On Friday morning, December 2, I met other Southern Arizona Hiking Club members John Ohm, Dave Kohnke, Tom Tutein, and Larry Wippman in Oro Valley. Our goal was to climb Peak 3272, the Maricopa Mountains Highpoint. Peak 3272 has 1432 feet of prominence making it the 172nd most prominent peak in Arizona. This peak is also a SAHC peak, which explained the interest the others had in joining me.

From Oro Valley we drove to the city of Maricopa, then further west to begin driving on primitive roads towards the Maricopa Mountains. As the roads deteriorated Tom and Larry parked their car and joined Dave in his Toyota FJ Cruiser. I drove my Jeep Rubicon with John beside me.

The driving route was often just a track in sandy washes or across the desert. Fortunately, we had recorded GPS tracks from another climb in the range last March and this helped at some ambiguous turns.

There had been some erosion over the summer monsoon. At one point we had to detour through brush to get past a deep trench and I added pinstriping to my Jeep here and elsewhere. At two other spots I could feel my Jeep fishtailing slightly in High 4WD as I drove through loose sand. But I held the Jeep’s Low 4WD and lockers in reserve and did not need them. Dave had no problem following me in his Toyota FJ Cruiser. We paused on the drive in for photos, then continued to our parking spot, about 16 miles from the highway.

From our parking spot we identified our ascent route, the northeast ridge, which led up towards the summit. We hiked directly towards the peak across the desert, then followed the northeast ridge higher. I generally followed the others, taking opportunities for photos.

At a few spots higher on the ridge we climbed around or over some rock outcroppings. Otherwise, our route was up a mostly open slopes with good footing.

At the top of the ridge I took a more direct approach through some brush and rock, but we soon regrouped with the summit in view.

John and Dave led across the summit ridge to the southeast summit, a rock outcropping with a summit registry and mostly decomposed paper entries. This was reportedly the highpoint of the Maricopa Mountains, Peak 3272.

I ate lunch and enjoyed the views. I recognized Nose Benchmark and Woolsey Peak far to the northwest in the Gila Bend Mountains. To the southeast I recognized Table Top in the Table Top Mountains and Maricopa Peak in the Sand Tank Mountains on the horizon.

While enjoying the views I decided the other summit knob, the northwest summit, seemed about as high as we were. I decided I needed to visit that summit as well before descending the mountain.

Most of the others joined me on this very short excursion to the northwest summit. From there we could still not tell which summit was higher, so we were glad to have visited both.

We descended our ascent route down the mountain without incident and returned to our cars. The drive out went well with only one spot where I was momentarily confused how to pass through a brushy area to regain a faint driving track. We returned to Tucson with our goals accomplished, another prominence peak for me and another SAHC peak for the others.