After breakfast Sunday morning, April 21, I said goodbye to Eric and Stacey Kassan as they left our campsite to climb nearby Iron Mountain. The slopes of Iron Mountain above seemed steep and I expected they would have a memorable day. I then left our campsite and drove further south to Ray Place, a remote and apparently abandoned homestead in the Iron Spring Wash below the Grand Wash Cliffs.
My goal was to climb Duncan Benchmark, the highpoint of the Grand Wash Cliffs. Duncan Benchmark has 2209 feet of topographic prominence, making it the 54th most prominent peak in Arizona. I understood it had a reputation for being brushy, but from reports the brush was manageable and I was not expecting it to be a particular problem.
[Read more…] about Grand Wash Cliffs, Arizona, April 2024