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| Hiking | 9.95 Miles |
3,007 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.95 Miles | 8 Hrs 14 Mns | | 1.48 mph |
| 3,007 ft AEG | 1 Hour 31 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | This was another off-the-grid hike, this time to the East Antelope 2 Benchmark (elevation of 6,400 feet and prominence of 1,520 feet). This peak is in the Weaver Mountains, and is a few miles east of the town of Yarnell.
We had no beta at all on the hike, and I wasn't certain if it would work, but things turned out pretty good overall. I could only find 3 previous recorded ascents of the East Antelope 2 Benchmark, although it is likely that there have been more than that; however, I think that it is safe to say that this peak is not popular with the corporate social media crowd.
Access to a good starting point was better than expected, although with a little more planning and research we could likely have driven further and cut off at least 2 miles of road walking each way.
The route for the hike was straightforward: Hike on a road for 3 miles and then follow a ridgeline for 2 miles to the summit. If only it was that simple.
The road walk was easy enough. It led us along Antelope Creek, and toward the end of this portion of the hike there was a lot of trash, apparently from someone camping or living there at one time: blankets, sleeping bags, and all sorts of stuff.
Once the road ended we could have continued through a drainage, but it was choked with thick vegetation; so instead we went a short distance to a ridgeline and followed it to the summit.
From a distance hiking along the ridgeline looked easy enough, but looks can be deceiving. Once we started along the ridgeline it was much more brushy than it looked from a distance. It was mostly shrub live oak, but there was other stuff as well. Thankfully there was no catclaw or New Mexico locust. In addition to the brush there were some rock outcroppings, boulder fields, loose terrain, and other obstacles. We probably gained 1,800 feet in elevation over the 2 miles, with 1,500 feet of the gain coming in the first 1.5 miles.
I saw one colubridae and got buzzed again by the Route Scout viper (crotalus hazerus)!
You can count on drawing some blood on this hike. I had some scrapes, scratches, cactus spines, a banged up elbow, a tip on my trekking pole that came off, and the mouthpiece on my bite valve that got snagged off in some brush somewhere along the way.
At the summit I located the benchmark, which was stamped "East Antelope 2". However, I was not able to locate either reference mark, which were covered up by the thick brush at the summit.
In spite of the obstacles and perils, I enjoyed the hike -- there were nice views along the way (the vegetation wasn't high enough to block the views) and there was a decent wildflower show. The going was slow on the ridgeline though, and it wasn't much faster going down than it was going up.
Synopsis
This was a fairly tough hike that is not for everybody. For me it is a much better wintertime hike -- the temperature was in the upper 70's when we got back to the TH, which along with full sun exposure made for a warm hike. I thought that the hike was tougher than the Mount Wrightson hike that I did the day before, even though Wrightson was 2 miles longer with over 1,000 more feet of AEG. |
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Wildflowers Observation Moderate
There was a decent showing of wildflowers. Indian paintbrush, goodings verbena, globemallow, and desert/mojave ceanothus stand out the most in my memory banks. |
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| _____________________
| Civilization is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there |
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