Summit Classics

SUMMIT CLASSICS WINTER CLIMBS IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA SUMMIT CLASSICS

"The body roams the mountains; and the spirit is set free." Hsu Hsia-k'o, circa AD. 700 There is no better place to begin a winter rock climbing pilgrimage than Arizona's seldom-traveled desert outback of serrated mountains and cactus-studded bajadas. Of the six major mountain ranges that occupy the area west of Phoenix within the Gila River-Centennial Wash-Colorado River triangle, one stands out in my mind as a classic: the 3300-foot-high Eagletail Mountains. The jagged igneous ridgeline gnashes its way out of the fertile Harquahala Plain like a row of wolf's teeth ripping through the fleece of a spring lamb. This is a range where prehistoric legends were no doubt made, for adorning the headdress of Eagletail Peak are three freestanding "feathers."

Other heights with special appeal are the Kofa Mountains' Signal and Squaw peaks, Weavers Needle in the Superstitions, Four Peaks northeast of Phoenix, and Baboquivari Peak southwest of Tucson.

These summits are not the most difficult challenges the Sonoran Desert offers.

From a technical rock-climbing stand-point, they are among the region's easier climbs. What these classic heights have in common is that they require some rudimentary route-finding and rock-climbing skills (there is no trail to the top), and the ultimate reward is well worth the effort: you perch not on another nameless rock wall but at the very top of a freestanding mountain peak.

It is a spring-warm January morning when my climbing partner, Randy Mulkey, and I eagerly head cross-country from our truck toward the east face of Eagletail Peak. There is a standard approach to the summit, we're sure of it. But without a route description to go by, we spend several fruitless hours trying to ascend a near-vertical gully that looks as if it leads directly to the summit's rock "feathers."

We celebrate our successful retreat with a gourmet snack, then doze in the brilliant winter sun like a couple of fat chuck-wallas. When the clackety-clack of stones falling from above awakens us, we scram-ble up a long ramp on the west side of the peak in hope of catching a glimpse of a desert bighorn sheep. Not a chance.

By three o'clock, we've traced a series of interconnecting gullies to the base of the north feather. Except for a belay bolt, there is little sign that anyone else has ever been here. This headband of monumental feathers is indeed a forgotten world. We decide to make an exposed scramble to the base of the south feather -and from there to the top of it.

The actual climb up the south feather's sixty-foot chimney is almost an after-thought. In fact, the south feather is the most solid piece of rock we've encountered anywhere on this mountain. Still, from my belay ledge, I'm only willing to place my hand on the summit two feet above me, for fear my weight on this volcanic serac may cause it to avalanche to the desert floor 1500 feet below.

I belay Mulkey up. He too places his hand on the summit and calls it good; then he gropes around and finds the summit register. It's an old aluminum 35mm film canister, and in it are the year and the names of the first known ascent party: 1977: Chris Beal, Bruce Grubbs, and Larry Trieber. [The author photo-graphed the climber atop the south feather -pages 38-39-at a later date. ED.] It is getting late, and Mulkey hastily begins his rappel. But the wind begins to blow hard, until his belay rope is almost horizontal. Best to wait. We crouch down and take a moment to peer at the golden, dust-laden horizon to the west.

COMING YOUR WAY IN THE MONTHS AHEAD

Arizona Highways returns to red rock country with a close-up look at beautiful Sedona, a photographic tour of dramatic Oak Creek Canyon, and a hike along the famed West Fork of Oak Creek. We also take a trip back in time along one of Arizona's early thoroughfares, the Stoneman Road. On a different front, we report on one of the latest advances in range management: goat ranching. In March.

Take the scenic high road to adventure as we travel U.S. Route 89 from border to border by way of the lens of one of the magazine's superb photographers, James Tallon, and a lively text by best-selling Travel Arizona author Joseph Stocker. We celebrate Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument's fiftieth anniversary in this issue, too, and visit the Phoenix Zoo as well as the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's latest attraction: a mountain habitat. Finally, we take you back-road traveling to some of the finest ghost towns in southern Arizona - via mountain bike. In April.

Meet Arizona's own environmental genius, Carl Hodges, and discover the wonders of controlled-environment agriculture, desalting seawater with solar power, and development of a biosphere that may be a prototype for man's first colony on Mars. It's science on the cutting edge, and it's happening now at the University of Arizona's Environmental Research Laboratory. Plus much more. In May.

