Andy called me, wondering if I’d be game for a Mexican climb. Since we had done several others recently, it seemed like a good idea. My neighbor had a friend, Jim, visiting her from Idaho, who spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. She thought he’d like to go with us – after all, that’d be quite the adventure, climbing a mountain in Mexico, right? – so I invited him. Saturday, March 10th, I picked him up at 4:00 AM and we drove to the east side of Tucson where we met up with Andy. We loaded everything into his vehicle and off we went, driving down to Douglas, Arizona and crossed the border into Mexico at the city of Agua Prieta, Sonora. It was early and the streets were pretty quiet. We headed south on a paved highway for about 15 miles, then found a dirt road which continued south parallel to the highway but farther to the east. This led us to a power-line access road which we followed for a while, and finally we parked off of that in a quiet spot. It was a perfect morning, the temperature pleasant with an expected high of around 80. Our mountain, named Cabullona, loomed to the east across the desert. Our planned route went right up the middle of the thing, to the saddle between the two high bumps, then right, up the ridge to the highest point.

Looking east to Cabullona

Getting our packs ready, and loaded up with plenty to drink, we set off. There were a few miles of fairly flat ground to cover, and we found cattle trails through the thorny brush to be a big help, but it was still a real chore. Those thorns were nasty and tried constantly to rip our clothes and flesh. As time passed, we got closer to our mountain and it loomed large. Our climb was to be over 2,000 vertical feet to the summit of Cabullona at around 6,202 feet elevation.

The west side of Cabullona

We rose slowly towards the mountain, moving from one gentle ridge to another, crossing a few gullies, and eventually found ourselves on steeper ground. We ascended between rock bands, encountering no difficulties, and gained a saddle to the northwest of the summit. Jim was lagging behind, so we stopped often to let him catch up. At one point, we noticed his arms were streaked with blood, plenty of it. He kept falling on the steep, loose ground and was really doing a number on himself. Maybe he was an outdoorsman, but those activities surely didn’t involve any peakbagging. From here, it was a steep walk to the summit itself. There were a few radio towers on top, and the usual trash scattered about. Here’s a view looking west back along the way we had come – the vehicle is lost in the distance.

Looking west from Cabullona

We ate lunch, took pictures, and left a register. Here’s one of Andy and me on the summit wearing our finest hobo climbing clothes.

It seemed like a good idea to descend by a different route, a ridge farther south than the one by which we had ascended. The whole mountain was a huge chunk of limestone, with a lot of cliff bands – a few of them gave us pause, but soon it was clear sailing.

It’s always fun taking a different way down, just to mix it up a bit.

It’s only a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, getting down one of these (with a bit of caution, of course). It takes a while to lose a couple of thousand feet, but before too long, we had done it. In the next photo, the summit is the highest-looking bump on the right.

We made good time and soon we were back in the lowlands. We were planning to continue farther south on the highway to the town of Nacozari to explore access to yet another mountain, so once we found the vehicle we got ready to drive away. It was then that Andy discovered that the battery was dead. He had forgotten to turn off the headlights before we had set out 5 1/2 hours earlier. Since the vehicle had an automatic transmission, there was no chance of compression-starting it on the flat dirt road we were on, although we did try to no avail. Here’s Jim watching Andy trying to start the Mitsubishi. He’s probably thinking “What the hell did I get myself into with these two Arizona nutjobs?”

We decided that Jim would stay with the vehicle, and both Andy and I would head west on foot to get help. In about 30 minutes we crossed the desert and some railroad tracks and arrived at a Mexican Customs station on the highway. There, a man and woman in uniform told us that they had no vehicle, but would try to call someone who could help us. She spent quite a while on the phone trying to round up help. While we waited, they gave us bottled water and sandwiches.

She finally hung up the phone and said that she had arranged help and someone would arrive soon. And they did – a young fellow, 20-ish, a college student from Agua Prieta who was visiting his policeman grandfather in a nearby village. We hopped into his full-sized Ford four-wheel-drive pickup and told him where he needed to go. He knew just where to find the start of the power-line road, and within 20 minutes we had arrived at our vehicle. He used his jumper cables and had us started up in a jiffy. He refused to accept any money for helping us out, but Andy insisted and forced a generous amount of US cash on him anyway. He followed us back out to the highway and we thanked him profusely before parting company. We drove south to the Customs station and thanked them again for all their kindness.

By now, we had lost a lot of time and so dedided to return home. We stopped in Agua Prieta and talked to Mexican officials about what was involved in getting proper documentation for vehicles and individuals to travel farther into Mexico on future trips. It turns out that we could not have gone farther south than the Customs station anyway without certain papers. We crossed the border and made it back home to Tucson just after dark. We got lucky about the dead battery – it could have been a lot worse – with a lot more inconvenience, time and money involved. Cabullona is only 15 miles from the U.S. border, but it felt like a world apart.

Please visit our Facebook page at:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Desert-Mountaineer/192730747542690