Peakbaggers are an interesting species of mountain climber. Usually, they are working off of a list of peaks, a list which they may have prepared themselves or have inherited from someone else. The list could be short, with only a few dozen peaks, or it could be lengthy, running to many hundreds. If you’re a serious player in the peakbagging game, you’ll only consider your project complete if you’ve climbed every peak on your list, no exceptions. And, depending on the peaks involved, some of them could fall into a category we call “stealth” climbing.

As the name implies, a stealth climb is one which, if you were caught, someone would be really pissed off at your being there. Most peakbaggers are okay with some degree of stealthing. In a lighter vein, it could be cutting across a bit of privately-owned land to get to a peak. On a more serious note, it could be something as bold as sneaking on to Area 51 in Nevada, where you risk being arrested or shot for trespassing on a top-secret military reservation. A serious stealth climb is for true adrenaline junkies, as it can be a huge rush, wondering every minute if you’re going to get caught.

Recently, I found myself in a situation where I had to go where no one is allowed to go, ever. From my home in Tucson to my final parking place was a total of 151 driving miles. The first 121 miles, on paved roads, took only 2 1/2 hours to drive. The final 30 miles took 3 1/2 hours. The farther I went, the more hair-raising the driving became. Although I had driven 151 miles by road, the distance in air miles was only 85 miles from Tucson.

I was shocked that I had been driving for 6 hours. Hell’s bells, I could have driven all the way to San Diego in that time! Anyway, there I was, way off the grid, in a spot not allowed by any permit. My idea had been to leave home early and drive to this place and camp, but still arriving early enough to do a climb that same day. By the time I was ready to start, it was already 1:45 p.m. That did not bode well.

Recently, I had had my old mountain bike worked on by a good bike mechanic – he had resurrected it from the grave, and it was road-worthy once again. Now I don’t want to give you the wrong idea – I’m no cyclist, not in any sense of the word. A bike is simply a tool, a means to an end, a way of getting to a mountain more easily. A real problem here in the desert is having your tires go flat from being punctured by sharp things such as cactus spines. It’d happened to me before. It really sucks, walking your bike along a road instead of riding it because a thorn has punctured your tire. The bike shop had installed new tubes and filled them with Stan’s tire sealant, which is meant to seal punctures once they occur. In addition, they had installed a Stop Flats tire liner in each tire, meant to act as a barrier to sharp things penetrating the tube once they had gotten through the tire. All in all, I felt pretty good about riding the bike far away from my truck.

My start was an easy one – I had to coast gently downhill for a mile or so on a disused, overgrown road. You could tell the road hadn’t been driven for many years – all manner of stuff had grown up on it. All I had to do was dodge the bushes and cactus as I rolled along. The map showed that the road crossed a major wash, then continued on the other side. The wash was huge, and a real mess. I ended up humping that bike a couple of hundred yards through brush, gravel and sand, then climbing up a steep embankment with it to find the road again.

Based on information I had gleaned from maps and satellite imagery, the roads I next had to ride looked pretty good. But even with detail as good as 40-foot contours, there’s plenty that you can’t tell about a place until you actually have boots on the ground. The road, which I had hoped would be quite flat, ended up having long, albeit gentle, uphill stretches. These, as well as an endless series of gullies that cut across the road, often forced me to dismount and walk or carry the bike, eating up valuable daylight.

By the time I had ridden 9 miles from my truck, the afternoon was wearing on. Finally, I ditched the bike in a gully and locked it to a tree – I’m not sure why, really – there wasn’t another human being within 30 miles.

An easy mile of walking took me to the top of the peak (which shall remain un-named) I had come to climb. This one was so far off the radar that there was no sign of anyone ever having stood on it before me. I prepared a register, built a cairn to shelter it, and, by some miracle, was able to call home on my piece-of-crap cell phone.

That done, I was shocked to see it was already 4:30 p.m. – I had burned through almost 3 hours of daylight so far on this little adventure, and I was still 10 miles from my truck. I hustled back down, retrieved my bike, and started pedaling. Although the lateness of the hour concerned me, I had to stop from time to time and admire the incredible desert beauty all around me.

It was so peaceful, not a sound to be heard. A perfect 70 degrees, no breeze – the low angle of the setting sun made the surrounding hills glow with all manner of pastel colors.

The sun set, and I rode like hell to eat up the miles back to the safety of my truck. The light faded, until, by the time I had to cross the big wash once again, it was completely dark – there was no moon to help show the way, I turned on my headlamp and my GPS and walked my bike through the desert. Luckily for me, the brush wasn’t thick, so I kept moving right along. Map in hand, I made a beeline for the truck, and arrived by 6:45 p.m., a full 5 hours after I had left. Man, that truck looked good! It meant food, shelter and safety, way better than wandering in the desert all night.

