Distance: 4.06 miles (Garmin 600 track on DeLorme map)
Elevation: 981 ft. (4823-5804’). 1251 ft. accumulated gain including all ups and downs.
Hiking Time: 9:02 AM to 1:35 PM (4 hrs., 33 min.)
Significance: Petroglyphs, scenic vistas, but badly overgrown with prickly shrubbery. There is no designated trail.
I'm no fan of bushwhacking through thorny brush, but this was a worthwhile hike to a mountain side void of official hiking trails. This was a trek to an old Apache look-out cave with petroglyphs and a stone in front of the cave, with mysterious etchings on it that allegedly was pre-Columbus. I wanted to see this. Getting to this small cave was the real battle. Thicker clothes and gloves should have been required as we fought off ocotillo, low mesquite, prickly pear, shin daggers and very uneven and rocky ground.
Rod led this hike. SteveS, Kent and Stephanie (who turned around due to the bad road conditions) Bill and I were members. I kept the dogs at home due to the terrain and heat and I'm glad I did so. It reached 84F. I drove with Bill in his high-clearance pick-up.
Entrance to this small mountain range is off SR 82 and a gated dirt road following powerlines through State Trust Land. One can see ranches in the distance. Cows grazed off the road. The gate is not locked, so we had to stop the truck, get out to unlatch the gate, and resume our drive on a very badly rutted road for a few miles. This was my first time here and had to watch Rod in front of us.
Once we got off the powerline dirt road, we were bushwhacking along a low ridge and gullies, using mostly cattle trails. The wash was the easy part, but it was the thick, thorny brush the entire way to the cave. It took us nearly two hours! We also had to crawl under some concertina wire (we think this marked the county line) which caused a few rips in our clothing. Once we got to the base of the nob, we had to follow a narrow game trail to the actual cave. I was disappointed that the etched rock was not in front of the cave. And the cave wasn't deep enough to be a cave, but more of a depression.
https://scontent.fphx1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/14890602_10207046129423768_187284512928429868_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_sid=e007fa&_nc_ohc=nxEP8WHjv0kAX80Lxm7&_nc_ht=scontent.fphx1-2.fna&oh=9cd0adecfdd7f46a2ff886988f1e9c19&oe=5ED2E770&dl=1
The cave was visible from the start, but getting there was not easy. The 3.8 miles (Rod's GPS said 4.06 miles) took us 4.33 hours (!!!) kicked my butt and scratched my arms badly even though I wore jeans and my favorite Royal Robbins long-sleeved shirt. Bill and Rod got more cut up than I did, and SteveS tore up his shirt rather badly. The return hike wasn't any easier, but we found a small saddle with a nice breeze where we rested a second time before returning to our cars and getting briefly stopped by Border Patrol. A helicopter had circled the nob and we assume we had been reported as drug smugglers. An agent was tracking our footprints and asked us to show him our shoes. It was Bill's honeycomb soles that were the trigger.
Bill later said that the etched rock turned out to be a fake placed there years ago as a prank.
http://spotidoc.com/doc/1203012/arizona-runestone-carved-in-phony-old-baltic?fbclid=IwAR3Tzah3_QnB4-yHE58RwIgZFZj5pr62Q3J_jinH8vmoJEif-f7T-qdqtyo
The cave was more of a hole in the mountain side with petroglyphs on its wet sides. The shaded interior gave us some relief, as we took snack breaks here and enjoyed the view. Clouds helped diffuse some of the heat, as we were completely exposed to the sun. Bill didn't wear a hat and Cole forgot his. This was a tough hike and I'm glad I did it, but it's a hike I won't be doing again.
***
Hike Narrative from Rod:
This was going to be a steep, bushwhack climb to the Mustang Mountain’s Rune Cave featured in a 2012 History Channel episode. This hike was being done prior to the talk given by Dr. Henrik Williams on November 11th about these rune engravings on a rock in this cave.
The drive route used the power line road which connected Ft. Huachuca to the Tucson Electric Power (TEP) power plant. The entrance gate to this road had a homemade sign stating in Spanish “No Coyotes” and “No Mojados”. The first term refers to smugglers, and the second term is Spanish slang for “wetbacks” (supposedly a more polite reference for emigrants than “illegals” used by Gringos). The powerline road was on State Trust Land, but provided access to private property and ranches in the eastern portion of the Mustang Mountains. It also required opening and closing 4 or 5 fence gates, and went into and out of several steep gullies draining the eastern side of the Mustangs. Stephany and Kent decided the road was two rough for their vehicle and turned around. Apparently they made it out alright, because we didn’t see any stranded RAV4s on the drive back in the afternoon.
After parking just off the powerline road, we started hiking west up a side road for 0.1 miles before it ended in a wide parking area. This is where Glenn had parked on the 30 April 2013 hike. From the end of the road, we followed cattle trails through mesquite/ocotillo/cactus thickets, and in and out of several gullies. About a mile from the parking area we crossed a fence line (no gate) where we the lost the cattle trail and we started bushwhacking through more thickets and gullies towards a high ridgeline. This fence line appears to mark the boundary between Cochise and Santa Cruz Counties according to the DeLorme map (see above). Note the yellow highlighted dashed line on the map and the proximity of the fence crossing waypoints. We aimed for a low dip in the ridgeline, but the gully crossings, heat and vegetation began to take their tool. This hiker wore a new pair of Dickies Levi’s, wool socks, my old (coming apart) heavy boots, heavy gloves and carrying a sotol hiking stick. I quickly fell to the back of the pack with all this stuff in the morning heat. Cole forgot to bring a hat, and used his jacket to cover his head. Bill had no hat either, or much food or water. His long white hair probably protected his neck from sunburn, however. Loaned Bill my hiking stick after manufacturing another one from the local vegetation. Steve did not bring any gloves and tore up his hands as well as ripping his pants on this hike. Needless to say this was not a pleasant hike, with most of us probably needing transfusions after we finally finished.
After gaining the ridgeline, we found a path leading up to a relatively flat saddle with views of the Whetstone Mtns and eastern Mustang mountains. It continued much more steeply around an unnamed nob and finally to a second higher saddle between the nob and the Rune Cave Mountain. Past this saddle the trail stayed close to the cliff face and started descending. The trail here was well defined as it hugged the cliff face, but one miss-step here would send you tumbling down a steep slope until cactus, ocotillo or mesquite stopped you. Arrived at the cave at 11:00 AM after a 2-hour bushwhack. Took pictures of the Rune rock and petroglyphs in the cave. There wasn’t much shade in the cave at this hour, and there were wasps flying around on the inside as well. We elected to hike back to the high saddle for lunch. On the mostly uphill hike back to the high saddle, we got the “benefit” of late morning sun reflecting heat off the cliff as well shining directly down on us. The saddle had no shade, but the breezes were picking up along with the appearance of clouds coming up from the south. Cole was stung by a wasp while eating, so it really wasn’t that pleasant here.
We started down from the saddle in the shade of the increasing clouds, but the hike down was just a painful going down as the climb up. Steep slopes made the going slow and precarious until we got to the flats with its sticker bush thickets and gullies. At the County boundary fence line, a Border Patrol helicopter showed up and kept flying around Rune Cave Mtn continuously until after we started driving back. Apparently someone had seen us hiking up on the ridgeline, and reported mojados to the Border Patrol. On the way back, we stopped a Border Patrol vehicle to let him know that we were probably the mojados/coyotes they were seeking. The agent wanted to see the bottom of our boots to confirm some tracks they had found up there. Bill King turned out be the owner of those tracks. So ended a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in the Mustangs.
