Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

January 1, 2022

823m

Quartzsite, AZ

Elephant Back Mountain is one of those small, but officially-named summits that does not boast any mountaineering interest. The peak might appear innocent, but covered in chollas and choss. In fact, this was probably the worst peak that Adam and I tagged in this Christmas-New Year trip. Earlier in the day we had scrambled Dos Picachos based of “no beta”. We were quite satisfied but the day was still young and we noticed the name “Elephant Back Mountain” on the maps. We figured that to add this summit into the day wouldn’t cost more than 2 extra hours. The decision was made to make a direct dash from the bottom of Dos Picachos towards Elephant Back Mountain.

My original plan was to stay more-or-less on the connecting ridge but that involved at least two or three minor bumps. We descended too far off Dos Picachos’ north slope and from our current position the better option was to descend even further to link up several washes. Adam led most of the way since I had very little motivation about this add-on summit. To link up those washes we had to scramble up and over a few ridges with a lot of side-hilling. Upwards again the terrain on the south slopes of Elephant Back Mountain felt like those loose, volcanic type of choss covered in chollas and other types of thorny plants. Wearing trail-runners started to seem like a non-ideal decision but we also wouldn’t want to carry boots for such a lame objective. Thankfully the slog to the summit was not a notably long one.

The summit was again, quite windy so we quickly started the descent. I said we should make a straight beeline towards the vehicle to minimize the distance. The descent off the east slopes was just as shitty with lots of loose rocks. There was even one cliff band that forced us to backtrack slightly. We eventually descended into some washes and the washes eventually brought us back to the deactivated mining road only minutes from the vehicle. Adam then carefully drove us out of the dirt roads and our next destination was the gas station in New Hope, about half an hour to the east.