Hike Central Eagletail Mountains Wilderness Eagletail Mountains Wilderness, AZ

Jan 28, 2024 — The high point of the Eagletail Mountains is a technical endeavor, but from its perch, I fell in love with the area and was hoping we could locate some cool routes to other summits in this gnarly-looking range. I set out with Matt, Karson, and Shawn to hit some more of the more spectacular-looking peaks near the center of the range. The problem with accessing the Eagletails is that due to the swath of land surrounding them being designated as wilderness, there are few roads that come within their vicinity. After scouring satellite maps, I located a road that could potentially get us pretty close and seemed to be of good quality. Leave the pipeline road here (33.47054, -113.29883) and then take a right here (33.44667, -113.32326). A crossover SUV or better can make it to the trailhead, which is located at the end of the road on the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness boundary.

As is typical for us, we loudly exited our car in anticipation of a fun outing. A couple of hunters concealed on a lump nearby didn't wave back, clearly not thrilled with our antics. We headed across the wilderness boundary along the remains of a very old road, which faded away not long after. The desert was easy to traverse here regardless, and we quickly made our way to the cliffy base of Dark Tower, the first summit of the day. At this point, we didn't know it had been given a name, but we would learn from the summit register that a party dubbed this "Dark Tower," and a second party had endorsed it.

Rather than stay low and wrap all the way around to the south side of the peak where the cliffs might give way a bit more obviously, we figured we could try to locate a weakness from higher up. We hiked up the steep slope to a small cliff band, which provided a Class 3/4 move to overcome. This led to a wide ledge that continued wrapping around and introduced some Class 3 obstacles. We soon reached the spot where we decided to descend later on the south side of the peak. Our shortcut had worked nicely. Above was an interesting-looking lightly colored slope that funneled to a Class 4 crux. The slope was somewhat slick with tiny steppy ledges. The crux at its head freaked me out a bit, basically a short, flared chimney. The moves were fun and quite solid, but a slip would be very bad. I used a piece of webbing on the way down later to assist. Past this crux, a Class 2 slope covered in boulders and prickly cacti got us to the east ridge of Dark Tower. A really delightful set of Class 3/4 moves using large cracks in a flat face gained us the summit. This section might be avoided on the right on loose terrain, but we didn't explore that since this was good fun.

From the summit, we could see the route to come, as well as the incredible Courthouse Rock nearby. We backtracked to the base of the funnel crux and continued down from here since it was clearly the only weakness on the whole volcanic plug. It still didn't go easily, though. The rock was a bit slick, and a detached cholla seemed to be on every hold I wanted to use. While the moves were Class 3, it felt pretty exposed all the way down to the slope below.

The next goal was to reach the main Eagletail ridgeline where we could access our next two summits. I'll note that map imagery might not be accurate here, as you'll see on my attached map. The summits are not correctly placed, and the topography is pretty much totally wrong at some points. The north face of the range is almost completely guarded by serious cliffs, but a weakness at the base of Peak 2874 seemed like our best option, accessed via a steep slope. I wrapped a little farther to avoid the potential for tough terrain, but you might be able to ascend more directly on the crumbly brightly-colored slabs, as my friends did.

At the saddle of our peaks, we decided to head north first to Peak 2874. The goal is to reach a major drainage on the southwest side of the peak. Initially, we debated dropping down and reascending when an option presented itself to reach the peak. In hindsight, this would be a good way to avoid much of the tricky route-finding to get to the drainage, but you'd lose a lot of vertical. Instead, we decided to risk staying high, which ended up working out great. The ridge crest is an impossible affair, so we kept just left of it on a Class 2/3 bench that somehow seemed to keep going. Just to the left of us was a lower cliff, and we were certain at some point our luck along this bench would end.

You'll notice two lines on my attached map. The purple one is our ascent, which I only left in because it was quite fun, but certainly low-Class 5 scrambling. I'll briefly describe that route now, but I'd recommend skipping this paragraph and taking the further option to keep the route more reasonable. For the Class 5 option, we located a deep-looking chasm splitting the ridge that seemed like it could be a feasible stemming chimney. We approached it and were confronted with a Class 4 crumbly slab we needed to climb in order to get into the chimney. We took turns scrambling up the chimney for a couple of hundred feet, surprised that it kept going. It landed us on a wide surface where we could see the easier route option far below (the one I will describe next). Although we could have dropped down to it, we instead pulled an unexposed low Class 5 move up a flared crack and decided to continue the excellent scramble up a series of cracks and ledges in the Class 4 realm to gain the summit.

For the easier Class 3 route to reach Peak 2874 from the bench mentioned above, navigate the now steepening terrain beneath cliffs. While it was nice to be on the wide bench for a while, it fades away and becomes a series of ribs and faces. It's difficult to see what will work and what does not, so you may have to poke around until you find a Class 3 option to traverse this section safely. The terrain eases up again and drops into the major drainage on the southwest side of Peak 2874. This is the key drainage to use, and you can't miss it once you lay eyes on it. The watercourse is quite pretty, a slickrock slope leading into a wide amphitheater-like formation. At the head of this formation is a massive weakness in the ridge crest above, forming a notch. The weakness provides a Class 3 series of moves out of the amphitheater and into the notch. The summit was just above us, but protected by another cliff band. To reach it, we had to pass below the summit on its north side and follow its base along a bench, then scramble some light Class 3 to gain the summit ridge.

The views from Peak 2874 were fantastic and made me want to spend even more time in the Eagletail Mountains. My friends wanted to return via the Class 5 chimney route, but my curiosity was piqued, and I was hoping to find a more reasonable option, hence my discovery of the easier route, which I used on the return and managed to beat them back to the saddle.

Next up was Peak 2773. We continued along the ridgeline using Class 3 moves on interestingly-shaped rock ledges. This brought us up and over a sub-peak, then we descended to the western base of Peak 2773. There's nothing too tricky along the way, maybe a low-Class 3 move here and there to overcome small cliffies. The summit ahead was looking a bit more serious now that we were getting close. A nicely-formed protruding piece of rock provided a fun, tricky set of Class 4 traverse moves, and then the proceeding 100 ft or so was extremely fun and sustained Class 3 on blocky ledges and boulders. Somehow everything was solid and free of cacti.

After enjoying the summit, we decided to wrap around its southern base in an attempt to find another route off of the ridge crest. All of us were looking forward to exploring the area a bit more rather than backtrack. The east side of Peak 2773 did not look reasonable for an ascent, but we didn't try to find a route since we'd already reached the summit. We dropped off the ridge, initially using a tame slope. This became a steep and gorgeous volcanic slab that descended/traversed to the south to wrap around a massive dryfall and surrounding cliffs. Once down, we followed a drainage for a bit and then continued north through the desert, passing by Dark Tower.