On Friday, March 17th of 2006, a wonderful thing happened – a group of friends assembled in the Sonoran desert, camped for the night and the next day climbed a mountain together. Not that such a thing hasn’t happened before, but this was a special circumstance. Allow me to explain.

My wife and I left Tucson around 11:00 AM and had a nice drive to the village of Hickiwan on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. That took two hours, all on pavement. The weather was perfect – clear, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. The temperature was about 70 degrees F. We expected an easy 30-minute drive on good dirt roads from there to our campsite. However, much to our surprise, immediately upon leaving the pavement we encountered a huge puddle across the road. We realized that while Tucson had received 0.28″ of rainfall one week earlier, this area must have received much more. This was further evidenced by very deep ruts in the still-soft mud in parts of the road. It appeared that vehicles had driven through when there must have been a lot of standing water. It was so bad that even in four-wheel-drive, we didn’t want to tempt fate by trying to drive through the worst of it. We drove into the adjoining desert around the really bad spots, as others had done before us. Thankfully, we made it through without incident, but we were worried about our friends who would be joining us later.

We stopped briefly at the abandoned village of Emika and examined some fallen-down stone buildings, one of which looked like it had been a church.

A short drive on better roads from there took us to our pre-arranged camping spot. We parked and started to get set up for the night. Within half an hour, another vehicle arrived. It was Dave Jurasevich, his wife En Lee and their kids Rachel and Aaron – they had driven in all the way from Alhambra, California! Soon after that, Mike and Deidre from Tucson pulled up. By then, we had gathered a lot of firewood. We ate dinner and sat around a roaring campfire. The night was cool and clear, and we had a lot of fun making s’mores.

Exactly at 8:00 PM, another vehicle pulled into camp. It was Andy Martin from Tucson. He had said he’d be there by eight o’clock, and you could have set your watch by his arrival. We were especially happy to see Andy, because we knew he’d have to Martinize this one. He drove a Honda sedan, low-slung compared to these 4wd pickups and Mike’s van, and we were worried that he would never be able to negotiate the huge ruts in the road. We should have known better! Andy is famous for driving that car into places where mere mortals fear to go, therefore the expression “to Martinize” a climb. He joined us around the campfire and we all visited for a while, but soon headed off to sleep.

The next morning dawned cool and breezy. As we were all eating and getting our packs ready, into camp rolled another vehicle. It was Andy Bates from Tucson, and his parents Ron and Mary Jo. We all said our hellos and finished getting ready. Finally, at around 8:00 o’clock we headed out on foot directly from camp. My wife and Deidre stayed behind to keep an eye on things.

The first two miles were fairly flat going, with the exception of several deeply eroded washes which we had to cross. Then we started to climb the actual slopes of the mountain. It took a full three hours from camp to reach the summit of Peak 3930. On top, it was cold and windy. We took several group photos and shared a bottle of sparkling cider to celebrate. Andy Martin left us and headed west in a large clockwise loop along the ridgetop. He wanted to climb Sauceda Benchmark, the range high point. He did so successfully and arrived back at camp only an hour after the rest of us.

In the above photo you can see our group – they are, from left to right:

Aaron Jurasevich; Rachel Jurasevich; Dave Jurasevich; En Lee Jurasevich; the Desert Mountaineer; Mike Byers (kneeling); Andy Bates; Mary Jo Bates; Ron Bates; Andy Martin.

Not shown are our photographers: Deidre Byers and Dottie Kasian

Well, it was over. All 401 of my climbing objectives on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation had now been climbed. We returned to camp in a total round-trip time of six hours. We celebrated with cake and champagne and then said our goodbyes.

Not counting this final climb, there were eleven different partners whose company I had enjoyed over the years to complete this project. I have listed each of them, starting with the number of the climbs they did with me:

ONE – Dottie Kasian; John Vitz; Mark Nichols                                                                     TWO- Richard Carey; Mark Adrian                                                                           FOUR – Andy Bates, who put together the list of TOIR peaks in the first place. Many thanks, Andy, for all of the high-quality work you put into creating that list.                 FIVE – Andy Martin                                                                                                     SEVEN – Nathaniel Harvey (an O’odham from the village of Choulic on the reservation, who helped me with the climbs of the Arizona range highpoints back in the summer of 1989.)                                                                                                                   FIFTEEN – Brian Rundle, who travelled from Chicago to climb with me.                 TWENTY -Dave Jurasevich, who really got me going on this project by suggesting that we climb all of the Hills high points on the reservation back in January of 2001.               TWENTY-FOUR – Mike Byers from Tucson. Thank you, Mike, for accompanying me on so many climbs in the Hickiwan District during the final months.

The above numbers show that I enjoyed company on 75 of the peaks – the remaining 326 were climbed solo.

Additional thanks goes to three of these climbers. They led technical climbs, and without their leadership and skills I would not have finished the project. They are:

Andy Bates, who led two climbs in the Castle Mountains and almost got us up the Ugly Sister too.

Dave Jurasevich, who almost got me up Peak 2650 on the Mexican border in November, 2005.

Brian Rundle, who made two trips from Chicago. In November of 2003, he led an amazing climb up Peak 6328 in the Baboquiviri Mountains. Later on (February 12, 2006) he led us up Peak 6300 (affectionately known as “The Ugly Sister”) right next to Peak 6328. Both were dramatic climbs, each requiring a night out high on the peak. I have published on this website a write-up of Brian’s on each of these peaks – they are outstanding, and I cannot thank him enough for the high-quality job he did on these. Brian also led me to the top of a peak we refer to as Border Monument 153 (Peak 2650), a crazy-dangerous peak sitting exactly on the Mexican Border.

Here are a few statistics for the entire project:

Number of peaks climbed                                            401

Number of trips needed                                               150

Number of days on the reservation                             173

Number of nights camped out                                       30

Number of miles driven                                          37,500

Number of vertical feet climbed                            352,770

Number of miles on foot                                            1,008

I am grateful to all of you who participated in this with me. Additional thanks to the Tohono O’odham Police, the Tohono O’odham Rangers, U.S. Customs and Immigration, and especially the U.S. Border Patrol.