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Having camped at the junction of SR78 and Black Mtn Rd in the SE corner of
the state, we had a party of five for the day's activities which were centered
around a visit to Quartz Peak, a P1K and the highpoint of the Indian Pass
Wilderness.
Mt. Barrow
Our first objective was a named peak on the eastern edge of the Chocolate
Mountains. Most of this range is used as a Navy aerial gunnery practice, making
excursions into it somewhat risky. Mt. Barrow lies just within the gunnery
range, making the ascent not exactly legal, though the risks are lower
than a trip deeper into the range. Piled into Matt's Subaru, we headed east on
Imperial Gables Rd, leading to the unincorporated community of the same name.
There is little left here decades after it was last inhabited. At the end of
our road, a mile south of Mt. Barrow, sits a private residence no longer
occupied. It appears that someone once spent a great deal of time building and
working as a hobby, with rock walls, outdoor
and facilities and all manner of
, only to see it once the work
stopped. The property is still signed for No Trespassing, but it doesn't look
like anyone has actively looked after the place in a long time.
We up a wash running adjacent to the property, soon
to gain running north. The terrain was
quite rocky with some modestly fun scrambling, but overall mostly a class 2
affair. The sparse vegetation includes ocotillo, barrel and
, the
latter a rather nasty invention that requires great attention to avoid and some
skill to remove if not avoided. Scott was the , and since
it was his initial encounter, he had the displeasure to find that removal
attempts, if not handled properly, can make matters worse. We traversed
of an intermediate false summit before dropping to
and climbing the last part (with the best scrambling and
most cholla) to of Mt. Barrow. It took us about an hour and
a half to make our way to the highpoint where we found and
a Gordon/Barbara register . There were three other parties to
have signed in since then, the last . After our break, we
back over the false summit before dropping more westward into
which we
followed back to the abandoned home. No Navy activity out today and no
unexploded ordinances encountered. The whole outing took 3hrs to cover 3mi
and 1,400ft of gain.
Black Mountain
We drove back out to SR78 and then east on , following this
good road, much of it paved, for almost 7mi to the top of Black Mtn, an
elongated ridgeline west of Peter Kane Mtn (whose highpoint is Quartz Peak), its
top populated by a number of . Black Mtn
appears in Purcell's guidebook,
Rambles & Scrambles, though it involves
little in the way of either. The views from following the
exceedingly short walk are pretty good - one can see the impressive formation of
Picacho Peak to and hundreds of
square miles of folded desert terrain in all directions. We had driven most of
the road back down Black Mtn when Matt remembered that he had left his spot
device on the summit. He didn't want to inconvenience the rest of us by
repeating the longish drive, but the rest of us would have none of it,
especially since we were passengers in
his car. Back up we went and sure
enough, the device was right where he'd thought he'd left it.
Quartz Peak
Back down the road for a second time, at the bottom we turned off onto a rough
4WD road in Julian Wash and followed this for a short time before it became
unmanageable without risk to Matt's car. We were about 2mi due west of Quartz
Peak at this point and would simply hoof it . Our route went
east across the surprisingly wide , eventually
what looked to be and following
. The terrain was open and easy to follow, little vegetation and
no real scrambling, all class 2. After just over an hour's effort and another
false summit, we where we found
but no register. Our to Picacho
Peak was better than on Black Mtn, though similar in other directions. To make
a loop of things, we descended to the northwest, dropping us
into the wash system much sooner and
dutifully following this back to our starting point. Having taken differing
return routes, Scott and Karl got a little competitive at the end, running the
final distance to "prove" their route was better. It's hard to beat Scott when
he gets in his competition mode.
Buzzards Peak
It was getting late in the afternoon and we had to skip the planned visit to
the Picacho Peak Wilderness HP and nearby Top BM, two other hikes I'd hoped to
squeeze in. Instead, at Scott's urging, we visited nearby Buzzards Peak, a
small, standalone summit on the east side of SR78 which we could do in short
order. We were able to drive of the summit and it
took us only 15min to the . Gordon and Barbara had
left a register here which proved far more popular than Barrow,
this one with nearly 20 pages of entries in less than a decade. We
the hike before 4:30p, very
close to sunset, with a chill in the air and our feet happy to be done for the
day. We showered in failing light before heading south on SR78 to Interstate 8,
then east to the Arizona border. We met up with Evan at a primitive campsite
located off Pichaco Rd, on the north side of the All American Canal. Matt cooked
us up a BBQ feast on his portable Weber and we ate until past satiation.
Scott had made my favorite cake for the belated birthday occasion - rum cake -
which Matt supplemented with a layered vanilla cake of his own. Who knew that
peakbaggers could make such excellent chefs?
Matt's Video
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