Battleship Mountain....Almost

I talked my wife and daughter into the 12 mile Battleship Mountain hike in the Superstition Wilderness.  Five miles of kind of boring hiking but the last one mile, just awesome.  The question, could they make it to the mountain and if so, could they pass the gauntlet of challenges on top of the mountain?  We shove off from First Water trail head, kind of rolling, enter "Garden Valley" which is flat, descend a very rocky trail to....

...a point where we get almost a full view of Battleship.  Not the distant ridge but the shape in front of it.  We entered....

....this boulder strewn wash and boulder hopped to the point where you exit the wash, walk off trail up a steep slope, gain a ridge and walk up to the base of the mountain where.....

...my daughter and wife poop out on me!  They complained it was boring and it is, to that point.  It's analogous to walking all the stairs to the top of the Empire State building and just before opening the door to the observatory platform, turning around and walking back down and complaining the view sucked. I pleaded with them but all they wanted to do was head back and get ready to visit the new shopping mall.  Defeated, I got permission to scramble the wall to get on top of the stern of the "ship" where....

....I could see the summit, about 1/2 a mile away.  So close and even this high quality image doesn't touch the magnitude of the view and what lies ahead. 

To the right is the magnificent view of Labarge Canyon.  It too is awesome.  I carefully scrambled back down the wall, rejoined my family and headed back, finishing with 10.3 miles.  Groan.....