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| Hiking | 9.26 Miles |
3,026 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.26 Miles | 8 Hrs 57 Mns | | 1.03 mph |
| 3,026 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | Warning... better grab a cup of coffee (or possibly a beer) and get comfy in your chair... and don't say I didn't warn you. 
With Liz and Curtis as my search-mates for the day we took a jaunt out to Sheep Mountain summit. Ok, so Curtis stayed a 1/4 mile back from the summit for some rappelling to the north. Unfortunately we found no trace of Joe but new ground was covered today. I can't take much credit for searching new areas, because 98% of the new ground was courtesy of Liz and Curtis. Great job HAZ'ers! 
Before getting into all the fun (and some less so) details I'll provide a quick summary of the new ground covered:
- Curtis rappelled down as far as his rope would take him from a "landing"some distance down from a bump in the ridge line about .25 miles ENE from Sheep summit, scanning some distance below.
Great job Curtis!  
- Liz dropped down in a northwesterly direction from the summit some distance, then circled around to the south before returning up to the summit.
- I simply wandered  around the edges of the summit taking some photos and scanning down in a semi-circle starting from the north all around to the east side.
And the epitome begins... huh?? How about epic tome?
It's 8 am sharp when we hit trail with great searching weather... no heavy weather on the horizon, boding us well for the day. The climb was uneventful... well, for me anyway. Liz & Curtis may beg to differ, probably due to what some might characterize as incessant chattering on my part. 
It wasn't long into our zigzagging up the east side of Mt Peeley before I began to wonder if I should have dispensed with at least one less layer of clothing for this part, but with the gusts of of chilly wind maybe I was ok as is. Hardly... by time we swung around to the north my upper body was soaked through to the skin with sweat, but at least I was still warm. Unlike last Thursday when I froze my hands with wet gloves, today I wore neoprene gloves that were so warm my hands were soaking from sweat... but they were warm!
As we came to the point where many hikers turn left off the trail to head toward the summit of Mount Peeley, we found the Mazatzal Wilderness sign laying on a rock pile. We stopped a moment while Curtis & I remodeled the rock pile so as to hold the sign vertically again. Once it was up we noticed hand written instructions on the back of how to get to the summit. If I recall (I neglected to take photo) the last phrase said "start slogging!" 
Once the sign was back in its glory again and we were on our way, it wasn't long before we left the Mazatzal Divide Trail to head west our quest toward Sheep Mountain. We continued along on terrain that provided a variety of conditions, none very taxing compared to the earlier zigzagging climb. "Over hill, over dale, we have hit the dusty trail" ok, not dusty (thankfully) "As the caissons go rolling along..." Ok, ok, as the hikers kept slogging along. With Liz our trail master, we kept up a good pace and by following in her footsteps (for the most part) and taking it one step at-a-time I hardly noticed as we racked up the distance. We literally did go over hill and over dale along the spine toward the summit of Sheep. We took photos and Liz was dropping way points along the ridge.
About 1/4 mile before we got to Sheep Mountain, on one of the last bumps on the spine that jutted a bit north, perpendicular to the spine, Curtis set off downward with the intention of getting down 2 or 3 "landings" with the immediate goal to scan over Joe's "last chance" track. Once he had done a quick recon he told us he would be fine and we should continue on. I believe Curtis dropped down from one small landing to the next, then rappelling down as far as his rope would take him (~80') onto the last big landing before the sheer drop of some 140' or so we thought based on Liz's mention of 9.8 meters per second, based on the length of time from when he dropped a rock until he heard it hit.... but it turns out it should be 9.8 meters per second squared!
Curtis, please take note here... although neither you nor I put up no argument at the time,
Liz was only half right.  I don't know about you, but that's a win for us in my book! 
If you don't like math or calculation of time/distance/stupidity problems, feel free to skip this next section... but go ahead and read it or you'll miss some of the fun 
So, here we go... Acceleration at 9.8 meters per second, per second means by 4 seconds the rock is already falling at 39.2 meters/second adding up to a total distance of 98 meters or 321.5'.
But wait a minute!! What about how long it takes the sound of the hit to reach back up to Curtis?? Ok, ok, let's see... the speed of sound travels at 322 meters per second at about 7,000 feet (at sea level it's faster at 340.29 m/s) and WOW! that's only 6" farther than our 4 second falling rock. So it takes a second to reach back to Curtis... that'll make it 5 seconds, adding another 9.8 m/s to the rate of fall which is already at 39.2 m/s for a new total fall of 147 meters or 482'.
But wait another minute! Now that it's fallen that much farther it will take another 1/10th of a second to hear it and the total.... HEY, ENOUGH already!!! It's close to 500' so how 'bout for sake of argument (who's arguing here?? )can we just say, it's one long way down?
