Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

My brother Matt is working his way into the trail running game.  Back in high school, he was a better distance runner than me, but due to a whole lot of school and many new promotions over the last 12 years, he's a little late getting back into the running game.  I'm not entirely sure, but I think he finally caught the bug when we went on our summer backpacking trip up to North Willow last summer.  He recently moved to Mesa AZ, and one of the requirements of his house hunt was the proximity to the mountains.  The first peak that caught my attention when I was helping him identify good areas was the Four Peaks area of Mazatzal mountain range.  It is called Four Peaks because of the very distinct 4 peaks.  The only one that is named is the tallest and northern most one, Browns Peak, which has a summit height of 7,657 feet.  Considering Mesa down below is only at 1,243',  it was a significant elevation change for Mattie.

Looking East towards Four Peaks above a lot of cacti.
Browns is the leftmost peak.

The road to get up to the four peaks trail head was a very rough, very slow 20 miles of dirt road.  Not being a native to AZ, it was amazing to see the thousands and thousands of 25' tall cacti.  I half expected the road runner and Wyle-E-Coyote to dart across the road.  We decided that getting a commuter car up there would be a difficult task indeed, and were glad we were in my Durango.  But upon reaching the trail head, most of the cacti were now down below us, and the mountain felt like home to me.

Mattie, about a mile in.

The actual trail from there is a rather short 2.5 miles to the summit, and most of that is runnable.  I need to point out and gloat a little that it felt so good to be running on a dry dirt trail again.  Everything was going smooth until we got to the last 500' scramble up the scree shoot.  Right before attempting it, we chatted with a man who said that he was going to loop around to the north, where the ridge drops down lower, and then follow the ridge to the summit.  I'm still quite surprised that no trail takes that route.  But because of the lack of trail, we decided to go up the shoot.  After climbing the scree for a minute, Mattie became somewhat uncomfortable climbing up the loose rock that required hand and foot, and I didn't blame him.  So, we looped back down to attempt to go around to the lower ridge.

Proof of my failure to find a good route.

Climbing through shrubs through a few inches of snow around to the north, we tried to make our way over to the ridge.  Then I made the mistake of trying to cut up the mountain a little early before we reached it.  The cliffs forced us back towards the south, and before we knew it, we were right back at the scree shoot, about 50' higher than we were the first time.

At this point, we called it.  Our wives wanted to go out shopping later that day and we decided we didn't have enough time to try again.  The great thing about mountains is that they aren't going anywhere.  I'll be back to visit Mattie soon enough, and when I do, I'll get my revenge on Browns, and it will feel the full weight of a little plastic red monkey.

Browns Peak map and stats.