansen’s copper registers before we dropped off the summit back to the saddle.
It wasn’t even 9 AM, and we certainly had the daylight to make a push for Marsh Butte, although it looked even harder from the summit of Whites, the east face looking just as loose and vertical. The next section of the Boucher Trail is what gives it its’ daunting reputation, a steep knee pounding descent through the Redwall all the way down to Boucher Creek, quickly loosing another 2000′ of elevation. This would be the first of four trips through the Redwall for the day, and I was a bit surprised that it really didn’t seem that horrible.
It was difficult to appreciate how far past the Redwall we needed to descend from above, both of us assuming we would traverse the Bright Angel Shale all the way to Marsh. In reality the trail dropped through the Tapeats and reach Boucher Creek only a few 100′ above the level of the Colorado River.
We took our second break here, filling our water in the creek. The continuation of the trail was a bit nebulous at Boucher, and we rock hopped downstream trying to follow cairns when we could. I was enjoying the rock hopping and being around water in the canyon that I blew past the turn off to climb back up through the Tapeats to the base of Marsh Butte. We both recognized the mistake when the views of some summits north of the Colorado opened up, and we walked 5 minutes back up stream to find the cairns hidden upslope. The switchbacks up through the Tapeats were ill defined but the trail materialized once we were back on the Bright Angel Shale with Marsh Butte towering directly overhead and suddenly looking a bit more possible.
What looked vertical from afar had turned into a series of ledges and gullies, and we tried to match the face with our beta before trudging up the talus to the base of the Redwall. While the cross country was quite easy down low, it became significantly looser as we passed through the short layer of Muav limestone and I was sucking wind when we hit the Redwall.
Some easy class 3 scrambling brought us up a few more ledges and we identified the 25′ detached pinnacle the marked the start of the class 4 climbing.
We had brought along a half rope and small rack of cams, and Carlos took the honors of leading as I was trying to catch my breath. There were three options from the detached pinnacle to climb, directly up being the most difficult. A crack led left- I would later spot a piton suggesting that this was the standard line. Carlos led out right, and immediately commented that he was glad to have brought the rack, even if the placements in the crumbling rock were not the most inspiring. After about 20′ of climbing he cut back to the left and found the rap station about 60′ up made of two ancient tricams and a chokestone wrapped in cord- one that we could very easily move. He built an anchor at the rap station and I followed, cleaning the lowest cam before taking the left line past the piton. Typical sandbagged Grand Canyon with fixed pitons and rap stations on a “class 4” route! When I reached Carlos, I continued past out left on an extremely exposed and loose ramp. Although I was basically walking, a fall here would be fatal and I was glad for the belay. I built an anchor at a small tree and brought up Carlos, the two of us agreeing to set a belay when it came time to reverse this portion on the descent.
There were some cairns on the slopes above, and we started to weave up rock ledges following them as best we could. About 50′ up from the tree belay was a steep and loose wall. I started up and the climbing quickly became fourth, then low fifth class. I stopped when I reached a band of completely rotten quartz cutting across the rock face, with every rock I touched pulling off the mountain in my hands. I paused here, and Carlos climbed a slightly different line to my left, having a bit more success but still needing to climb through the rotten band of quartz, pulling off loose rock himself.
“Anything you can build an anchor off of?” I yelled up.
“Uh, not really…” he said, looking around on the large ledge above.
I really wasn’t feeling the unroped fifth class choss, and downclimbed to look for another option. Although a cairn had led us up these ledges, I spotted another one down around a corner to the right. I followed this and found a comparatively easy and secure class 3 chimney that I quickly worked up, putting me on a talus slope about 10′ below Carlos.
Reunited, we moved onto the ridgeline proper, following it fairly directly and dropping down and around obstacles when required. Although it felt very exposed nearly to the top, that scrambling was never very difficult and there were usually talus ledges not far below.
Several hundred feet of ridgeline scrambling brought us to the summit plateau, with the cap rock 100 yards to the west. We crossed a short and easy notch in the plateau and hiked around to the summit rocks, reaching the top before 1 PM. Considering I had almost turned back at the band of rotten quartz, I was excited to have topped out and in decent time. We had a straight shot down the Colorado River from the summit, with Vishnu, Wotan’s Throne in the distance and the smaller summits of O’Neill and the Battleship a it closer. North of the Colorado was Shiva Temple, the Dragon and Dragon’s Head and dual summits of Confucius and Mencius Temples. To the west was fairly uncharted territory for me, the closest summits including Geikie Peak and Scylla Butte. Above us on the South rim was Diana and Vesta Temple.
The view was so fantastic, it was tough to leave. Looking at the rim towards Hermits Rest made me want to leave even less. We recrossed the notch along the summit plateau and started scrambling back down the ridgeline, making sure we didn’t overshoot our turnoff for the class 3 gully to avoid the rotten quartz.
I knocked down the cairn below the ledges leading to the rotten rock, and we moved back down to the where Carl could belay me across the exposed ramp to the tricam anchors. I added a fresh sling to the carabiner anchors, and backed up the old tricams with two cams, which Carl would remove if the tricams held my weight. They did, and Carl joined me at the notch to collect the rest of our gear for the hike down.
Dropping through the Muav limestone and Bright Angel shale was much easier on the descent, and we were able to partially boot ski our way back down to the Boucher Trail.
We took one final long break to refill our waters at Boucher Creek before beginning our final climb up through the Redwall, the portion of the day I was probably dreading the most. Climbing above the Bright Angel Shale, we briefly missed our turn off and continued on the Tonto, but quickly realized our mistake and retraced our steps to continue up the Redwall. Although grueling and certainly slow, I was happy to make it to back to Whites saddle without feeling completely gassed.
Looking up at Whites Butte, we were both happy to have climbed it on the way in and didn’t need to worry about it on the hike out. My goal now was to get through the Supai ascent before the sun set. I hadn’t appreciated how long or steep this section was when I had fresh legs in the morning, and I started to bonk as we ascended the red layers of rock. The sun set shortly after we broke above the Supai bands, and we threw on some layers with the temperature dropping fast.
We needed headlamps within a half mile of where we shut them off in the morning, and the traverse across the Supai seemed to never end. We took one short break at the junction with Dripping Springs before our final ascent up through the Coconino and Kaibab. I hit a wall the second half of the switchbacks and needed to pause every 20 minutes for a short breather, finally topping out on the rim 16 hours from the start. Not my longest day in the canyon by any stretch, but certainly one of the toughest in a long time and certainly since my accident. Carlos and I parted ways and I grabbed food in Tusayan before driving all the way back to Phoenix, arriving at 1 AM and getting up at 6:30 for work the next day.