(Did all that math give you a headache? ](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall") It sure gave me one! Of course as you'll see later, I already have a reason for a headache)
Let's move on and leave Curtis behind with his math for a while, shall we? 
Liz and I push on to the Sheep summit, winding our way around and over rocks as well as around and through Manzanita and other assorted brush. It's not anyhing near the slogging I went through last week in waypoint area F, but that's due to there have been enough hikers/searchers through here that one could relatively easily follow the "trail" without a GPS with some careful attention. As Curtis was busy rappelling down and we were halfway from him to the summit whether it was Liz or me that mentioned it first, we agreed we should have left one of my radios with Curtis.
Oh well, he's very capable and no sense crying over spilt milk and surely no turning back to remedy the situation, so we press on. On one of the rocky areas to climb over I managed to incur my only major owie of the trip. Liz had gone up some rocks relatively easily right before me, but by this time with my 60.667 year-old body having already accumulated 2,000' elevation gain for the day, I just couldn't hop up a rock like I may have earlier in the trip. So I grabbed a hold of a rock and lunged upward as I pulled myself up, only to whack my noggin' a pretty good one on an overhanging rock that managed to escape my notice.  (must be the mind failing after 60.667 years... or maybe just getting tired, or just weak-minded?)  It was a hard enough knock to rattle my teeth, give me a headache and leave a small red mark (Liz said "it's nothing")  and later the requisite bruise. Thankfully it was nothing close to a concussion and by the time me made the summit it was simply a minor annoyance, although enough to remember the trip by. 
We're at the summit!!!  ...within seconds of 12 noon so 4 hours on the dot since leaving the trail head... not bad! First thing, Liz heads over to the summit cairn to dig out the summit log while I begin to remove my thoroughly wet upper body layers, gloves and socks. The latter two holding the sweat in nicely (NOT!) thanks to being waterproof.
After we both signed the log we attended to our own admin work... me to call my girlfriend and let her know good old accident prone Mark made it to the summit in one piece and not to worry, Liz was doing a fine job of keeping me safe and sound (after all, the bump on the head did make a nice, resounding thump) and I saw no reason we wouldn't arrive safe and sound at the end of the day. Only problem was... no signal for my T-Mobile. So having some signal Liz let me try calling with her Blackberry. I tried twice but it came back with lost signal so I was about to give up. I picked up my cell and figured I'd compose a text and try sending if/when I did get a signal. By time I completed the text (I hate the stupid unintuitive) word feature!!) eureka, I had all the bars of a full signal and the text went through. While last week I had assumed my cell worked due to line-of-sight to the towers on Mount Ord, it turned out that was not true and my signal was coming from the southeast. As long as I was oriented just right I had a signal. After a text response from my gf I attemped to respond back to her but quickly gave up that fiasco (the old-man syndrome at work again?) and just called her. Because I can't stand still when talking on a phone, the signal kept cutting out until I realized hey, stand still! and I quickly completed the call, ending with I love you! so if perchance I didn't return, she could forever remember my last words.  Hey... so I'm a romantic... sue me.
Moving right along.... By this time Liz was ready to do some searching below the summit, heading off down the NW side about 200 feet to do some recon. While she dropped down I simply walked the circumference of the summit looking closely for any signs of disturbance, mainly toward the north and northwest. I found two areas where something of reasonable significance had fallen, leaving a fresh gash in the loose gravel, but with the rains in the last week and by the freshness of the scraped surface, I'd say it happened within the last day or two and likely was an animal. Still, it was much larger than something like a rabbit.
About a half-hour after Liz had dropped down I thought, hmm, I wonder where she is, and is she ok? I could no longer see her, so taking a few moment for a lull in the wind I yelled out to her but as it turned out, looking at her GPS track later, I was yelling in the opposite direction than where she was at that moment. Then I thought... We didn't bother to agree on which radio channel we would use if needed. No matter, because after wandering back to our stuff, I noticed the radio I gave her to use was sitting next to her pack. Another doh! I also noticed her camera in her yellow bag... which turned out to be to her chagrin upon returning. With some great photo opps she wished she had taken it with her. The final DOH! I'll take my share of the credit for the first two but Liz will have to take the last doh! all by her lonesome. 
