Trip report
Mar 18, 2019 — This great loop hits some of the highlights in theMount Nutt Wilderness near Oatman, AZ. I wanted to plan a route to bag a few peaks as a loop around the ridgeline, while avoiding reported brushiness within Cottonwood Canyon. There is very little information about this area, and the four peaks I summited (Battleship Mountain, Mount Nutt, Nutt Benchmark, and Peak 4975) only had a handful of signatures in the summit registers, so I went about this route a bit blind. It worked wonderfully. Note: Don't confuse this Battleship Mountain with the more popular one in the Superstition Mountains.
Starting from a terrible dirt road off a really good dirt road (I made it a short distance before stopping, but better vehicles can definitely make it farther), head into Cottonwood Canyon, passing a few pools that were flowing during my visit. First up for me was Battleship Mountain since the route from Battleship to Mount Nutt sseemed the most dubious. Locate a gully on the left once the canyon starts to get interesting and follow it to the base of a 30 foot Class 3 dryfall, beta compliments of Adam Walker. You might be able to head around the right side of it to avoid the scramble, but the dryfall is actually quite a bit of fun. From here, work up a gully with a Class 2+ moves serving as obstacles. You'll get to the east ridge of Battleship Mountain, where you can either pull a single Class 3 move, or just skirt the south side of the ridge to keep the rest at Class 2. The summit has great views, especially of the route I still had coming for me.
From Battleship Mountain, head northeast, skipping the ridge crest for the majority of the route to avoid sheer cliffs. Peak 4100 serves more as an obstacle along the way, but it's another peak along the ridge. I ran into a family of wild burros. One kept honking at me, somewhat aggressively. I got a little freaked, but it continued on its way. If you don't see any wild burros, consider yourself unlucky. I saw at least a dozen of them throughout the day, and used their trails to help me route-find for a large portion. It's hard to describe my route, but I'd recommend just looking at my map and keeping to the north side of the beautiful buttes on slopes and animal trails.
I eventually got to the base of Mount Nutt from the west. I could see a couple of potential weaknesses on its western face (Class 3/4?), but I was more inclined to attempt a half-circle around its northern slopes, since this had been the trend for all the buttes so far for the day. Fortunately, this worked out and led to a Class 2 gully up to the northern ridgeline. I head south to Mount Nutt, and then back north along the ridge crest on flat, unique desert up to Nutt Benchmark, the high point. Absolutely incredible views of the route I came from and still had to go, and of the interesting rock features and wildflowers to the north.
Continue south down a Class 2 ridge to the saddle with Peak 4975. I went around its east side and worked up Class 2+ cliff bands to the black volanic rock summit, then slid down the Class 2 northwest slope. I eventually located a burro trail that led safely along the top of a major cliff band to flat ground to the southwest, where I then head down a drainage that I thought could bring me back into Cottonwood Canyon to complete the loop. I encountered a single impassable dryfall that I could fortunately bypass to the south, and although the canyon bed was brushy, an animal trail serendipitously leads safely parallel to it on the north side of the canyon. And then, I passed through a really gorgeous bit of flowing water, complete with white and pink bedrock and a short section of narrows. It made any small aggravation coming down the canyon more than worth it. The gully eventually opens up into Cottonwood Canyon, roughly where I left to go up to Battleship Mountain that morning.