What a day! It had started normally enough – Jake had showed up at my place at 2:30, but PM this time instead of our crazy AM starts that we had been doing all summer. My truck loaded, we headed out and by 4:00 PM had left the pavement. From Big Horn, an abandoned house on the side of the freeway, it is an insane bone-jarring drive 12 miles to the southwest across the grain to the old Papago Indian Chief Mine. Up and down through endless gullies, it took just over an hour to do that, then more time to reach a camping spot by 5:30. It was a nice flat spot, way off the beaten path (or so we thought).

We unloaded our gear and settled in. It wasn’t the 90-degree heat that was so bad, it was the humidity. The area had recently seen a lot of late-monsoon rainfall and you could really feel it. The bugs loved it too, and pestered us non-stop. Those are two things we rarely experience in the desert – bugs and humidity – but both were there in spades that evening.

We heated some soup for dinner – that was a mistake, it made us feel even hotter. A couple of cold beers each relaxed us, though, and we sat back to enjoy the sunset.

Just as the light was fading, a bit after seven, Jake called out to me. I looked to where he was pointing and saw the figure of a man standing a hundred feet away. What the hell – way out here? He was calling out one word, “comida”, which means “food”. He appeared to be alone, but his sudden appearance had caught us off guard. He came closer, and I asked him a few times where the others were. He said he was alone, all alone – his companions had been apprehended by the Border Patrol several days earlier.

Picture this – a Hispanic man, mid-20s, slight build, dressed in camouflage shirt and pants, camo wide-brimmed hat, brown shoes. No backpack of any kind, only the clothes on his back, and a black plastic water jug, maybe 1 1/2 gallons, of the kind border-crossers often carry. Although we felt sorry for the guy, we were still concerned that there could be others nearby. We didn’t want to take any chances, so didn’t encourage him to stick around. He said his goal was to reach Phoenix, still a hundred miles distant. We gave him some food and he reached around behind his back for something – our first reaction was that he might be reaching for a weapon, but no, he pulled out a wallet. He took out some U.S. cash and offered it to me, but I refused. I asked him if he had water and he said yes.

Pointing out the road right in front of us, I told him that la migra often drove the road and in fact would be along soon, and that he should probably keep moving. He was fine with that, saying that he traveled by night anyway. How he could do that on a moonless night was amazing to us. The land was creased by countless gullies and studded with an infinite number of cacti which could cause you no end of pain. Jake and I were astonished that he or anyone else could travel safely in this unforgiving land in such inky blackness – we knew that we couldn’t do it. We told him that, if he traveled steadily, he could reach the highway by morning. “Vaya con Dios” were our final words to him as he continued al norte.

Luis (the traveler’s name) really gave us something to talk about. After he left, we sat there in the dark, wondering about every little sound we heard in the night. At one point, we heard a vehicle off in the distance to the north and figured it was probably our friend Andy arriving at last, but no dice. He could easily navigate in the dark by map and GPS to find us. Around 8:00 PM, we clearly heard a vehicle a short distance to the east, and voices as well, but that too faded away into the night. It was all starting to seem a bit like the Blair Witch Project.

Now more ill-at-ease than ever, we talked in hushed tones, wondering what was to come next. Thank goodness we hadn’t lit a campfire, which would have broadcast our position to whoever was wandering around those parts. Still no sign of Andy. We decided to call it a night and turned in, Jake in his tent and I in the bed of my truck. Around ten, I heard a vehicle approaching and called to Jake to wake up. It took me two tries – he was sleeping soundly and I hated to wake him. As the lights approached, we realized it to be Andy. He pulled into our campsite and parked. It was good to see him – he’d been climbing in the Sauceda Mountains all day. We brought him up to speed on all the crazy happenings, then went back to bed. After all, we were here to climb and had an early start ahead of us. Andy slept on top of the shell on his pickup, under the stars. Between his snoring and mine, it’s a wonder Jake got any sleep at all.

That alarm sure went off early. By the time we ate and locked everything inside the vehicles, it was 6:10 AM as we headed out at first light. It wasn’t a long walk over to our first peak – we had camped in close proximity to give ourselves an easy start to our day. There were 5 things we wanted to climb, all grouped fairly tightly, none very far apart from any other. As soon as we started climbing, though, we found ourselves soaked in sweat, the humidity was so great. Each of us carried five quarts for the day.

The first peak had intrigued us – seen from camp, the summit looked sharp. As we got close to it, on its north side, we saw a large cave undercutting the summit block.

Circling around to the south, it was an easy scramble to the top of Peak 2608. With no sign of any previous visit, we left a register. It’s not going to take much for the highest part to collapse with a bit more erosion in the cave. In fact, the whole summit was very precarious. In the next photo, the empty space of the cave is only two feet under where Andy is sitting.

