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| Sonoyta Mountains High Point, AZ | |
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| | Sonoyta Mountains High Point, AZ | | | |
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Sonoyta Mountains High Point, AZ
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| Hiking | 8.20 Miles |
1,049 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.20 Miles | 6 Hrs 48 Mns | | 1.91 mph |
| 1,049 ft AEG | 2 Hrs 30 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This was Day 3 of 4 of our trip. We camped the previous night at the Twin Peaks campground in the Organ Pipe National Monument on the South end. With Brian's discount card, the cost was $10 per night, normally $20. The site had a shelter, picnic table, and grill with room for 2 vehicles. There were a total of 208 campsites at this location, with 6 restrooms and there are showers at 3 of the 6 restrooms areas. The water for the showers is solar heated and not warm in December. There were 2 shower nozzles, one up high and one lower with ON buttons for each. After pressing the ON button for the lower nozzle, it would stay on for only 6 seconds and then you needed to press the button again. The upper nozzle would stay on for 9 seconds. In my opinion, this run time should have been extended to something like 20 or 30 seconds. It's quite annoying to have to press a button 30-40 times for a 5 minute shower...
We started our hike around 9.40 am by taking the Victoria Mine trail. The mine trail was relatively flat and very well-maintained with a few wash crossings along the way. We took the trail about 1.8 miles to a junction. At the junction we could have turned left to go to the Victoria Mine but we decided to see this on the way back. We turned right and continued. At this point the trail turned into a road. We saw some large organ pipe cactus along the way which made for great photos. We continued until we hiked a total of about 2.9 miles and found ourselves at the base of the peak. It took us a little over 1 hour to get to this point. From this point, the hiking would get steeper and some route finding was involved to get to the peak.
We started climbing up the ridge which got rocky pretty quickly. When we got higher up, we looked to the left and noticed that ridgeline looked much better so we crossed over to it and continued up until we reached a saddle. From the saddle, we could see the summit. We just needed to stay along the ridgeline to get there because there was a deep canyon to our West that we needed to go around. At a certain point, we found a trail North of the ridgeline which we followed and this seemed to save a little time. Eventually, we made it to the high point. From the top, we could see Twin peak, the Ajo range to the East and the low saddle where we took a short break on the way up. We were not able to see the Twin peaks campground because it was hidden behind a ridgeline.
From the summit, the ridgelines looking South and West from the high point were very rugged and we were glad we went this way. Going the other way would involve rougher terrain and take more time, I'm sure.
At the top we found a registry going back 10 years that had only 3 pages of entries. We took our photos and had lunch at the summit. On the way down, we decided to take the same ridgeline, but we found a much better route. If you follow our GPS route, I would recommend using our down route for both directions. We got back down to the road faster than we thought we would. From here we hiked South toward Victoria Mine, saw some volunteer workers there doing some reconstruction work on a small stone building and we stopped for another break as it was quite hot out there. There were a few mining holes, all blocked with fences and solid metal barriers. We saw a lot of mine tailings in the area.
After exploring the mine area, we took the well-maintained trail back to the Twin Peaks campground. It will still quite early, but we felt that we did enough hiking for the day.
Stats
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Distance (round trip): 8.2 miles
AEG: 1,049 feet
Strava moving time: 3 hrs 21 mins
Strava elapsed time: 6 hrs 48 mins
Directions from Why, AZ:
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From the AZ-86/85 junction, take AZ-85 South from Why, AZ for 22 miles to the Kris Eggle Visitor Center in the Organ Pipe National Monument. Turn right, going West, onto Puerto Blanco drive. Follow the signs to the Twin Peaks campground area. There is trailhead parking on the South end of the campground. If you are not camping, you will need a National Park pass to park at the trailhead parking for the Victoria Mine trail. |
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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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