SHARE THE ARIZONA ADVENTURE: Start or give an Arizona Highways subscription. Use enclosed order card or call today: (602) 258-1000.

By popular demand, Arizona Highways has once again republished this nostalgic guide to Arizona first distributed one year after statehood. A compact 5¼ by 95/8 inches in size, the 1913 Arizona Tour Book is 200 pages of entertaining and informative text, maps, and advertisements describing Arizona's dreams and adventures. And dozens of pictures show scenes across the state, including mining activity, horse-drawn wagons, and delightful high-wheeled cars traveling the narrow dirt roads. Order your copy of this collector's treasure today. Hardcover. $9.95 The 1913 Arizona Tour Book may be ordered through the attached order form or by writing to Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona 85009. Phone orders may be placed by calling (602) 258-1000 or dialing toll free within Arizona 1-800-543-5432.

1913 Arizona Tour Book

Across this outback, the ancestral lands of the western Yavapai, we see no sign of civilization. But we can pick out the Little Horn Mountains, another refuge of the desert bighorn, and the conglomeration of the Kofas, which harbor the next classic climb we'll attempt. Assuming, of course, we're not blown off here before dark. The castle-crowned cliffs comprising the west face of 4877-foot Kofa Mountain, known today as Signal Peak, lead to the top of a massive buttress of great globs, rotten spires, and frozen-molten humps of lava, schist, granite, and shale that has mushroomed out of the desert floor like a nuclear batch of chocolate.

It's 11:15 A.M. when Mulkey and I climb out the head of Palm Canyon toward the summit of Signal Peak, angling to the south of Cliff Canyon. By following this direct route, we hope to reconnoiter the entire 663,700-acre Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and return by nightfall.

We top out on the century-plantcovered ridge of Signal Peak around 1:30 P.M. and scan the eastern horizon. It's a jumbled mass of seemingly impassable cliffs and impenetrable box canyons; but poking out of all the geological confusion is the single withered finger of the Kofas, 4416-foot-high Squaw Peak. In the soft winter light, it looks like a holograph of Weavers Needle in the Superstitions. It is the classic of the Kofas.

The following week, Mulkey and I return with another climber, Pat Orozco, to find the standard approach to the summit pitches of Squaw Peak. Several sheep trails zigzag up a steep slope cov-ered with a dense growth of grama grass, an important food for the estimated 800 desert bighorn sheep that thrive in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.

The three of us rope up at the top of the talus and one by one negotiate a short chimney filled with Spanish bayonets (yucca)-climbing as though we're traversing a vertical pincushion.

When the sun finally punches through the gun-metal-gray cloud cover, we reach the base of what we assume is the second pitch. The way ahead does not look pleasant, and Mulkey isn't any more amused with the crumbly unprotected route he is leading than Orozco is with the rusty World War II piton she's "anchored" to. When Randy yells, "Off belay, Pat!" an hour later, she lets common sense overrule her urge to stand atop this ver-quite another door in the corridor of our journey. We are, as author Alan Watts once wrote, "cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown" on the north ridge of Four Peaks. Mulkey leads up into the mist while I play out the rope. But any romantic notions we have of ascending through the clouds into the heavens are quickly dispelled when he tries turning the overhang above. Technically, we are on an easy route called The Lady Bug, first climbed in 1969 by Phoenicians Chuck Graf, Bob Graf, and Bruce Grubbs. But this slick Mazatzal quartzite is covered with lichen and dripping with condensing moisture. What we've assumed should be a romp in the park is now making us consider just scrambling up the standard gully route that tops out on Browns Peak and calling it a day. But Randy yells down that he is too strung out above his last anchor to safely reverse any of the greasy moves he's just sweated up. So he presses on, quietly, until I can no longer make out his figure through the cloud cover. "Off belay!" he yells at last, signaling he is anchored in and ready to belay Orozco up. "What's it look like up there?" I shout back. "I don't know; I can't see a thing!" He is right. An hour later, I join Orozco and Mulkey, grateful I haven't led the first pitch. Randy hands me the gear rack, and I lead up the next pitch, determined to

SUMMIT CLASSICS

climb fast enough to get us off before dark. But visibility is now limited to my fingertips, and searching for handholds is like feeling for rocks in a bin full of cotton. Nor is there any visual reference to the ground. It's as if I am climbing through my own dream of climbing this mountain.

