Although Beautiful Mountain sits just a couple of air-miles inside New Mexico from Arizona, I hadn't bothered trying it mainly because it is still over 300 miles of one-way driving from my home. However, a climbing buddy of mine, Adam the Webguru, was spending a week in New Mexico and we worked our itineraries so that I could meet him to hike the peak. For him, it would be his last hike before he headed home to California. For me, it was a good chance to go get this peak which I'd put off for too long. Since I don't teach on tuesdays, I decided to go for it: I left home monday afternoon after work, drove the 266 miles to Gallup, New Mexico, and crashed at a Motel-6, arriving well after dark.

Adam and I hit the road early tuesday morning, driving in Adam's new truck (I left mine parked at a Wal-Mart) and taking US-666 north roughly 60 miles through the darkness toward Sanostee. The sun rose as we made our way up- the land was rolling high-desert with large volcanic remnant monoliths looming out of the land here and there. We followed BIA N-34 west about 10 miles through Sanostee, which, being off the main highway, strictly is a local community of Navajo, numbering about 500 I'd say. It's laid out generally in a grid pattern with pre-fab homes, plus a church and other local businesses, surrounded by pastures full of cattle and sheep. From Sanostee we continued west on dirt N-34 about 4.7 miles to Road 5013, then northwest on 5013 5.5 miles to a junction. Road 5013 was kind of rough as it gained a lot of elevation, but we didn't need 4-wheel drive. The last junction was marked with a stone column on the right. We turned right and followed a rough, unmaintained road for another 2.6 miles, keeping right at 2 junctions then left at an obvious 3rd junction 1.8 miles in. We parked in an open clearing. Adam got some valuable practice with 4-wheel drive in his new truck, including one short but icky section of deep ruts and a discomforting lean. We used a previous report from Jobe Wymore from the cohp site to negotiate these roads.

The hike is short, but steep and strenuous. From where we parked we hiked directly up the hill to our north (on our left as we drove the road). This gained us about 150 feet pretty fast. From here we had a commanding view of our objective. Beautiful Mountain is surrounded by a large, imposing band of cliffs, easily 200-300 feet high. The trick is finding a breach or weakness. From where we stood, we could see one tucked into a point on the cliff band where the usually straight band makes a quick jog (on the map it is easily noted about 3/8 mile southeast of the summit where an obvious comma-shaped jog is found). There is no maintained trail. We had to hike down briefly then figure our own way up the steep slopes toward the breach. Down low it was tricky due to the thick, dead underbrush. Shortly, however, we found what appeared to be a game trail made more obvious by hikers, and this proved to be an easy, if steep, way up to the mountain's plateau. In all, a half-hour from the truck to this spot. We took a brief rest and noted some landmarks for our return.

From this point the summit is sometimes visible through the trees. Following a bearing of about 320 degrees, we started up the hillside. The tree cover abated, the hill grew steeper and sometimes crumbly, and we hiked toward an obvious rocky knob which turned out to be the top. We reached the summit in 52 minutes since leaving the truck. The top was rather small but very pronounced, with great views in all directions. To our west was a higher peak (Roof Butte) in Arizona. To the east was the vast flatness of the high plateau, with the various rock monoliths poking up in places. The most famous of them all, Shiprock, was visible to our northeast, partially obscured by Beautiful Mountain's large and extensive plateau top. We took plenty of photos. Previous visitors had left some soda cans strewn on the top, so we packed them out. It was surprisingly cool and windy on top- cool enough to force us to start moving faily quickly. After 20 minutes we started our hike back to the truck. We had no problem at all navigating by reckoning through the trees back to our cliff-breach. Going down was a little tricky for me: my left knee was starting to get tight- I'd hurt it about 6 weeks previous and it still has some residual achiness to it. Nevertheless, the hike to the truck took about 40 minutes, for a total round trip of less than two hours. I'd say it was two miles round trip and about 950 feet gain.

Back at Adam's car, we relaxed briefly then started the drive out. We had to pay close attention to the junctions, but at one point, we came to a Y-junction that confused us at first. We took the left fork down to a good road, eventually leading us to an intersection with another "good" road... but both of us couldn't be sure if it was our correct route out, so we turned back and went up the way we came back to the first Y-junction. Adam was getting kind of spooked driving down these roads so I took over. From our junction, I drove the other road, which seemed unfamiliar at first... until I saw some rock piles that I'd noticed coming up. So we went out that way and came out to an intersection... the one we were just at! So now we knew at least we were on the right path, so we got out to Road 5013, just as the weather turned kind of nasty and started to rain. We had no desire to be on these roads in wet conditions since they appeared to get real clay-like and slick. I drove us out the 10 miles or so to Sanostee and pavement. There, Adam drove us another 20 miles to a gas station on US-666 where he bought a pint of ice cream. I drove us back to Gallup while he ate the whole damn thing! The rain really picked up so we were pretty happy to be back on pavement and off the mountain, just in time it seemed! I picked up my truck in Gallup then spent the rest of the day driving the 266 miles back home, arriving about 4:30 p.m.

A day later my cool nephew Rawlins was born to my brother and his wife in California. I drove out that weekend to visit the new little dude!