On Sunday, November 4, I joined Matthias Stender and Scott Peavy on a climb of El Capitan Mountain. El Capitan Mountain has 6568 feet of elevation and is the highpoint of the Mescal Mountains southeast of Globe, Arizona. It also has 1808 feet of topographic prominence, making it the 92nd most prominent peak in Arizona. None of us had visited El Capitan Mountain before. We had heard that the mountain was very brushy; we expected a challenge.

Scott had scouted out a potential route we hoped would reduce the brush we would need to deal with. The three of us parked along Arizona Highway 77 and crossed the highway. From there we mostly followed a primitive road as it crossed a gully beneath the WSW Ridge.

Near the end of the road we climbed through thick, but fortunately not particularly thorny brush up the steeping slope. The morning shade below the cliffs helped. We followed game trails where we could and eventually climbed to the ridge through a notch in a cliff.

From the WSW Ridge the brush was more open. We traversed the slope upwards to the east until we could finally see the summit. After a short descent to a saddle we climbed through some easy rock bands and across rock slabs to the summit.

Matthias found the summit registry, placed in 2004. We were surprised to see that over these past 14 years we were only the fifth party to add our names to the registry. The last entry was by our friend Michael Berry a year earlier.

We had lunch and enjoyed the views from the summit, identifying many peaks and ranges around us. We hiked over to a subsidiary summit to the east just to be sure we had visited the highest point. It was eventually time to descend.

We approximately followed the same route to our cars but picked up the primitive road at its end, then stayed on the road its entire length out to the highway. We were treated to nice views of a scenic canyon below us containing a small stream on its rocky bottom.

It was very satisfying for us to have climbed El Capitan Mountain. I always enjoy climbing with Matthias. Although I had never met Scott before I knew he was a very experienced Arizona peakbagger. Meeting him and sharing the climb with him was a bonus. I hope to share more peaks with Scott and Matthias in the future.