Elephant Butte

Elephant Butte (5,653 ft) – Highpoint of Arches National Park

Katie just before the rappel on the ascent, with the summit in the background

Eric and Katie

March 26, 2015

Elephant Butte is one of the few technical National Park Highpoints in the lower 48 states, and is the first peak I’ve climbed that requires rappelling on the *ascent*. Katie and I had driven from Seattle down to Utah for spring break, and our primary goal was to get a lot of climbing in at Indian Creek. But we needed to take a few rest days from climbing, so used those to tag some national park highpoints in the area.

On March 26 we drove into Arches National Park and parked at the pulloff between Harn Rock and Elephant Butte. We packed up a 60m rope, harnesses, and a light rock rack and started hiking. There’s no real trail, but we aimed for the butte and hiked through a small NE-trending canyon almost due west of the summit.

Starting the climb

The canyon narrowed and we were forced to scramble up a small headwall, then turn right as the canyon wrapped around. More scrambling led to a short steep section that would probably be rated low 5th class. I put the rope on, placed one red cam on the way up, then reached a large flat area and body belayed Katie up.

From there we kept scrambling southeast until the canyon ended overlooking a big cliff. There were a few climbers in front of us here rapping down to the floor below. There was a good mult-piton anchor in the sandstone and we soon made the rappel down to the floor as well.

From there we went up the canyon a bit, then scrambled easy ledges to the right to reach the summit. The summit was very flat, and it appeared there would be an easier ascent route from the north, but I’m not certain.

For the descent we took a different route than the ascent. We scrambled down due west down a different canyon that ended in a cliff. On the wall to our right was a 4-piton anchor we used to rap down to the bottom. From there the terrain opened back up to the desert, and we hiked back to our car. It was a complicated but very fun route.

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