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| Hiking | 8.02 Miles |
2,950 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.02 Miles | 7 Hrs 28 Mns | | 1.30 mph |
| 2,950 ft AEG | 1 Hour 17 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | I have been wanting to do this hike for a while, and the weather looked good today so I decided to go for it.
El Capitan Mountain is south of Globe off of Highway 77. The summit is on BLM land, and is about 1/2 mile from the San Carlos Apache Reservation. El Capitan has an elevation of 6,560 feet and prominence of 1,808 feet. The latter number slots it in the 100 most prominent peak in AZ. But wait, there's more: El Capitan is also the highpoint of the Mescal Mountains.
As for the route to take, I started to pull a page out of the @FLYING_FLIVER playbook and take the route that surveyors used back in 1938. They had driven about 3.5 miles off of Highway 77 and then took a drainage from north of the summit to a ridge west of the summit, and then followed the ridgeline to the summit. I looked at their route and it looked like a steep and brushy climb up the drainage, so I opted to instead park further down on Highway 77 and approach the summit from the west.
I walked a road for about 1.75 miles and than made a crazy steep ascent for about 1/2 mile(gaining 700 feet of elevation) that took me close to a ridgeline from the west of El Capitan. I stayed below the ridgeline most of the way to El Capitan, and then climbed up to the summit. It was not a bad traverse, but the terrain was rough and rocky, and had very little flat ground. On the other hand, it looked like there had been a recent fire (perhaps this was part of the Telegraph Fire??) and there was very little brushy vegetation left, which basically eliminated any bushwhacking on the entire hike.
At the summit, I located the "Pioneer" benchmark and both reference marks, but I did not see a summit register log. Views were great at the summit, so I hung out there for a while. It was cool to be able to sit and see the Pinals, turn to the right and see Mount Baldy, and then turn to the left and see Mount Graham.
I enjoyed the hike and was glad to do it, but the terrain made the going fairly slow. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
There was a good bit of Gooding's Verbena along the way, but not much else. |
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| Civilization is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there |
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