I prepared a hot meal, changed out of my sweat-soaked clothes and listened to some good tunes. It cooled off quickly and I soon turned in. The next morning, the alarm woke me early, and by the time I walked away from the truck, there was barely light enough to see. There was a bit of frost, so I wore my fleece. I was carrying a day pack with 4 quarts of water. The weather was to be a carbon-copy of the day before – in a word, perfect!

My goal today was to climb four peaks, and my path was to describe a big loop. Sorry, I can’t tell you where these peaks were, or I’d catch hell (or worse). I started off by walking a short while to gain the huge wash of the day before, then followed it downstream for a mile. Because this area was so off-limits, so far off the beaten path, there wasn’t any trash littering the desert. What a treat!

I headed up a canyon, then up a ridge of my first peak.

Over one false summit, and there I stood on the top. If you look carefully at the next picture, you can see a boulder right in the middle. On top of it is a pile of rocks, the cairn that I built. Right above that are two saguaro cacti reaching into the sky side by side, and, in between them in the distance is the summit of the peak I did the day before.

Untouched, pristine – I did the usual cairn and register, then headed off the peak down to a pass. I had seen wild burros and cattle wandering the desert in these parts, and in the pass I found evidence of them both, the two kinds of poop they had left – and then there were three.

From there, it was an easy climb up to my second peak. Like the one before, nobody had been there.

I left my mark, ate a bit, then dropped down the steep west slope, crossed a ridge and came upon an old road. It appeared to not to have been driven for a very long time.

What a beautiful morning! The desert colors were so alive, the sky so blue. Once again, I crossed the same huge wash of this morning, but farther downstream. Crossing a flat piece of desert and then a low ridge, I turned south and headed up a canyon. Reaching a park-like clearing, I dropped my back and got ready for my third peak of the day. In the next photo, notice the well-worn path in the lower left corner. This was created not by the passage of human feet, but rather by wild burros and cattle in the area.

It was a steep scramble, and, before I knew it, I stood on the summit. What a great view – I could look out over miles of unspoiled desert. In the picture below, there is a steep drop just behind the cairn to the desert floor below.

As I was filling out a register, I was surprised by a loud boom. Some miles away, I saw an A-10 fighter jet, affectionately nicknamed “the warthog”, swooping low and dropping bombs. Later, by looking at my telephoto shots, I was able to distinguish several groups of buildings, which no doubt were used for some type of military training or target practice. Today, the bombs were being dropped near one of these “villages”. Look closely, or zoom in, and you can see the flash of one of the explosions.

Time after time, the jet swooped low and dropped more bombs. I’ve gotta tell you, it’s high entertainment watching bombs exploding – every boy’s dream come true. Eventually , the fun stopped and it was time for me to leave.

Back down at my pack, I got ready and headed farther up the canyon, but soon left it and headed up to a ridge. This was very broken and was a lot of fun to negotiate.

By the time I reached the fourth and last summit of the day, it was 1:17 p.m. Once again, there was no sign of a previous visit. I left my mark and surveyed the land below. Hey, just for the fun of it, zoom in on the next photo. Keep enlarging the area between the tops of the two saguaro cacti, until you see a white dot – keep going, and you can see the shape of my truck.

Before I knew it, I was back down to the desert floor, and all I had to do was walk one final mile to my truck, which went without incident.

Today felt much better than yesterday, as it was only 2:48 p.m. and my climbing was done. There were other peaks I wanted to climb, but they were some miles distant in another area. I figured that I could get the toughest of the driving done in the daylight still remaining if I started right away. I finished packing up the truck, and away I went.

After only a mile, I saw something under a tree off to the side of the road, and stopped for a look. What was it, a vehicle?

I shut off my engine and got out for a look – probably not the smartest move, being alone and in such a remote area. I walked down to the thicket and, sure enough, it was a pick-up truck – two, in fact. One of them had its front end wrapped around a large tree.

A closer look revealed that they had been there for a while. In fact, one of them had an Arizona license plate, with tags from March, 2008. There was even a bicycle in the bed of one of the trucks. Almost certainly stolen, they appear to have crashed as they were fleeing the law – a story that has occurred countless times out here in the desert.

As I left the area, thinking back on my two days in no-man’s land, it occurred to me that I was pretty lucky. Great peaks, great weather and first-class stealthing – welcome to Arizona!

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