Hike The Four Peaks (The Motherlode) via Oak Flat Tonto National Forest, AZ

Mar 18, 2017 — I wanted to challenge myself, and the standard route of The Motherlode (a traverse of the Four Peaks), while definitely a lot of work, didn't have the large amount of gain I was hoping for. The standard route starts from the Lone Pine Saddle Trailhead (Browns Trailhead), and I'd recommend you just do that (see map). Alternatively, I started at the Oak Flat Trailhead to add a few thousand elevation gain, as well as to avoid any potential road damage issues to the standard approach.

The Oak Flat Trail (#123) led steeply up a sandy trail to a junction with the Pigeon Trail (#134), which I followed to the next junction with the Four Peaks Trail (#130). Shortly after, the Amethyst Trail (#253), though poorly maintained during my visit, leads steeply up to the Browns Trail (#133). The Amethyst Trail continues along the western base of the Four Peaks, the same trail I ended up taking back after finishing the Motherlode. Alternatively, if you can't find the Amethyst Trail, you can continue along the Four Peaks Trail, which leads to the Lone Pine Trailhead, where you can then start the standard route most take.

Regardless, once on the Browns Peak Trail (#133), I decided to do the Motherlode via Browns Peak first, working my way south. Follow the well-defined trail to the gully up Browns Peak's northwest side. There's some Class 2, and then a Class 3 move, and the gully has definitely seen a fair amount of human erosion. An easy ridge leads to the summit, where the next three peaks loom ahead: Brother Peak, Sister Peak, and Amethyst Peak. Dropping down to the saddle of Browns and Brother requires some scrambling, but a true crux is just after the saddle on the way up to Brother, where some mostly solid rock put me at the ridgeline leading to the second summit. The route from Brother to Sister is the most tedious, in my opinion. The ridgeline is riddled with impassable cliffs (unless you've got a rope to rappel), so instead I dropped east for a few hundred feet to make my way to Brother and Sister saddle. The difficulty continues from here, though. I'm not toally sure what I did to ascend Sister Peak, but any number of routes likely would work. I pulled a couple of Class 3/4 moves to get up Sister Peak. It's possible I did more work than necessary, so this section requires some route-finding. Sister Peak doesn't yet mark the end of the route-finding, though. The route down the south side required finding a gully to avoid more impassable cliffs, but the route worke really well once I located the gully. At the saddle of Sister and Amethyst, a quick scramble through some trees lead to the summit, and then I headed back to the saddle and took the standard gully down to the Amethyst Trail. Apparently this is private property, so enter at your own risk. I certainly wasn't going back the way I came. Follow the very easy to follow Amethyst Trail (#253) back to the Browns Trail, and then continue on the Amethyst Trail back the way you came, assuming you took my route. Otherwise, it's a just a short jaunt back to the Lone Pine Trailhead. I included both routes in the attached map for reference.