Oh yeah, while I was waiting for Liz to complete her recon, I hung up all my laundry at the summit to dry out. Although it was a nice day and no rain, as I mentioned earlier, with all the effort to drag this old body up to this point, just everything but my pants were soaked through. The neoprene socks (worn under my Teva's) had so much perspiration in them there was a slight sloshing as I walked.  Not good! Since they weren't about to dry anytime soon and the terrain on the way out had not left such as one cut in the neoprene, I donned a pair of merino wool socks I had along for just this reason. After donning the now-dry shirts I felt great and was ready to hit the trail just about the time Liz made her grand appearance. Liz had done a semi-circle around below the summit of Sheep before climbing back up from the southeast some 50 minutes later. Nothing to report save a spot of something white on a rock on the first lower peak to the northwest. She did not see it until on her way around the circumference, but once she pointed it out to me on her return, we could not tell what it was. It almost seemed into the rock as though it was a thick band of white rock across the large rock. Whatever it was it did not seem to be a clue to finding Joe. Maybe another trip when there's longer daylight hours to go out and check it first-hand.
We set out from the summit at 1:30 on the way to link back up with Curtis who had been cooling his heels for some time. I had seen his brilliant red pack sitting upright about .2 mile to the east of the summit but with no means for two-way contact, there was little I could do to apprise him of the situation or how long before we would return... and of course I had no idea either with no commo link to Liz.  Once we linked up with Curtis again, he said he could hear all our conversation on the way over. Even at a normal level of conversation the wind brought it toward him, so I could have called out to him, but it would have made no difference because I couldn't hear his yells previously. Onward we go... Within one mile I didn't feel as comfortable as I'd like on some of the angled surfaces so I removed stopped and removed my wool socks and went the rest of the way with bare feet in the Teva's. It wasn't a hundred feet later and I thought, man! I should have gone with bare feet the whole time!
Nearing the Mazatzal Divide Trail again, Liz lead us on a short roundabout loop toward the north on the return trip, covering more new ground. Time's a-wastin' now and we wanted to return before the upcoming 5:17 pm sunset. Since Liz didn't want to be driving out the 8+ mile dirt road in pitch darkness, we pressed on. The rest of the return trip was as uneventful as the first part (yeah I know... the chatter) 
Success! We made it back to the TH exactly 20 minutes before sunset. Exactly 3 minutes under 9 hours, not bad for a full days' search! (9.26 miles and 3,026 AEG for me, Curtis may have been the same due to his rappel but no trip to the summit and I'm sure Liz could add on another 200+ feet) Again, all kudo's to Liz and Curtis. First Liz for leading the way, otherwise I likely wouldn't have done it on my own, and Curtis for bravely rappelling down for a closer look.
The aftermath... What?! There's more?!! Is this ever going to end?!!! 
Patience, Qwai Chang my child... don't say you weren't warned at the outset... EPIC TOME!**
**
Epic: Extending beyond the usual or ordinary especially in size or scope. (In particular, I love this Miriam-Webster example) "his genius was epic!"
Tome: A large or scholarly book[/] (Miriam-Webster)
Thus, an epic tome is a book bordering on the extreme in size, and in this case you'd likely agree, in scope as well. Showing off scholarly genius as well! What's that you say, a little over the top?? Ok, maybe scholarly genius in the manner of Homer Simpson.
Back to the aftermath... ALMOST done here... what good would writing such an epic novel be to leave out the last chapter??
Once home and washed up (as in showered, not [i]wiped out) I took an inventory of the bumps and bruises sustained. One pincushion spike still in one finger (by now pushed below the surface), the bruise on the forehead, a couple pokes by agave below the knees, a few bruises on the right thigh and a slight skinning of the left knee. I had absolutely no recollection of the last so it was a surprise to me. When I finally hit the bed I wondered if the endorphins that had taken full effect wouls leave me a physical wreck in the morning, and unable to get up and walk. As I lay still for a moment I thought my right ankle felt weird so I took a closer look and found it was swollen pretty good and balck-and-blue, yet I could move it without pain. It only hurt when I pressed on the bruise. Stop doing it if it hurts! When I thought back trying to figure out when and where I managed to bruise my ankle, I remembered bumping into and knocking over a large rock from the summit cairn and into my ankle, not once, but I had set it back and moments later did it again! Dang, the old man syndrome rears it's ugly head again. What can I say?
Wow! What a wake-up! I wake up, take quick stock of my aches and pains... once, twice, three times... and wonder of wonders, nothing but the pincushion in my left middle finger and pain from the bruise on my forehead... but only when pressing it... stop that!! With no other pain, I got up, rejoiced in how great I felt and thanked the good Lord for not only keeping me safe and sound (there may be some question just how sound my mind is) through the trek yesterday, but just as importantly leaving me practically pain-free and ready for another hike.
B'de, b'de, b'de... that's all folks!! You don't believe me?? I have nothing more to say, and that's the truth.   (Although again, Liz and Curtis may beg to differ on that) 
THE END! 
I posted 25 photos photos here on HAZ, 75 on my own web site:
http://www.changephoenix.com/10/2010-12-20GPSJoeSearch.html |
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