I finally made it up Gavilan Peak

Gavilan is a very pointy sort of peak just north-east of Anthem, kind of in the middle of the loosely affiliated area that calls itself "New River". Everybody who drives by it has to look at it; most folks say that they might like to "hike" it, but nobody ever does.

I mean, I've never met anyone who's actually done it, but I've met people who say that they've met people who've done it - but not many of them.

And when I say that I "finally" made it, I'll point out here that my friend Arnie has lived at the bae of Gavilan for thirteen years, and hadn't made it up there yet. But he finally made it to the summit:


                      

He seems to be pretty tickled right now, but there were places along the way where I suspect that Arnie was really questioning the wisdom of following a crazy Cherokee up the side of a rock.

There aren't any established trails - I would have said, before, that "there are no trails" but it turns out that there are, indeed, trails up the mountain - at least, pieces of trails, here and there. So when we made the decision that we wanted to try to summit this sporing, Arnie did the research - took pictures from all angles so that we could figure out an approach, and in doing so found the route that would get the SUV as far up the mountain as possible.

Gavilan is a strange peak, as there are three types of surface on it -

1) Slopes that aren't too steep to maintain soil
2) Sheer rock faces
3) Talus fields.

The first type is the type that can be walked on -however, unless there is a trail, you're walking through Arizona flora, and - as Silas says - in Arizona, when you bushwhack, the bushes whack back. So you can expect to give up some blood if you're walking through areas without established trails.

The second type, the sheer rock faces, are the second choice - and the faces at Gavilan were such that we didn't require technical gear. Anything that we needed to climb, we could free climb; in fact, there were some outcroppings that I went ahead and free-climbed anyway, just for fun, like one here at the saddle¹ -

                          

Arnie doesn't have a rock-climbing background, but he didn't even slow down - he just hauled himself up whatever rock face came up in front of us (I actually had to talk him around one face, which would have been a friction climb - doable in climbing shoes, but suicide in hiking boots :)

(note to self - get Arnie a harness and shoes, most riki-tiki, before he kills himself :)

The route in turned out to be .52 miles by my GPS, with a bit over 800 feet of vertical - were that all walking, it would be a 30% + grade, but of course you can't walk up a 30% grade, so a good bit of it was, indeed, face climbing. It took just under 90 minute to get to the summit, but it took longer to get back down, because Arnie had lost his wife's binoculars on the way up - so we had to keep backtracking on the way back down to see if we could find them (Death by cactus or dehydration was one thing; but Arnie figured that going home without the binoculars would be even worse. We didn't find 'em, but Arnie was so depleted when he got home that Gloria was going to have to wait for him to rest up before she could pummel him).

It was a pretty nice hike, and it was a great day for it; I'll probably do it again someday.

But the main thing is that now, I do know somebody who's climbed Gavilan Peak :)


¹ - huh? what is that? Is it just my monitor or does it look like I'm wearing orange ear muffs? Well, those bright-orange balls are actually just my ears, backlit by the Arizona sun. Okay, that's it - I'm getting the surgery done. I'm tired of looking like an ugly pale Will Smith :)