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| Hiking | 10.10 Miles |
3,773 AEG |
| | Hiking | 10.10 Miles | 9 Hrs 35 Mns | | 1.22 mph |
| 3,773 ft AEG | 1 Hour 20 Mns Break | 30 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | El Recortado West & East had been on my list for so long it looked like I'd never get around to bagging them so I figured it's about time to knock them out.
Side Note: While Peak 2857 is in fact part of El Recortado West it is not the high point, which is Peak 2900, while Peak 3068 is the high point of El Recortado East.
But after reading Joe & Bob's triplogs from December 2011 and realizing it would be a tough one, I wanted to do more recon to find the shortest and easiest route. But as usual, what began as a short recon turned out to be an all out brutal day of hiking.
As much as I hate traipsing along the sandy wash of Cottonwood Creek, I decided to drive out FR1829 to and start from Brownie Tank instead. A short jaunt from Brownie Tank to Cottonwood Creek and I was descending a very narrow drainage into the wash.
With just a few couple boulders left all of a sudden I heard the sound of a hive of bees on my left and within a second or two here came a swarm of bees. 
One had already stung me on the back of my neck. As I reached back to swat it off I tripped over the last boulder, which meant my hands which were holding my hiking poles were behind me as I fell hard into the wash. ](https://hikearizona.com/dex2/images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
I managed to twist enough to avoid falling directly on a boulder but not enough to avoid hammering my left knee on it.
Even with long sleeves I got a pretty good sand-burn on my right forearm. But with the bees still swarming this was no time to take stock of my injuries, it was time to run! But try running in soft sand with a left knee causing enough pain with each step that it gave out whenever I put pressure on it.
All I can say is the ONE positive of falling so far and so fast was that only a few bees were still after me. Surprisingly I managed to kill two by smacking them against my neck but the last one seemed a bit more wary and just kept flying into my hat and bouncing off. Practically reduced to crawling I was overjoyed when it gave up by time I got a few hundred feet from the hive. Whew! I only dodged half of that bullet... the rest will come later.
With the knee injury I should have just called it a day and headed back... except for three things:
1. I was NOT going to climb back out past the bees
2. I wasn't sure I could climb at all
3. I don't give up easy! 
So I decided to work on just being able to walk before deciding what to do. Knowing I simply couldn't climb toward El Recortado at that spot (where Joe & Bob ascended Dec '11) I would try to shake it off by walking-it-out. The soft sand made it more difficult, but eventually I was able to walk without enough pain to collapse again. Now I'm looking for another route to climb out of Cottonwood Creek wash... somewhere away from the bees. When I found a spot, I was not ready to try climbing yet, so I just marked it on my GPS and kept going to the south. By time I reached 'Route B' (in place of Joe's route), I found a drainage that didn't look like too tough a climb, until I tried to climb it, that is. Whenever I tried to push up with my left leg, the pain was enough it would give out... so if I was going to go anywhere I would have to do a whole bunch of right-leg steps, which I proceeded to do.
Again I knew I should turn back, but hey, I've come this far, I might as well do a little more recon. So... I kept going. And like an Energizer bunny, I just kept going and going and going. I'm not so sure the pain was any less, I was just able to ignore it... as long as I didn't push with my left leg. Thankfully by now, while seeking an ascent route through the first level of cliffs, it was more a sideways traverse than climbing. Although I had mapped out an possible ascent route farther along, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the easiest climbs of the day and was up on above the cliffs in a few minutes.
Wow, that was easy!  So now what was I to do but continue on with the recon... yeah, right... it's no longer a recon, now I'm committed now to knocking out El Recortado West at the very least, and scan ahead for a future trip to El Rec East. Yeah, I know, right about now you're thinking yup, he should be committed... to an insane asylum!
 Be that as it may, I continued on.
Once I passed over the summit of Peak 2857, all that was left was an easy dip and back up to Peak 2900. I took the usual pan photos and video before grabbing the first half of my PB&J lunch. Then I continued on across fro a look down the other side to get an idea of what the rest of the route looked like to El Rec East.
Hmmm... I think Joe was right when he called this the Gates of Hell... but what the heck, I feel like I already went through hell up to this point, so I began a short recon descent which gave me pause... while I was able to favor my left knee by climbing with my right leg, descending was a whole new ball game! Every successive step I took that put pressure on the knee it would give from the pain.
Newsflash! It's time to turn around, NOW! While that rolled around in the back of my mind, all I could think of is I've made it this far, it's only 8/10ths of a mile to El Rec East, let's just git'er done! Of course I had to tell myself to ignore the fact that was by a DIRECT LINE, and the actual route was more like 1.5 miles and 700' of climbing. Yes, the heat (already at 104° and it would reach 105° later) probably addled my brain enough to ignore all the caveats. And so that's what I did, I ignored all the warning signs and continued.
