Mount Tipton is the highest peak of the Cerbat Mountains running northwest of Kingman, in northwest Arizona. It is the highest and most prominent mountain north of the Hualapais and south of the Grand Canyon, and had been on my “want” list for a long time. Its distance from my home (over 240 miles) and the fact that I’d have to get there via dreaded highway US-93 usually dampened any motivation for going up there to climb it. Other than Hualapai Peak and the easy Mount Perkins, I have done very little actual climbing or exploration north and west of Kingman. However, Adam Helman and I talked ourselves into meeting up for this mighty summit, and nearby Peacock Peak, so I took advantage of this opportunity. Adam had driven up a couple days before and had climbed two other peaks. We’d meet up near the Mount Tipton Wilderness boundary Friday evening for our Saturday hike.

Me, getting out of Phoenix was as grueling as always. There’s no great way to get to US-93 in Wickenburg without encountering heavy traffic or indirect routes. Even though Wickenburg is about 70 miles from Scottsdale, it takes me a good hour and forty-five minutes to get there under normal conditions. I left directly from work around 1 in the afternoon, hit the usual traffic, and suffered in the early-spring heat (Phoenix would hit 100 today, the second earliest on record). Got into Wickenburg, and drove with the sustained traffic up US-93 toward Kingman. The road is scenic but inadequate for the traffic it bears, being the main connector between Phoenix and Las Vegas. Too many trucks, too many “no passing” zones, too many idiots. By the time I get onto Interstate-40 east of Kingman I am usually completely frazzled, and today was no different. In Kingman I stopped for groceries, then got gas. I put the nozzle into the hole, turned to get the squeegee for the windshield, and the tension cord on the nozzle yanked it back out, spritzing gasoline all over me! I was extremely upset and angry! The nozzle was one of the older-types from the 1970s or 80s. I got some change of clothes from my bag, changed, drenched my gas-soaked clothes in water. All the while, a female employee sitting out front having a break, on her cell phone, never did a damn thing. Needless to say I was as pissed off as I have ever been.

So it was a damned relief to finally get out of Kingman, up US-93 for another 30 miles to Dolan Springs, and along the dirt roads to the wilderness boundary, where Adam was already parked and getting his dinner ready. It was about 6:30 p.m. and the sun was low in the west, giving nice color to the Cerbats behind us. I was able to park in a very scant pull-out (the road itself is in poor shape for the last mile or so). Adam and I caught up on things, mainly mountains he’s done, then when it got dark, we both crashed in our respective vehicles. It was a warm night and I didn’t need a blanket at all.

Given the little heat wave we’d been having, we had reasonable concern about how it may affect us on the hike up Tipton, which is no walk in the park. We agreed to start hiking about 20 minutes before first light. We had the advantage that the sun would be behind the range until later in the morning. Even so, when we awoke at 5 a.m., it was breezy but barely cool, maybe mid 60s. We started hiking at about 5:35 a.m., planning to walk up an old road for about a mile, figuring we could navigate this bit easily in the pre-dawn. Well, we got a few hundred yards in and then lost the dash-gum road! We hiked up a sandy wash for a little bit, then hiked up onto a brushy bench, where Adam’s GPS helped us figure out where we needed to go. We found the road again after about 15 minutes, and hiked it to a highpoint. Our little off-route excursion cost us maybe 10 minutes. (We’d discover how we made this error on our descent, so read on.)

We left the road and started our cross-country leg, generally traveling southeast amid knee-high scrub and rocky ground, aiming for the base of a slope beneath “hill 5313” which we nicknamed “Triangular Peak” for its nice symmetrical cone-shape and useful navigational aid. When the brush started to get thick, we angled left and dropped into a rocky wash which slowly closed in to form a true gully. We saw a few cairns, but they weren’t necessary to stay on course, just confirmation others had gone this way. The gully was pitched very leniently, and not as brushy as other gullies, so we made decent time. Our goal was a saddle at elevation 5,300 southeast of “hill 5534”. Adam’s GPS had this segment—from road to saddle—as 1.35 miles. From our vehicles we’d gained a little over 1,300 feet in about 2.4 total miles of hiking. We arrived at about 7:30. The sun was up and there was a strong breeze blowing, but we still had shade and the temperatures were still very pleasant. We took an extended rest here at the saddle.

