Grand Canyon Summit Report - Battleship - Good First Summit
Early August in Flagstaff usually means one thing if you're planning a Grand Canyon trip: heat. The inner canyon in August is brutal, so most of the time we're looking at rim hikes or early alpine starts somewhere higher up. But this year the monsoon had other plans. Alan checked the forecast and saw something we don't see often for this time of year, a cool, wet system was rolling through with highs only in the 70s. Getting some Canyon action in August is rare, but when the stars align you gotta go!
The original plan was to hit a summit off FR328, but after looking at the road conditions and thinking about how greasy that clay gets when it's wet, we bailed on that idea as we saw how muddy some of the side roads were. Our backup was Battleship, a formation just off Bright Angel Trail that a couple of us had done before. It's a great first summit for anyone looking for an easy to get to and climb GC formation.
We left Flagstaff at 6am, got to the parking lot, and were hiking by 9. The temperature at that point was around 70 and cloudy, which felt great walking into the canyon.
Battleship sits just past the 1.5 mile rest house. There's a switchback where you can see the point to break off Bright Angel and start sidling along a a dirt/rock slope in the Coconino. You follow that for about a mile until you land at the base of the formation. We dropped our packs there and took a snack break. While we sat there, a swarm of maybe 100 swallows came whipping past overhead, diving and cutting through the air right above us. Very cool to just sit back, watch and listen for a minute.
From the base, the route works around to the east side of the formation, then north, looking for a break in the Coconino that gets you up to the next shelf. Once you're on that shelf, you work back south until you hit a block column that forms a crack you can stem up. The stem is solid the whole way, no exposure, which makes the whole move feel pretty relaxed even though you're working your way up rock. A bit more light scrambling after that and you're on top.
The summit view is what you'd expect, wide open canyon in every direction, the kind of perspective you only get from being inside it rather than looking down from the rim. We didn't get to enjoy it for long though. The clouds that had been building all morning started moving in fast, and it wasn't long before it started raining on us at the summit.
With wet sandstone, downclimbing the crack didn't sound appealing, so we moved quickly, grabbed our packs at the base, and started heading out. On the way back we ended up on a slightly different sidle line that popped us out lower on Bright Angel than where we'd left the main trail.
That's when the real storm hit. Wind picked up hard and the rain went from steady to heavy on the climb out. A lot of people on the trail were clearly not prepared for it, just standing off to the side getting soaked with no rain gear. We pushed through, made it to the top, poked around Kolb Studio for a bit, changed into dry clothes, and drove home.
All in, just under 7 miles with about 2200 feet of vert. Not a huge day mileage wise, but a fun one, and a good reminder that keeping an eye on the forecast can turn a normally miserable August canyon day into one of the better hikes of the year.
If you're looking for a great introduction to summits in the Canyon I would recommend this as the first one you log!