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| Peak 6444 - High and Lonesome, AZ | |
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| | Peak 6444 - High and Lonesome, AZ | | | |
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Peak 6444 - High and Lonesome, AZ
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| Hiking | 3.20 Miles |
1,278 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.20 Miles | 4 Hrs 15 Mns | | 0.91 mph |
| 1,278 ft AEG | 44 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This was a hike to the summit of Peak 6444, which is in the Gila Mountains in Graham County. If you guessed that the elevation of this peak is 6,444 feet you would be correct. If you have read many of my triplogs you might also guess that this peak has 1,000+ feet of prominence. In that case, you would once again be correct: this peak has 1,004 feet of prominence, giving it 4 extra feet above the magical 1,000 foot threshhold.
If you wonder why this triplog includes "high and lonesome" in the title, it is because the benchmark at the summit is stamped "Hi Lonsum". I am not sure what the story is behind that, so I'll just guess that the surveyors had a good sense of humor!
I thought that the bridge across the Gila River from Fort Thomas was washed out, so I started the drive in from the town of Pima. It was about 17 miles to get to Day Mine Road, which I drove for 10.5 miles to my trailhead. Surprisingly, Day Mine Road was well graded but I would still recommend 4WD due to some steep hills and a couple of rough spots. On the way out I decided to check out the bridge over the Gila River and it was fortunately open. It is only about a mile from Day Mine Road to Highway 70 when going this route.
I parked just off Day Mine Road on a lesser road, and hiked almost a mile on this lesser road to a saddle. I had no beta on this hike, and I had planned to hike on a ridgeline from the NNW, but as von Moltke once said, "battle plans never survive first contact with the enemy". This ridgeline had some imposing cliffs, pinnacles, and gendarmes on it, so it turned out not to be a viable route.
From the saddle I wound up traversing below the cliff bands, going through some sometimes thick brush and doing a bit of rock scrambling. I made my way to the upper part of a gully, and went up the gully. I got to some imposing, vertical cliffs and I was beginning to think that getting to the summit was not going to be doable. I decided to go ahead and continue below the cliffs in hopes of finding a way up. I spent a lot of time investigating some routes up -- 2-3 times I found a way that would be doable for a lot of people, but it had more exposure than I was wanting. I was about to call it, but then decided to go around a rock outcropping and take a look once I got around it. Voila! There was a route up that was no more than class 2+ on some solid rock that was angled back very nicely. I continued to go through some rocks and brush, and the summit finally came into view. It turned out the final stretch to the summit was just a class 1 walk through some brush.
Getting to the summit there took a lot longer than I envisioned -- I spent LOTS of time trying to find a viable route through cliffs. On the way back Route Scout's one mile split said that it took 3 hours to go one mile. It seemed like about 5 minutes though.
On the way back I took the gully all the way down, and then traversed over to the saddle that was at the end of the road. This was much better than my route up.
This was a fun hike with some challenging route finding, and I would 100% do this hike again. |
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| Civilization is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there |
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