Newman Peak 4480′ and South Newman Peak 4209′
Total Time: 5:45
Distance: 5.9
Elevation Gain: 3500′
Crux: Class 2
Trailhead: Network of dirtroad roads on AZ Trust Land, high clearance, no services
I had given up on trying to finish the AZ P2K list in my five years in Arizonawith many of the ones I had left at least a few hours drive to reach. Newman Peak was one of just a handful remaining under 2 hours from Phoenix, and a summit I had passed many times while driving down to Tucson. I had climbed its’ more famous neighbor, Picacho Peak, as one of my early summits when I first moved to Arizona, foolishly trying it with my sister and brother in law in extreme August heat. Although Newman did have some impressive cliffs like Picacho Peak, the routes leading to the summit follow mostly class 2 drainages all the way to the top. In fact, there’s an old, long forgotten trail that can be followed in from the west that obviates the need for too much bushwacking. I left early on a Saturday morning and drove south along I-10, exiting the highway at the small agrarian town of Eloy. I followed the driving directions on HikeAZ, passing a farm near the border of the AZ state trust land. The instructions reported going through a closed but unlocked gate to enter the state trust land. But when I reached the border, I found the gate padlocked shut. I was only a few miles from the trailhead and considered just parking here and hoofing it up. But I drove a bit past the gate and turned off on a faint 4 x 4 track through the desert, following it through washes until I reached a different gate, this one unlocked. I drove through and continued east, reaching the Powerline Road described in the original approach and taking it to a turnoff near an animal crossing over the canal. I parked here and started across the canal, the water looking quite clean and clear despite the recent rains.
After a quick jog north I found the old road that continued up the canyon to a mine, unused since the canal was built in the 1970s. The road was slowly being reclaimed by nature, and I didn’t try all that hard to stick to it, the cross country being quite forgiving by Sonoran Desert standards. I eventually lost the road completely and boulder hopped up the canyon until finding a row of cairns in the wash below, roughly near a split in the canyon, with a northeast branch heading towards Newman Peak and a southeast branch heading to the less frequently climbed South Newman.
Taking the northeast branch, I found a series of switchbacks in surprisingly good shape, not getting washed out by monsoons on the steeper slopes. The old trail entered a narrow sub-drainage and aggressively cut upslope. Cairns led the way up the steep line as the ill-defined path climbed up to a notch on a small ridgeline.
From the notch, the summit towers were almost directly above and I continued along the trail, less steeply now, another 15 minutes to the summit. The summit register was cached near a BM behind one of the buildings, and I quickly flipped to the first page. The register was almost as old as I am, placed in 1989, and by the famous Barbara Lilley. I thumbed through the register a bit, only recognizing a handful of names for a peak that seems to see about 5 summits per year, although remarkably had two others just this same week!
I moved around the building to the south to take in views of South Newman Peak and Picacho Peak across the I-10. The traverse over to South Newman Peak looked interesting, and it seemed like there would be some options to get down. I had summited faster than I expected, and after a little internal debate, decide to go for the second summit. I dropped down the connecting ridgeline, finding a little bit of loose rock but nothing that couldn’t be easily avoided. There were a few false summits along the way, but South Newman Peak grew closer as I climbed up and over each one.
At the final saddle just before South Newman was a series of short cliff bands that pushed me off the ridgeline proper to the west. This had the most tedious brush of the day, and I used thin game trails hugging the cliffs to reach an old campsite at the saddle.
A little bit of loose class 2 brought me to the final grassy ridgeline to the summit. As I climbed the final 300′, I spotted 5 Desert Bighorn Sheep watching me from above. They didn’t seem frightened, and just stared as I moved past, surely unaccustomed the seeing a human on this side of the mountain.
When I hit the summit and opened the register, I could understand why… this peak hadn’t seen a summit in two years! I added my name to the loose pages before closing the jar and sat down to take the burrs out of my socks. The views were similar to those on Newman Peak, although with an even closer look at Picacho Peak across the highway.
As I dropped off the summit, the sheep had moved off and out of sight. I reached the saddle quickly, and spotted a cairn in the drainage below. Dropping into the canyon, I worked through thin brush on a vague path downslope. This climbers trail to the southern saddle sees significantly less traffic than the route I took up Newman Peak, and I pretty much just headed downhill without trying to stick to the cairns too closely. It took longer than expected to reach the point where the two canyons merged and I joined the more traveled main trail and old road.
Not far from the trailhead, I passed the remains of an old mine that I had somehow not noticed on the way in, and stopped to poke around before continuing back over the canal to the car.
I retraced the rough roads and desert tracks back to pavement, thankfully finding no additional padlocks had been added to any of the gates on the way out.