Three pitches later, we reach the summit. The clouds part, but only long enough for a glimpse of the Superstitions to the south and what we think are the McDowell Mountains to the west. Then, without warning, the clouds literally erupt in billowy orange flames. The sun is going down. We are spellbound by the light, riveted where we stand, and cannot move until the last flickering tint of this fireorange “smoke” completely dissipates with the setting sun. Only then do we begin our rappel down through the dark swirling mist toward camp.

To the Tohono O'odham (Papago) Indians, 7730-foot Baboquivari Peak is the supernal dwelling place of l'itoi-a deity who sought refuge from his enemies in a labyrinthine cave located within the heart of this sacred mountain.

For Randy Mulkey and me, Baboquivari Peak is the only place to end our pilgrimage to Arizona's classic summits; any climb to its top is promptly eclipsed by the view from this bald granite dome. When we reach the summit, after a fivepitch climb up the southeast arete, the world is at our feet; as far as we can see, in whatever direction we look, civilization holds its breath while the earth speaks. Immediately to the south, the fifteen-mile-long southern crest of the Baboquivari Range undulates its way into old Mexico. To the east, row upon row of southern Arizona's “sky islands” face us like a series of great sea waves. To the west is the vast land of the Tohono O'odham, first crossed by runners on their biannual journeys to the Gulf of California for salt and spiritual renewal. Later, in 1600, it was traversed by Juan Mateo Manje, a lieutenant of the explorer-priest Eusebio Francisco Kino, who described Baboquivari as a “tall castle, situated on top of a high peak, for which reason we call it Noah's Ark.” And still later, in the 1800s, it was traveled by hundreds of prospectors who marched in the footsteps of Kino on El Camino del Diablo to the California goldfields.

In Mountains of the World, authormountaineer John Cleare writes: “Mankind has never been indifferent to the mountains which have always marked his horizons. Usually the emotions the high places engendered have been strongeither those of repulsion or of awe.”Standing on the summit of Baboquivari, I realize my good fortune in having climbed some of the mountains that have long marked my own horizons; they in turn have marked me with a sense of both wonder and awe. And in the dwelling place of deities, a mere mortal couldn't ask for more.

John Annerino is a free-lance photojournalist whose work has appeared in Life and Fortune magazines. He is also the coauthor of the soon-tobe-released Arizona Highways book Outdoors in Arizona-A Guide to Hiking and Backpacking.

Selected Reading

Basic Rockcraft, by Royal Robbins, La Siesta, Glendale, California, 1971.

Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, by the Mountaineers, Seattle, 1984.

Fifty Classic Climbs in North America, by Steve Roper and Allen Steck, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1979.

ARIZONIQUES

Something of an almanac, a sampler, a calendar, and a guide to places, events, and people unique to Arizona and the Southwest.

HIGHLAND HОНОКАМ

Workers installing long distance telephone lines have unearthed thousandyear-old jewelry and artifacts from an Indian ruin north of Tucson. The line crew discovered the Hohokam village near Oracle Junction more than a year ago, but the find was not publicized to prevent the illegal removal of historically valuable ancient artifacts.

The site is thought to have been established around A.D. 900 and inhabited for 300 to 500 years. According to Rick Effland of Archaeological Consulting Services, which supervised the dig, the mile-square settlement was unusual because of its location in the foothills. Most Hohokam sites have been discovered in river valleys. "That's where we've known the Hohokam the best," Effland said.

IN FEBRUARY...

... 1912, on Valentine's Day, Arizona became the forty-eighth United State. ... 1918, the Graham County sheriff and a three-man posse attempted a dawn arrest of brothers Tom and John Powers for alleged draft evasion. They killed the brothers' father in an ambush, and the brothers killed the sheriff and two of the posse, then escaped into Mexico. In pursuit rode 3000 men. The brothers eventually surrendered and were convicted of murder. They were paroled in 1960. The incident was responsible for Arizona's largest manhunt, its longest prison terms served, and the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1918. ... 1919, the United States Congress created Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona.

UNPRECEDENTED DISTINCTION

Scottsdale's Parada del Sol Rodeo has honored artist Kenneth M. Freeman for an unprecedented third time in the rodeo's thirty-four year history by selecting another of his paintings for the 1987 Parada del Sol poster. Proceeds from sales (five dollars for posters, sixty-five dollars for signed prints) go to selected charities. This year's final performance of the Parada del Sol is February 1. For rodeo ticket information or to order posters and prints, telephone 990-3179.

TRAVELIN' THE STATEHOOD TRAIL

The year was 1912. The rate at the Commercial Hotel in Phoenix was a dollar a night; the high school graduated thirty-one boys and seventeen girls. And, eighty miles east, in the copper mining town of Miami, the speed limit was six miles per hour.