The next segment is a short but steep and brushy hill to the southeast, our goal roughly the 5,600-foot contour. We just charged up this segment, plowing through the tree branches, woody scrub, grass and cactus … and rocks … to gain onto the western ridge. Some cairns up here gave us a little comfort in knowing we weren’t completely off route. The summit ridge was visible again above us, with the actual peak still a good 1,550 feet above us in a little over a mile, meaning sustained steep grades amid more brush. Ugh. So we moved upward, trying to surmise paths in the thick brush, but having variable luck. We angled left toward some rock outcroppings, but mostly stayed barely to the ridge’s south (our right) as we ascended. The brush was thick but not impossible, just annoying. We’d grunt up 300 vertical feet, take a few minutes to drink or enter a waypoint, and proceed. At about 6,800 feet we came upon a large rocky slope where the grades moderated finally a little, and the brush lightened up. We actually ascended the final portion directly underneath the northern sub-summit of Tipton, topped out onto a small saddle, battled through a thicket of madrone, then came upon the saddle directly below Tipton’s summit, a nice rocky mound covered in moderate pine forest cover.

Adam went on ahead to the top while I rested then slowly ambled up to greet Adam at the summit rocks. We arrived here about 9:30 a.m., meaning a four-hour ascent. We took a very well-deserved break up here, looking out all over creation at the various peaks and desert valleys. Snow-clad Mount Charleston was visible way off to the northwest in Nevada. We could see peaks into California and of course, the surrounding Arizona ranges. West of us we could see the grid-work of roads of Dolan Springs below us, while east we could see the sandy Red Lake Playa and the Grand Wash Cliffs rising behind it. North and south views were dominated by the spine of the Cerbat Range: numerous brushy, forested nameless summits, many with dramatic rocky profiles.

After about 25 minutes we started the trek down, hoping the weather would behave for us. Up this high it was very pleasant, even slightly cool. But now, as the sun rose, we could feel the heat starting to build. We descended to the saddle below the summit, then angled a little more northwesterly to put ourselves on the main western ridge again, but a little more north than on our ascent (maybe no more than 100 horizontal feet). We found the going here to be a lot more open, at least for the initial 500 or so vertical feet of drop, much less brushier than we had coming up. This worked out great since we were able to drop a lot of elevation fast. We hit the brush again at about the 6,000-foot elevation, and had to battle our way down to the 5,600-foot point we had while on our ascent. Nevertheless, we had come down faster than we thought, which was great. The hike down the steep slope back to the saddle was brushy and slow, but we arrived shortly and had another good break.

From the saddle we descended the gully, just hopping rocks and avoiding the occasional brush, until we were well out into the open again, now able to see “hill 4288” where we had left the road earlier in the day. It was warm, but not terribly so, and a strong breeze that helped keep us cool. We ascended out of the gully onto the raised slopes and hiked back to the road. Not more than a few feet later did we scare up our first snake of the day. We heard a rattle coming from a bush alongside the road, but couldn’t see the snake. We knew better than to “verify”—the rattle was sufficient! We walked the road back to our vehicles. It meandered past what looked like an old gravel pit, then became indistinct and even disappeared on us at the sandy wash, where we’d lost it earlier in the morning. In truth, there is no road of any sort for about 60 feet. If coming up, the road will “end” at a sandy wash. It resumes again on the other side about 30 feet farther east, but we wouldn’t have seen this on our ascent. In any case, no big issue. We were back to our vehicles at 1:30, a 7-hour, 45-minute hike overall.

We took time to relax, get things in order and get ready to leave. From here we exited back through Dolan Springs into Kingman, and killed time at a McDonalds in town before driving out to our next peak’s trailhead, the western slopes of Peacock Peak, about 20 miles northeast of Kingman.

Overall, the hike up Tipton was grueling and tedious with the brush, but never cliffy or even remotely technical. We may have ascended a little quicker had we known to follow the west ridge on a more northerly tack. Others have commented that the brush wasn’t bad, but some (in the log book) had mentioned the “incredible” brush. I thought it was moderate-to-dense, about a 7 on the 10-point “annoying” scale. It may lessen at different times of the year. We were here later in the season; it may be much less in the dead of winter. I enjoyed this hike immensely and was happy to finally have Tipton logged and in the books. We were very amused to read the comment of a summitter from about 2008 who called it “lame”. By what standard?

Frankly, I am surprised we didn’t scare up more snakes than the one we did.