And whadda'ya know, all of a sudden there I was, on the summit of El Rec East! I shot the pan photos and video and finished the last half of my PB&J lunch. I really wanted to spend more time wandering around the summit but already with well over 5 hours of hiking under my belt, I knew there was no more time to waste, and I needed to find the shortest route back. And I managed to do just that... after 6.2 miles to get here (which of course included some wandering) I reduced it to 4 miles on the return.
But enough for skipping ahead, there's still a long slog back. On the return I did the best I could to follow game trails whenever they appeared, reminding me how smart these critters really are, and as a result the return leg was not as difficult as I anticipated. Still, while I seemed to manage on all the ascents using my right leg to push, the descents were getting worse. By time I began the steep descent from Peak 2857, it almost out-of-hand... I was constantly stumbling on the loose terrain, which slowed me down even more, because whenever I stumbled it was into a pile of cholla balls  which meant I had time to rest while pulling the cholla out of my boots. Making it worse, I didn't have my leather boots and the canvas boots allowed spikes free access to my feet, which meant taking the boots off more than a few times. 
I felt almost overjoyed once I reached the flat mesa and I was looking forward to the easiest descent of the hike... dropping down from the cliffs. Now it was a long traverse across before the final descent back into Cottonwood Creek. By this time the descent was more of a stumble, slide, stumble, slide than any semblance of a controlled descent but I made it down without further injury... at least that I knew of at the time. (see the end of the triplog)
Even though I brought plenty of extra fluid for a 4-5 hour recon on a hot day, after 8-1/2 hours of hiking I was out of fluid! At the rate I was moving and with over a mile to go (including climbing 150' up out of Cottonwood Creek) I had at least an hour of hiking ahead of me. Once I reached the far-from-the-bees waypoint I marked for the ascent, I knew I had to rest before the climb. So I found a nice large boulder in the shade (although being in the sun for hours before, it was still pretty warm) and laid down in hopes of getting my heart rate down before attempting the climb. It seemed to be somewhere around 180 bpm but it was hard to concentrate enough to be accurate. After what seemed like 20 minutes and it still hadn't come down enough to notice, I realized I had to just suck it up and get on with it. (Looking at the GPS track I had only rested there for 5-1/2 minutes... but it sure seemed longer)
Thankfully the slope was almost completely in the shade and it was just a series of short steps up a rocky wall. Even so, I decided to ascend 10-12 feet at a time, resting for 15-30 seconds each time. I got a blessing-in-disguise when it took over 3 minutes to cut a swath out of a huge cat-claw bush before climbing past it. Once at the top, I breathed a sigh of relief... a short one as it turned out, because I still had close to a mile along a sandy wash (which again I tried to follow game trails to avoid most of it) and a last 50 foot slope at the end. By now I could not pass by anything that offered some shade, taking 30-40 seconds to rest at each.
When my GPS said I had only 385 feet forward to go (plus a 50' climb) I was so light-headed I really wasn't sure how I would do it. So I picked out a Saguaro as a landmark to aim toward, just sucked-it-up and climbed. Wow, I must have been to the point of hallucinating because once I reached the Saguaro, I realized of the two that had been between me and the Jeep, I somehow managed to walk to the one 90 degrees to the right, which just meant an extra 200' of stumbling... but I made it!
I fired up the Jeep, set the AC on Max/High, tossed everything in without bothering to worry about where, exchanged my boots for Tevas, popped open the ice-cold cooler and proceeded to drink as much as I dared at a time. By time I drove the 90 minutes home I downed 84 ounces, so by figuring that as added weight after the hike, when I weighed myself back home and compared it to 5 AM that morning, I had lost 9 pounds! After eating and drinking fluids off and on overnight and today, after 24 hours I still have a pound left to go.
So... 24 hours after the hike, I'm sporting bruises almost everywhere on my forearms and legs (including a nice shiner on the right knee as well), but the weird thing is, other than a little stiffness after sitting too long (like now writing this triplog) I have absolutely no pain... not even the normal arthritic pain from my hip, knees or ankles. The worst I feel right now is I'M STILL HUNGRY!
While I have in fact survived the ordeal, I almost didn't survive the chastisement from Tracey to know when to call it quits when  happens on a hike.
But! I knocked off two more peaks in the Mormon Flat Dam Quadrangle, which leaves me just Sheep Mountain on the 'other' side of the Salt River. Yes, I will wait for cooler weather before tackling Sheep!!
Anyway, all said and done, I posted 50 photos on HAZ with a full set of 110 on my web site. I'm still working on removing the extraneous stuff from the GPS track but I will post it soon. Well, maybe tomorrow, I've been sitting way to long to finish it now.
El Recortado West summit panorama video:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/JNUxABEoyuU
El Recortado East summit panorama video:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/9LnKSCSOd7o |
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