It was during that same year that Arizona achieved statehood. Since then things have changed dramatically, but you can experience a little of what life was like back then by visiting the mobile exhibit "Travelin' the Statehood Trail," funded by Valley National Bank and Bashas' Markets.

Housed in two forty-foot vans, the handicapped-accessible exhibit assembled by Exhibitgroup of Phoenix features memorabilia, photography, art, and special effects showing Arizona life at the turn of the century. Travelin' the Statehood Trail will travel to forty locations throughout Arizona. For information, telephone 261-1267.

BOOKSHELF PAPER MEDICINE MAN: JOHN GREGORY BOURKE AND HIS AMERICAN WEST, by Joseph C. Porter. University of Oklahoma Press, 1005 Asp Avenue, Norman, ΟΚ 73019. 1986. 352 pages. $29.95, hardcover, plus $1.50 postage and bandling.

The telescope of biography sometimes fails to focus on a brilliant star. John Gregory Bourke died in 1896 after an atypical Army career of thirty-four years. He lied about his age, joined the Union Army at the age of sixteen, and served as an enlisted man during the Civil War. Then, upon his discharge, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He led a heroic and productive life, making monumental military, cultural, and scientific contributions to society. Yet a worthy biography of this unique man has never appeared until now. Joseph C. Porter has focused the telescope at last.

Graduating from West Point in 1869, Bourke served on the western frontier from Montana to Mexico and engaged in the Indian wars against the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Chiricahua Apaches. He was regarded as a fearless fighter. He also was an intellectual, and his frequent contact with Indians concentrated his attention on their ways of life, religious ceremonies, and values. Early in his career as an officer, he began keeping a daily field journal of his observations of Indian culture. These extensive notes proved a treasury of ethnology and served as a rich reservoir of information for his many books and articles. His devotion to his field notes both amused and intrigued the Indians themselves. The Apaches called Bourke "Paper Medicine Man," and the Sioux dubbed him "Ink Man."

PAPER MEDICINE MAN

The author of this definitive biography of Bourke is the curator of Western American history and ethnology at the Joslyn Art Museum's Center for Western Studies in Omaha, Nebraska. He received his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. Joseph Porter is one of those all-too-rare individuals who demonstrate twin talents for impeccable research and excellent writing. These gifts, disciplined by objectivity, make Paper Medicine Man a most rewarding experience for the reader. Porter discusses the anger and bitterness that seized Bourke toward the end of his life. While he was no stranger to the violent clashes of cultures, he did not subscribe to the dead Indian-good Indian thesis so prevalent at the time. He had developed into a well-recognized ethnologist and cultural anthropologist. This intellectual inquiry, while it offered understanding and pointed the path to peace, hampered his military career. Some of Bourke's superior officers recognized the value of his studies and offered him time to work in the nation's libraries and archives. When Major John Wesley Powell became director of the Bureau of Ethnology upon its creation in 1879, he welcomed Bourke as a major contributor to both the bureau and the Anthropological Society of Washington.

From the distance of a century, Joseph C. Porter has given us a remarkable portrait of a man of quality. John Gregory Bourke has withstood the test of history.

Porter has enhanced his text with eleven color plates, twenty-five black and white illustrations, six maps, supplemental notes, and an index. The University of Oklahoma Press again has shown itself a major publisher in the field of Western Americana.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT: WILDERNESS WRITINGS, by Theodore Roosevelt. Gibbs M. Smith Inc., Peregrine Smith Books, P. O. Box 667, Layton, UT 84041. 1986. 292 pages. $5.95, softcover, plus $1.50 postage and handling.

Today, sixty-eight years after his death, most Americans still think of the twenty-sixth President of the United States as the Big Stick diplomat with an insatiable lust for life. He was that, and much more. Few perhaps recall that Roosevelt was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, or that he pioneered wilderness conser-vation. He appointed a national conservation commission headed by Gifford Pinchot. This single act served as a stimulus for other conservation movements, both public and private.

Roosevelt first went into the wilderness for what he considered its only offerings: hunting, adventure, exploration. His conversion to proclaiming its intrinsic value became a driving force.

This volume, a sensitive selection of his writings edited by Paul Schullery, provides insight regarding a man many Americans never really knew. From a hunter of magnificent animals evolved a birdwatcher and a defender of spiritual values to be found only in the wilderness.