One time way back in the 1980s, I was roaming around Arizona on one of my peakbagging jags. My sights were set on Mohon Peak, a mysterious mountain in the west central part of the state which seemed a long way from anywhere. Talking to other climbers didn’t help – I couldn’t find anyone who’d climbed it. There just wasn’t any info on the thing – the whole area around it was one big question mark. The topo map showed roads that approached Mohon, but I’d heard stories of locked gates and un-cooperative ranchers blocking access to all outsiders. Conversations with the US Forest Service didn’t really help either. They fed me stories about roads that maybe had unlocked gates, but nothing sounded reliable.
Somebody told me of a company back east that owned a lot of land around the peak. I tracked down a phone number and spoke to some suit who told me that it was their policy to not allow anyone to drive their ranch roads, that if they let one person do it, then everyone would want to do it, and just think of the liability issues! So much for trying to do the right thing. That left me with only one option, to stealth it.
I filled my tank in the little town of Wickieup (the word means “shelter” or “home” in the local Mojave Indian language), then drove north along the highway until I found Trout Creek Road. This took me across the Big Sandy River (dry as a bone), then up and over the Aquarius Mountains. Thirty miles later, I was where I wanted to be, and had climbed from an elevation of 2,000 feet in town all the way up to 4,800 feet. There, I found a road which turned north to the Wagon Bow Ranch. A locked gate was festooned with welcoming signs such as “Private Property” and “No Trespassing”. Yep, that’s the road I needed alright.
I moved the truck and parked it half a mile away, to appear less obvious, then spent a lot of time getting ready. I stuffed everything into an extended day pack and was all set to go. Next, I hauled my trusty mountain bike out of the back of my truck, checked it over thoroughly, then set out. There was no way I could do this without the bike, the distances were just too great. I rode back to the locked gate, looked both ways along Trout Creek Road to make sure nobody was coming, then lifted the bike over the gate and rode like hell. It was 2:30 P.M. and I was as nervous as a cat in a dog pound.
As I pedaled, I scanned my surroundings constantly, even looking behind me to see if anyone were following. A mile and a half in, I thought I saw someone at a corral, but may have been mistaken, as nobody give chase. Talk about paranoid! Just under the 4-mile mark, I crossed another fence into the Oro Ranch, owned by the JJJ Corp. Still no sign of anyone. The old dirt ranch roads I traveled went up hill and down dale, some of the hills being long, steep and rocky – poor fare indeed for a mountain bike, or at least for a rider in my shape. On the north side of Dividing Canyon, I had to push the bike up the mother of all hills for 1.8 miles.
This was beautiful country – wide expanses, long unobstructed views, with little brush and plenty of wildlife. On the ride in, I saw deer, javelina, coyotes, antelope and about a gazillion cattle, but thankfully no humans. At long last, I arrived at Goldwater Tank. It had taken me 2 hours 35 minutes to cover the 12.8 miles. Man, I hadn’t even started up the mountain yet, and I was feeling pretty tired. Looking around, I found a really good spot to hide my bike, at around 5,300′ elevation.
I started up the long, gentle slope that was the west ridge. The sun set and I kept on climbing, finally stopping for the night at Point 6,406′ – I was totally shagged out. It took a while to get my bivi site level enough to sleep on. My digestion was pretty messed up, no doubt due to the paranoia of stealthing in, so I ate little. My idea was to travel lightly for this climb, so I hadn’t brought a sleeping bag. A bivi bag, yes (my Cyclops) and my down-filled pants which converted to an elephant’s foot. A big moon brightened my night. Although it only dropped to 53 degrees overnight, the wind picked up and I slept poorly.
I awoke at 4:00 A.M., ate and slowly packed up. Very slowly – it took me until 5:20 to get moving. Compared to the previous afternoon, the going was steeper, but easy. At around 7,000 feet, I met a group of cows on the ridge. Maybe they thought I was a “wrangler in the night” – after all, we were “exchanging glances”, to sort of paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes. There was a small scrub-oak forest around the summit, at 7,499′, where I arrived at 6:30 A.M. The sun rose a few minutes later. It goes without saying that I had the place to myself. I did find two small radio antennae, but no register, so I left one. There wasn’t much of a view and I didn’t linger on top. It felt good to have made the summit, to have unlocked the puzzle of Mohon Peak, but now that was done, there was no point hanging around.
The rest is history. The ride back out was a bit quicker than that in – even the uphill stretches were easier. I didn’t see a soul on the way out, thankfully, and by the time I reached my truck at around noon, I was done in. Factoring in all of the hills en route, this trip involved 5,080 vertical feet. I had covered 25.7 miles by bike and 6.8 on foot. Back in the day, Mohon was perhaps the toughest climb of any of Arizona’s range high points due to its inaccessibility. That honor has passed to the Bryan Mountains these days.
Always a glutton for punishment, I next turned my attention to the nearby Aquarius Mountains. As I drove in, I met a rancher and his three hands rounding up cattle. When I asked his permission to park and climb, he said “Go for it”. I parked at 5,100′. It was brushy in spots, but in 58 minutes I stood on Peak 6236, the range high point, where I left a register. When I arrived back at the truck, there was still plenty of daylight, so I drove the thirty miles back out to the highway at Wickieup.
Once there, I pointed the truck north and kept on going. I’ll skip the details – suffice it to say that 63 miles later, much of it on pavement, the last of it on rough dirt roads, I parked high up on the west shoulder of the Cottonwood Mountains. At 5,600′, a steep rock step in the road got the better of me. I had no choice but to park in a precarious spot barely big enough for the truck. The rocky shelf on which the truck sat was so scary, I was fearful of rolling off and crashing below in a fireball.
As I sat in the truck eating some supper, I noticed that every radio station was carrying breaking news about some disaster in the Bay Area. The Loma Prieta earthquake, magnitude 6.9, had struck less than an hour before. Sixty-three people killed, almost 4,000 injured. Pretty sobering stuff, it made me thank my lucky stars I lived in Arizona – quiet, geologically-stable Arizona.
Early the next morning, after a surprisingly sound sleep, I walked up the rest of the old road, then headed cross-country through a juniper forest along the gentle summit ridge. On top of Peak 6631, the range high point, I found a register – Bob Martin, Barbara Lilley and Gordon MacLeod had signed in before me, good company indeed.
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