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| | | Peak 2881 - Horns - Keyhole - Massif - Willow, AZ | | | |
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Peak 2881 - Horns - Keyhole - Massif - Willow, AZ
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| Hiking | 11.56 Miles |
2,479 AEG |
| | Hiking | 11.56 Miles | 9 Hrs 39 Mns | | 1.51 mph |
| 2,479 ft AEG | 2 Hrs Break | | | |
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| partners | | We headed to the northeast Goldfields to check out some new areas, and I cobbled together a few different points of interest from various routes and triplogs, mostly centered around the 2881 Consensus Loop, knowing we wouldn't have time to see them all today. We parked at the small pullout along SR 88 where the Consensus Loop starts and followed the route clockwise toward 2881 on a windy morning. The route leading toward the peak was extremely well-cairned...I recognized @Yoder's handiwork from hiking Sunset Arch a few months ago, and some of the cairns along the route today were as much artwork as they were trail markers  .
We circled around to the east side and then up to the peak, and the wind was almost unbearable on top, with gusts that must have been up to 40-50 mph. The views were great, but we didn't spend much time up there before heading down the more gradual slope on the north side.
[ youtube video ]
The traverse to Horns was a very scenic area, with a small arch along the route and a good size cave up in the formations behind us. I'd added the Little Keyhole Saddle route among the other points of interest, and after hiking down from Horns, @TBoneKathy waited while I took a quick detour to see if I could find the keyhole. I didn't have a specific location and didn't know what it looked like, but when I reached the spot where I thought it might be located, I did see a tiny, keyhole-shaped arch on top of a rock formation. The description said it was small, but this was only a few inches tall...someone who's been there will have to confirm if what I saw was actually Little Keyhole. If so, that's the smallest named rock formation I've encountered...if not, I guess I found Really Little Keyhole.
We detoured off the main loop again and explored north toward Peaks 2178 and 2135 and saw a few arches, but I didn't have time to go up to the peaks. Next up was Canyon Lake Massif 2276. Hiking along SR 88 with all the road noise wasn't exactly a highlight today, but the views from the massif made it a worthwhile stop, and the wind had calmed down some by afternoon.
[ youtube video ]
We hiked back to the loop and headed south following Willow Creek. It was a lot more rugged than a lot of the other Goldfield creek beds, and we had to bypass multiple deep pools on the hike out. The official route has two of the pools marked, but we there were 4-5 that we ended up navigating around--all of them surprisingly deep given the dry conditions, though it looked like at least one was fed from a spring upstream. The final large pool had a lot of debris nearby...old irrigation tubing, buckets, rusty pipe, and other random stuff. That final section of the loop ended up being a lot and interesting than anticipated...there's a lot more going on down along the spring than you'd ever see just driving by on 88.
As expected, we didn't get to everything I'd mapped out, but it was a good day with a lot of variety in the terrain and scenery. In typical Goldfield fashion, we saw ~3x the number of arches as we saw other hikers today . And I found a Leatherman multi-tool in the dirt on the way to Horns of Dilemma, which was a nice bonus. |
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Route Editor
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Route 
. We eventually came to the area on top that is pretty much right in front of the Horns. Here we encounter a couple hikers and Larry and I asked them about the route they had taken. We would take that back the whole way. 
