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| Music Mountain via Tortilla Pass Trailhead, AZ | |
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| | Music Mountain via Tortilla Pass Trailhead, AZ | | | |
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Music Mountain via Tortilla Pass Trailhead, AZ
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| Hiking | 14.43 Miles |
2,279 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.43 Miles | 9 Hrs 14 Mns | | 1.93 mph |
| 2,279 ft AEG | 1 Hour 45 Mns Break | | | |
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| Partners |
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[ show ]
| partners | | I hiked part of Trap Canyon a few weeks ago and wanted to check out Music Mountain just to the north, so we decided to hike in from Tortilla Pass Trailhead. We had a nice sunrise on the drive along SR 88 past Canyon Lake and Tortilla Flat. Any thoughts we might have had about driving Service Road 213 to start the hike directly at Peter's Trail were quickly abandoned when we saw how rough it was...I imagine all but the highest clearance 4x4s would have problems on the first few tenths of a mile on 213. It's not as rough after that, but the early part is very rocky and uneven.
We'd planned to hike the road anyway, and that part was fast hiking toward Tortilla Ranch. There's not much left to see there--some old fences/corrals, water troughs, metal posts, and a concrete foundation. We turned onto Peter's Trail and started following the creek bed. It's a beautiful area in the canyon, with some balancing rocks and natural windows up above. We saw a few remaining cairns spray painted red that @ScottHika mentioned in his 5/15/21 triplog. He'd removed almost all of them, and I tossed the few remaining ones that I saw out of sight off the trail. There was very little water in the creek bed, just one or two stagnant pools along the route.
Once we were back out of the creek bed, there was a fair amount of catclaw along the trail. I clipped a lot of out it out of the way when going around it wasn't an option, and it was even worse on the off-trail portion of the hike after we left #105 to head toward the northeast side of Music Mountain. Dodging and clipping the catclaw slowed the pace, though it was a little easier to avoid one we started the final scent to the top, with a lot more exposed rock to climb on where we could avoid the brush.
The ascent up Music Mountain was steep but manageable, and I found a single, random pot sherd on the slope but didn't see any others in the area. With the slower pace on the off-trail portion, we were approaching our turnaround time, and my partner stayed behind while I continued up to the top. The views of 5057, Weaver's Needle, the ridgeline, and Tortilla Mountain were fantastic. The mountaintop is very flat, so it took a little wandering to find the summit cairn and register.
[ youtube video ]
The small jar had some old pages sealed in a Ziploc that looked like they had water damage and were almost illegible, and there was a small pencil from a law firm that was shaped like a gavel with a double eraser...never seen one of those before. The jar had a few new sheets inside that FOTG and Jordyn placed on 2/28/21. The only signatures on the new pages were theirs and Scott's from 5/15/21, and I added my entry and took a few pictures around the top. With my partner still waiting below, I didn't take the time to explore further south to get better views of Trap Canyon and Herman Mountain like I'd hoped.
I headed back down, and we battled the catclaw back to Peter's Trail and resumed the hike out. The afternoon shadows were nice, and we stopped for a late lunch on the foundation at Tortilla Ranch before finishing off the hike. I'd zoomed in on a few caves throughout the day, and looking at the pictures later, I noticed that one short cave may have some cliff dwelling walls that I'll have to explore next time I'm out there. The temperature was very comfortable today, and the only other people we saw were two people with a few dogs walking back to the parking lot along 213 ahead of us as we finished the hike. The area around Music Mountain is a very beautiful part of the Superstitions, and I hope to get back there soon to do more hiking. |
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