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| Hiking | 10.89 Miles |
2,252 AEG |
| | Hiking | 10.89 Miles | 7 Hrs 3 Mns | | 1.80 mph |
| 2,252 ft AEG | 1 Hour 1 Min Break | | | |
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| partners | | I decided to head west of town to the Eagletails to go arch hunting and also to climb Eagle 3186.
I came in from the NW on an unmarked forest road that I don't think was YE029, but it might have been. The road was in decent shape, although you needed high clearance to cross a few washes. I was in 4WD mode, but I probably didn't need it.
I inadvertently drove in past the wilderness boundary. There was no signage at the boundary, so I wound up driving 1/4 mile or more past where I think that the boundary is. I guess that I should have driven back, but I decided just to park where I was. I wasn't 100% sure where the boundary was, but when I got home I looked and saw that I had indeed driven a short distance past the boundary. It was strange that there wasn't a sign or something on the road at the boundary.
We walked on the road past the Triple Eye Arch and continued to the Eagle Eye Water Catchment. Then we went to an arch and stopped for a break in the arch.
We then went cross country and then along a drainage to a ridgeline NW of Eagle 3186. From there we had to drop steeply into a ravine and then make a steep ascent on the other side of the ravine to near the summit block. Fortunately the descent into the ravine and the climb out of it was not as bad as it looked.
Once near the summit block we stopped at a rock outcropping that had 4 arches in it. Then we made the fun scramble up to the summit, some of which I would call class 3. However, it was on good grippy rock and there was very minimal, if any, exposure if you picked a good route.
There were great views at the summit, so there was a good payoff for the effort to get there.
We made our way back to the ravine the way that we came up, but then took a more direct route back, skipping the water catchment on the way back. It wasn't a great route, but it wasn't terrible either. We were in a couple of drainages/washes, one of which that had some pools of water in it. This drainage was fine to hike through for a while, but then we got to a point with some droppoffs, so we had to backtrack a short distance and go around it.
On the way back we went across the desert floor to below the Triple Eye Arch, in order to get a better view of the arches. If we had more time and energy we would have climbed up closer to the arches, but that will have to wait for another day.
We didn't see any large mammals unfortunately.
The weather was nice for the hike. It was in the 30's early on, but it was sunny with no wind, so it felt much warmer than that. It got up to around 60 on the way back, which would have been a bit too warm in the full sun, but there was a nice breeze blowing in our face on the way back which helped keep it cool.
Synopsis
This wasn't the greatest hike ever but it had its moments. We saw at least 10-12 arches, which was pretty cool. I really enjoyed the climb up on the summit block, but there was a lot of up-and-down on the hike to get to get to that point. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
There were some brittlebush blooming here and there, but that was it. |
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Triple Eye Catchment |
76-100% full |
76-100% full |
| | | The smaller guzzler below the catchment was full, while the catchment itself did not look quite full | | _____________________
| Civilization is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there |
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