The next photo is taken from the summit. The shadow of our peak stretches across the desert floor, with Slag on the left and Jack in the Pulpit on the right.

One down. An easy but loose scramble took us down the south slope to a saddle, en route passing an unusual cliff – rock climbers would have a ball on it.

We sweated our way up from the saddle to a ridge, where there were two contenders for its highest spot. Welcome to Point 2740. We trudged over to the western bump – it appeared the higher, so we left a register, then made our way over to the eastern.

Jake mentioned that the small red fruits on the pincushion cactus were edible, calling them “desert strawberries”, so we started eating them when we found them. They were sweet and tasty, but scarce – you could look for a week and not gather a pound – meager fare indeed if you had to survive on them.

Leaving this ridge at its east end, we soon ran into some steep rock. Andy, our rock climber, chose to downclimb it, while Jake and I took an easier way around.

In a short while, we met again at a saddle. There, a steep slope rose above us leading to our biggest peak of the day, steep enough that much of it was climbed in the shade. The summit of this one, Peak 2849, was broad and quite flat. By the time we were done with our register on this, unclimbed like the others, it was 9:40 AM, 3 1/2 hours since we had left camp.

Of the three of us, I guess I was the only one who wanted to climb one farther south – Andy wasn’t interested at all, Jake was so-so. Andy said he’d meet us near another peak to the east across the valley, so we all started down the loose, cliff-riddled south slope. When we were most of the way down, Jake decided to accompany me while Andy went his own way. Making our way over to, then south along, a large wash, we climbed part of the way up a slope. Jake then waited for me in the shade of a cliff. God, was it hot, so much so I almost felt sick. It was the work of a few short minutes to reach the top of Point 2500 and just after eleven when I left a register, then dropped back down to Jake.

We headed down the mountainside to the wash. There were a lot of clouds building up, and we appreciated the bits of shade – we agreed that we wouldn’t even mind if we got rained on, anything to cool us off. Heading east, we found an old road and walked it for a while, then left it and continued cross-country over ridges and through gullies. At around noon, together we let out a mighty holler, “Andy!”. He replied right away, and we spotted him atop our next peak.

It had been raining a bit, but by now it had clouded over completely. As we started up the slope, it started to rain hard. Thunder was rolling in the distance, nothing so close as to be alarming, but as the rain started pouring down, Jake and I got separated. I waited out the worst of it in the lee of an outcrop on the ridge proper, then during a lull I walked the last bit over to the summit. Jake was there, and so was Andy, who had stripped down to his shorts and was enjoying the cold rain.

The rain stopped and we got busy with the usual duties – register, photos, something to eat. What a difference a few minutes had made! The sky had become completely overcast, with dark, brooding clouds threatening.

Jake had been hoping for years to see a desert tortoise in its natural habitat, and his wish came true there on the top of Peak 2660. It was quite a surprise to see one on the very top of a mountain.

It was probably one o’clock when we started down, but didn’t get far when another squall hit us, with strong winds and buckets of rain. By the time we hit the desert floor, we were soaked to the arse – the water squished in our boots as we trod along. Two and a half miles later, we reached our camp. The rain had picked up again, and we stripped off our wet clothes and changed into dry. It pinned us down in the truck cabs for a while, then let up and we convoyed out of there, driving 4 miles west along the  remote road. When Jake and I stopped for the night, Andy left us and drove back to Phoenix. We set out our gear to dry and enjoyed another great desert sunset.

The rest of the day, we took it easy. Once it got dark, the bugs vanished, but it was still plenty humid. After a good night’s sleep, we drove to a spot farther east and parked in a wash. Today, there was only one peak to climb. The morning was plenty warm, but not overly humid, not yet anyway. We set out to the south at 6:35 AM, walking along a broad, sandy wash. It was easy going, and after a while we walked through a gentle saddle, a barely-noticeable change in the direction of the drainage. For the first time, we had a good look at our goal – nothing out of the ordinary. A short while later, we were climbing up the north side of Peak 2324, and there we stood on its summit. What a beautiful spot, surrounded by impressive peaks with really cool names such as Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Blue Plateau and Desolate. And best of the lot, we were east of Slag, a big peak climbed less than three years earlier.

Only a few hundred yards away, at the bottom of the south slope, began a huge swath of flat desert that stretched across the active air-to-ground bombing range. I couldn’t stop staring at it – so forbidden, so mysterious.

We didn’t want to leave, but finally had to – obligations awaited back home. Our return walk to the truck went without incident. On the drive back out, we made a brief stop at the old Papago Indian Chief Mine (you can read more about this historic spot in the story entitled “Round Butte” on this website). After that, all that was left was the awful drive back out to the freeway and then home to Tucson. The Sand Tank Mountains never disappoint, and this trip had been no exception – can’t wait to get back in there.

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