My Journey

[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

Arjan.....those dogs are great ! I love it when other members post their dog pictures. I'm a simple man.....travel, mountains and dogs are all that I seem to need to stay happy....thanks so much for sharing. We've been hanging out in some fairly obscure places.....the nights & mornings have been cold but so worth the sacrifice.....

sburks737.....I know what you mean. I can still remember sitting on the second floor of my office building in my cushy chair staring out the window and thinking how can I get myself out of here. That was over two decades ago for me. Hang in there.....it'll come one day.....



Next for us was climbing in the Mustang Mountain Range.....a small mountain range to the southeast of Tucson, Arizona.....



We accessed the mountain range from the west taking a dual track sandy, rutted road to the base of the mountain chain. After passing through several metal gates we finally reached what I thought was our starting point (this climb would be complete bushwacking.....no trailhead).....



Unfortunately we took the wrong road in and it was now 10:00 a.m so too late to start all over. Well, there was a peak to the north of us and several to the south.....so we chose to climb the northern peak and headed up North West Dome (6,145').....




I no longer remember how long this route was, the elevation gain or the time it took to summit.....I do know that it was a challenging climb.....




We climbed up the south facing wall of the mountain so I'm guessing that the fact that the sun shined on it all day kept this south facing wall hot & dry cause the thorny plants thrived here.....



The pictures don't do much justice to the difficulty of the climb.....again, there was no route (trail), it was absolutely covered in cactus, and it was steep enough to make it challenging.....



Close to the summit we had to make our way through some significant rock walls.....



Tanner led the way.....sometimes a good thing.....sometimes not.....

 

[YukonMontanaTannerTrapper]

Much of the stone was covered in a green moss (?) like plant.....shown here with the shadow of a world famous climbing dog.....



There was an antenna on the summit.....very small so not sure what it could have been for. In addition I found tons of old rusted cans strewned about.....obviously they'd been here for years.....



To the south I could see the highest peak that we had initially planned to climb that day (as well as several other prominent peaks).....

The highest peak in the background is called the Mustang Mountains High Point (6,469').....

The peak to the left is called Mustang Peak (6,317').....

The peak in the forefront is called UN 6199 (6,199')....

***We would eventually climb two of these peaks.....



I took photographs from the summit.....looking north, east, south (shown above) and finally west.....





From the summit I could see that the route we took was not the best route to use so on the way down we took the much gentler sloping east face down.....



There was much less cactus here and only a few small cliff bands to work around.....



Of course this made the day a bit longer cause now we had to hike around the mountain and through a valley and back around to the Jeep that was on the west side of the mountain.....we took a rest under a Mesquite tree (?) along the mountains' eastern slope.....



Fortunately we found trails in the valley that had been troddened down by the cattle so we made fairly quick work of it.....and another fun day in the mountains was had.....