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| Indian Head Peak - Sawtooth Mtns, AZ | |
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| | Indian Head Peak - Sawtooth Mtns, AZ | | | |
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Indian Head Peak - Sawtooth Mtns, AZ
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| no partners | | Note: I did this hike in conjunction with Wildcat peak and peak 2487 which is along the ridgeline going up to Wildcat. My trip report for Wildcat peak is where you will find all of my stats, driving directions, and even a route for driving. I uploaded a route here which includes all 3 peaks. See my trip report for Wildcat peak for more info....
Brian and I have known about this peak for a few years as we saw it on previous trips to the Sawtooth mountains. Finally, today, we decided to go back to the Sawtooth mountains. It was a cold day and we didn't want to be too high up in elevation. When the highs are in the low 60s, it's a pretty decent time to be in the Sawtooth mountains.
The distance would be roughly 1.85 miles each way if you parked where we parked and did this summit only. We hiked Wildcat peak first so it's a little tricky to estimate the round trip distance of this peak only. When I did my analysis for this peak, I noticed there was an old 4x4 road that spiraled around to the North side of this peak. Based on the topo map, it appeared that the less steep ridges were on the North side. On the approach coming in from the 4x4 road, we could see that it looked steep and very rocky if trying to summit from the South or West. In my opinion, it's a more enjoyable hike taking one of the 2 North ridge lines.
There's also an old mining area on the North side which is labeled on the topo map. We went to take a look and there was not much to see there aside from the historical aspect that it was an area used for mining in the past. After checking out the mining area, we went up the North ridge closer to the mining area. The ridge was steep and the ground was solid enough to zig zag and make it up to the top in under 20 minutes from the old mining area. At the summit, we had some good views of all of the peaks around us. We could see Little Picacho (Peak 2614) to the North and Wildcat peak to the South. The Sawtooth mountains high point was out of sight. Looking North we could also see Peak 2473, which is a peak we did probably 10 years ago. Looking to the Southeast we could see the West Silverbell mountains, and Looking East/Northeast we could see Picacho peak and the larger higher Newman peak.
At the summit, we found a small jar registry which amazingly had only 3 visitors listed since 2001. We saw 1 person from 2001, another from 2010, and the last from December 2013, then us, over 11 years later! I will say that there was no pen or pencil included so if you want to sign this registry you will need to bring something to write with, or bring a TINY pencil to leave in the jar which is about the size of a baby food jar. Maybe there were more visitors since 2001 but some of these people didn't have anything to write with.
This peak was quite a bit easier in comparison to Wildcat peak. From the summit, I looked down to the West and saw some messy and steep ridgelines. I didn't have any interest in going down that way. I decided to take the other much better looking Northern ridgeline down while Brian decided to take our original ridgeline down. The ridgeline I went down proved to be slightly faster and maybe not quite as steep. This is the ridgeline I would recommend for someone to take up or down.
Brian and I met back up on the road and we took the road back to our vehicle. We thought about doing a 4th peak but we thought 3 was enough and we had a long enough day. Someday we'll go back and do some of the other peaks we have not summited yet.
Also see my trip report for Wildcat peak. |
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Michael Williams
IT Professional
Rocky Point Vacation Rentals
Ocean Front Condo in Rocky Point, Sonora, Mexico
www.beachfrontmexico.us
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