I love the desert because there are so many ways it can kill you,” says Steve Jones in his normal sarcastic tone, as his point is taken that lack of water, flash floods, falling into cactus and fire are just some of the ways this land can take you. The Tres Alamos Wilderness is a good example of the ruggedness of this land.
Hiking with peak-baggers is unlike hiking with anyone else. Peak-baggers hike peaks, often without trails, as they use waypoints on GPS to find their paths, often where other peak-baggers have gone before. Some even use equipment to get up to those peaks, but most peaks don’t demand that.
I hiked — I use the word loosely because there was no trail — Tres Alamos Wilderness with experienced peak-bagger John McCafferty and the less experienced Jones.
McCafferty appears to be the top peak-bagger in Yavapai County and rates among the top 50 in Arizona, with more than 335 peaks. Those conquests are logged on the peak-bagging website. Jones, a retired Chino Valley police officer, has done about ten with McCafferty.
I’ve been to the top of most of Arizona’s mountains, but on trails. Sawyer Peak is the highest point of the Tres Alamos Wilderness at 4,293 feet, and we climbed about 1,500 feet on a 2.6-mile round trip from the jeep.
Afterward I was more wiped out than from a twelve-mile, 3,000-foot climb, because we were bushwhacking while we were climbing, with constant cactus along the way that poked me more times than I’d like to admit. McCafferty said it wasn’t till he got home that he realized he had to pick cactus from his shin. “This is a place that is rarely climbed, and it’s rugged,” he said.
While we got stuck with cactus, none of us fell into it. That’s a concern. A month earlier I was on the Go John Trail in Cave Creek, an easy trail but with a lot of cactus along it. I came across a bloodied hiker because both he and has dog had fallen into cactus. I offered to pull out my first-aid kit, but the hiker was confident that he could make it back to his car all right.
There was no one else on the trail on the Saturday we were there. Records show 26 others who’ve claimed to have bagged Sawyer Peak, but that’s it, and to me it’s doubtful that any other people have been there.
Amazingly, the Tres Alamos Wilderness is in Yavapai County. From Chino Valley it takes about 90 minutes to get to the dirt road that leads into it, and it took another hour in Jones’ high-clearance vehicle to get to our parking spot. Don’t even think about doing this without a high-clearance vehicle.
The most exciting moment came during the drive in, when we saw a badger. It was the first time I’ve seen a badger in the wild, and sitting in the back seat of the jeep I wasn’t able to get a photo. Hawks and other birds were moving about the Joshua trees. Another factor of this trek was few places to sit and rest, and next to no shady spots along the climb.
The road into Tres Alamos is off Route 93 between Congress and Wickenburg. Driving six miles in, you can’t tell that the highway or anything else is out there. Route 93 is known to be one of the most deadly highways, so if you make this drive be careful, it’s one more way the desert can take you.
Covering 8,300 acres, the protected Tres Alamos Wilderness is centered on the south end of the Black Mountains, and its namesake feature, Tres Alamos, is a colorful monolith among them. Established in 1990 by the AZ Desert Wilderness Act, the area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
It’s a classic example of the Sonoran-Mojave Desert transition zone, with vegetation including creosote and Joshua trees as well as saguaro and palo verde. Along with the badger the area’s wildlife includes Gila monsters, golden eagles and prairie falcons.
After the recent rains and snowfall I hiked the Peavine Trail to see the water levels, and I was excited to see flowing water there for the first time in months. In about a month the turtles and frogs should be returning.
My next video in the Preserving Arizona Wilderness series is out on my YouTube channel, about the Kendrick Mountain Wilderness. In it have an encounter with an elk, and cover a historic cabin near the top that firefighters have preserved. See the link with this column online at 5ensesmag.com.
Stan Bindell is always looking for a good hike. If you have one, contact him at thebluesmagician@gmail. com
