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| Hiking | 8.46 Miles |
4,032 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.46 Miles | 10 Hrs | | 0.85 mph |
| 4,032 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | I hiked this a Saturday in early spring with AHOTE (AZ Hikers and Outdoor Trail Explorers). Wally gave the basic rundown, but I thought I'd add some on route finding. I posted a GPS route, so this will go along with that. While I agree with the assertion that the same route will probably never be taken twice, there are a few points that might be useful.
To start, follow the trail to Brown's saddle, and then up the cleft to the right of the ridgeline, as described in the Browns Peak hike. If you found that in any way challenging, congratulate yourself on making it to the highest peak visible from Pheonix, and turn around and head down. If you thought that was fun but not nearly hard enough, consider continuing south.
To get down the South side of Brown's Peak, I basically just picked the nearest ravine and headed down it, pretty easy going. I did get fooled though, as I thought I had reached the saddle and headed back up, only to discover that I wasn't at the saddle at all (this "false saddle" is visible on the topo map). It would have been easier to skirt this knob rather than go over the top of it.
Heading up Peak 2 was pretty easy, straight up the ridge. Enjoy it, because this is the last "easy" you get until you hit the amethyst trail. The difficult part is the saddle between 2 and 3. The S face of Peak 2 is an impossible series of 100'+ cliffs, so here you have to leave the ridge and head East. I traversed the mountainside, heading steeply down the East face as I continued S. This worked well enough that I passed the rest of the group (who started two hours earlier than I had), who had stayed higher on the peak before cutting down to the East. However, I think that it would actually have been easier to continue further down the E face before trying to cut across. While it would mean climbing further back up to get to the middle saddle, the route I took included some very challenging downclimbing, enough to genuinely scare me in one or two places. The first (and hardest) was as I came across the E face (remember, go lower sooner), and the rest after I had met up with the group and turned around to the SSE face. Finally, we did succeed in making it to the second saddle (My wanderings visible on the GPS route are an attempt to find the Geocache located there, which I had passed earlier without realizing it).
You can see that from here we chose a chasm just to the right (West) of the ridge. This route worked, but was not in any way easy. It included some material that was certainly solid grade 4 climbing. The ample snow on the ground didn't help. Many in the group were uncomfortable with this. We moved steeply up until reaching the ridge not far below the summit (We hit the ridge at a spectacular knife edge separating the Valley of the Sun from the Tonto Basin), and headed up one final cleft to reach the top. I wonder if there might be an easier route on the E side of the mountain, but if there was, it wasn't obvious from below (or from the top of 2).
From the top of 3, our group split up. Half stayed near the ridgeline, but yelled back that it wasn't a good route, so the rest of us turned E to go a ways down a ravine before circling around to the S. This was not an easy route either, and it took us a good deal longer than the group that stayed closer to the ridge. However, we had more people in our group with less experience. Pick your poison, I guess. A bit of excitement on the way down was when someone yelled out to clear the trail below them. They had stepped on a large rock and had the entire bed of the ravine shift. Once everyone was out of the bottom of the ravine, they gave one more push to let what literally must have been tons of rock careen down the sleep slope. Hate to think what might have happened if that had given way without the opportunity for a warning.
Back near the ridgeline and approaching the saddle, there were a couple of large rocks to get around. You can see my aborted attempt to go W around the first, but the W route around the second was much easier than the E route.
From the saddle, the route up to peak 4 was much less technical -- just a long tiring slog, now through more underbrush and a lot of Gambel Oak. I would reccomend going up and down the route that I took down -- it was much more direct than the route that I took up.
From the top, back to the 3/4 saddle, and straight down to the amethyst trail. Remember to look around on the ground for amethysts, several beautiful stones were found by members in our group. The hike back along the trail is very nice and pleasant in the evening.
So there you have it! This was a wonderful hike, and I'd enjoy doing it again, so feel free to contact me if you'd like company on the four peaks! |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
) to the peak. On my way down, I take the highest of the many unofficial trails down the south face of the mountain, circling back to my starting point. It's about 2.5 miles in the park, or a little over 3 round trip to my front door. It's been beautiful lately with all the brittlebush in bloom. Contact me if you'd like someone to jog or hike with sometime! -- Dan
) to the peak. On my way down, I take the highest of the many unofficial trails down the south face of the mountain, circling back to my starting point. It's about 2.5 miles in the park, or a little over 3 round trip to my front door! It's been beautiful lately with all the brittlebush in bloom. Contact me if you'd like someone to jog or hike with sometime! -- Dan
I would definitely say that the view from the top makes the bushwack worth it -- Circlestone doesn't compare on that front. It's getting more crowded up there though: while 200-2005 only averaged 2 groups a year, there have been 3 in each of the last two years! Other than the confusion getting back to Circlestone, my hike down was very nice as well. There was a big group of cowboys at the ranch that gave me some water so I didn't have to pump, and fed me some Churrizo and beans as well. They were all super friendly, but I was amazed at how many empty beer cans they had aquired given that they said they had only been there two days! I hiked hard on the way down to make it while it was still light out (although I had a headlamp and was equipped to spend the night if need be, I wasn't too excited about either one).
