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| | | Dome Mountain and Two Lesser Peaks, AZ | | | |
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Dome Mountain and Two Lesser Peaks, AZ
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| Hiking | 9.04 Miles |
2,386 AEG |
| | Hiking | 9.04 Miles | 7 Hrs 28 Mns | | 1.62 mph |
| 2,386 ft AEG | 1 Hour 54 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | On our first hike of 2022, we headed back to the Goldfields for the third time in the past few weeks. The plan for today was to hike up to Dome Mountain and Three Lesser Peaks, and hopefully see Elliptical Arch on the way. We started from Bulldog Canyon Gate at sunrise, and it was a cold morning, with a layer of ice on the puddles. The views of the peaks were beautiful as the sun came up and we started hiking along FR 10 and FR 1356.
I'd only previously hiked up to Dome Mountain from the back (north) side, so this was my first time approaching from the south on the "official" route. The stretch between FR 1356 and the saddle is a great area among all the yellow cliffs, though some idiot spray-painted red arrows to mark what was already an obvious route...there seems to be a lot of that in the Goldfields. I'd marked a waypoint where I thought Elliptical Arch was located and explored a little off the trail but didn't find it. We did find some small windows in the rock, but not the arch. On our way up to the saddle, we had to go up around some smooth rock slopes that were covered in ice.
When we reached the saddle, we took a left up toward Dome Mountain. It's a short (~0.5 mile) and fairly steep route up to the summit, but much easier than the approach I took last time from the other side. This stretch had a series of white paint streaks marking the route...not as visually intrusive as the red arrows, but still annoying. One other hiker got up to the top around the same time we did, and the wind chill was very cold--the temperature was in the 40s, and the wind must have been gusting 25-30 mph at the top, so we had an incentive to keep moving and not linger at the top too long.
Near the summit cairn, there was a small statue/figure of a cartoonish tennis player, and the base said, "Girls Tennis 1982"...an odd thing to find at a summit. I found my previous entry in the summit register from September. My friend and I hiked to Dome Mountain and Peaks 3269 and 3239 that day, and it was 100°+ and very humid, and he ended up with bad leg cramps. His entry in the register, which I hadn't read until today, started with "Inhospitable conditions..." Today, we had the opposite problem with the frigid wind chills--what a difference four months makes  .
We headed back down toward the saddle and passed two people and a dog making their way up, and they were cursing the inaccuracy of AllTrails as they passed . We hiked up to Peak 3134 next, and the trail was well established and had plenty of cairns marking the way. We signed the summit register and took a quick break at the top. There were plenty of familiar HAZ names in the register--more there than in the Dome Mountain register.
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With the amount of time we had today, we'd talked about making it an out-and-back and hiking to the two other Lesser Peaks another day, but it looked like a fast hike to get over to Peak 3089, so I decided to make a quick detour over there. It was a short but steep scramble off the peak on the southeast side of 3134 but easy hiking along the ridgeline after that. TBoneKathy waited on 3134, and it took me ~10 minutes to get over to Peak 3089. There was no summit register there, but I had an empty plastic bottle with me and placed one at the peak...I'd forgotten to bring an extra writing utensil to leave behind, so it's a BYOP register .
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Getting over to the third peak, 3047, looked straightforward, but I headed back for the hike out since we didn't have too much time today....though, in hindsight, I should have just gone over there--it probably would have only added another 20 minutes getting there and back. But we started down from 3134 to the saddle and hiked out the same way we came in. We still didn't see Elliptical Arch on the way back but had plenty of great views of the Superstitions. The wind had calmed down, and it turned into a nice day, and it was a solid start to the year even if we didn't hike the full loop or find Elliptical Arch today. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
Lots of cool rock formations and stuff to see. Only saw a hand full of people all day!
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