Beautiful Mountain is a somewhat isolated peak sitting in far northwest New Mexico on the Navajo Indian Reservation, northeast of the town of Sanostee, not more than a couple miles east of the New Mexico-Arizona boundary. The "mountain" is an outlier peak grouped in with the Chuska Range, which runs mostly in Arizona (its range highpoint is Roof Butte just across the Arizona line). Although a nice mountain (beautiful? I wouldn't go that far), Beautiful Mountain wouldn't attract itself much attention save for the fact it is the highest point in the county. It has a nice shape: a noticeable pointed summit surrounded by bands of cliffs. The land up this way is very lovely, high desert with rocky volcanic monoliths poking up out of the sands all over the place. The best known monolith, Shiprock, is nearby and visible from the summit of Beautiful.

Despite being "close" to Arizona, Beautiful Mountain is well over 300 miles one way from my home in Chandler, and I had been putting off this peak for some time for that reason. However, Adam Helman was spending a week in New Mexico working on the various highpoints, so we agreed to meet for Beautiful Mountain. This would be an excellent excuse to make the effort for this far-away summit. Due to a fluke in my teaching schedule, I had tuesdays open. I left work monday afternoon and made the 265-mile drive to Gallup, New Mexico, meeting Adam at a Motel-6 his mother has graciously paid for. We left very early the next morning, me stashing my truck at the local Wal-Mart, and sitting shotgun in Adam's new Toyota Tacoma. We went north up US-666 for the 60-odd miles through the beautiful countryside. The sun rose as we got near our turn-off, BIA Route N-34, which leads a few miles into Sanostee, a small pre-fab community of Navajo. Being off the tourist grid, Sanostee is strictly for the locals, a neat little town laid out in a grid with a church and basic shops, surounded by fields with sheep, cattle and various crops. Past Sanostee, Road N-34 turns to dirt; we followed this road 4.7 miles to Road 5013, then northwest on 5013 for 5.5 miles to a junction marked by a stone column off to the right. We were very much in the boonies out here: the roads were getting rough and gaining considerable elevation, although we did not need 4-wheel drive yet. At the stone column junction we went right onto a very rough road for 2.6 miles, going right at two junctions and left at an obvious third junction 1.8 miles in, parking in an open clearing due south of the peak itself, below its impressive cliff bulwarks. Adam got some valuable practice using 4-wheel drive on these last roads, including one stretch with an intimidating sidways lean to it. 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 in them. 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). Getting there meant bashing through brush, although as we got closer we came upon what was an obvious path, perhaps a game path made more distinct by occasional hikers. The path wormed its way up the steep slope in this breach, allowing us passage onto the upper plateau of Beautiful Mountain. So far, great! Only a half-hour of hiking to get here. We made note of some landmarks and Adam took a compass bearing

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. Evidently the local kids know about this place: 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. The weather was generally unsettled. 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 as I'd hurt it about 6 weeks previous in a biking fall, 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. For the whole hike we covered about 2 miles and 950 feet of gross 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 neither of us could 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 then 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. My thanks to Adam for working his schedule to include me on this little adventure.

The next day I became an uncle again as my brother and his wife welcomed little Rawlins Surgent into the world. The following weekend I made the drive out to SoCal to meet my new nephew!