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| Hiking | 7.37 Miles |
1,706 AEG |
| | Hiking | 7.37 Miles | 4 Hrs | | 1.84 mph |
| 1,706 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Decided to try a hike in an area I haven't been to since the Spring and an area that Brian hasn't ever hiked in. Kunde mountain seemed to be a good choice for today. We arrived around 10 am and parked in a lot off Harshaw Rd called the Harshaw road trailhead. This is the start of a connector trail that leads to the Arizona trail which is a few miles away. We saw only 1 vehicle in the parking lot. We started the hike and did an uphill climb for the first 1.3 miles, which was steep at times and rocky at times. There were 2 gates to go through in the first 1.5 miles or so. The trail was pretty well maintained except for a few areas that had catclaw bush near the trail and in some area there were thorny branches that grew into the trail. After 2.05 miles, we could see Kunde mountain to the North and decided to get off the trail and head in that direction. A map at the trailhead showed some kind of dotted brown line which was supposed to be a primitive dirt road. We didn't see anything like this running into the connector trail, but we did run into an old dirt road in the lower part of the open Country walk up to Kunde peak. Once we hit the road we basically followed it all the way to the top and we were surprised that the road went all the way up. I brought a pair of hand shears and did some trimming of thorny branches from trees that were growing right on the road and there were MANY. This is why my elapsed time was so long. This trimming made the hike much easier on the way down.
Near the upper part of the road we saw some pinyon pine, and some interesting red colored rocks. At the summit, we had good views of Red mountain lookout and a lower unmarked peak to the West. We had a long lunch here and admired the views in all directions. The temps were nice and comfortable. Looking North we could see some private property in Redrock canyon, which we later learned was part of Redrock ranch. After a while we decided to head out and decided to take the old mining road all the way to the bottom. After passing the location where we picked up the road on the way up, we kept following the road and ran into a barbed wire fence going right across the road. We had to crawl under this fence to continue on the old road. I did some more trimming in this area for future hikers. Eventually, the road fizzled out and looked more like trail with a few cairns continuing down the slope. Eventually I found myself on top of a small ridge with canyons/washes on both sides of me. It was hard to tell if I was on an old road of not but there were wider clearings in many places so that indicated that this could have been an old road in the past. I kept moving forward and ended up hitting the main trail very close to where we left it hours earlier. I believe our route going down was slightly better than our route going up. Then, we took the main trail back to the parking area.
After finishing, we still had enough daylight to drive around and explore the area more. We drove past North Saddle and Indian Head mountains which both looked they involved a steep climb through rugged terrain. There was private property to the West of those peaks with a barbed wire fence line, but after driving about 1/4 to 1/2 mile South we didn't see any private property signs so we thought this might be a good place to start a hike toward these peaks someday. Probably the next peak we would do in this range is Saddle peak which was a few miles South.
Stats:
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Distance (round trip) = 7.37 miles
AEG = 1,706 feet
Strava moving time = 3 hrs 20 mins
Strava elapsed time = 6 hrs 41 mins |
| _____________________
Michael Williams
IT Professional
Rocky Point Vacation Rentals
Ocean Front Condo in Rocky Point, Sonora, Mexico
www.beachfrontmexico.us
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