Dear Mark,

It’s hard to know where to even start this letter to you. Although I’ve been climbing fewer years with you than with some other partners, the climbing we’ve done together has been unique, one-of-a-kind, something nobody else has done. What do I mean by that? Stealth climbing, that’s what. You were the only one who was willing to take the biggest risks with me. Recently, someone said to me that only by taking the biggest risks can you reap the biggest rewards. I’ve come to believe that wholeheartedly, that it certainly applies to peakbagging. Let’s go back to the beginning.

It was late February of 1996 when I met you, Dave and Richard at a Tucson restaurant. I can’t recall with certainty when we next crossed paths, but it was probably in March of 1997 at Dave’s cookout get-together in the Kofa Mountains of western Arizona. We did some climbing with the group that weekend.

At that time in your life, something important was going on. You and a few others were working hard on completing all of the 204 climbs on the Arizona mountain ranges high points list. I joined with you and a few other friends for a climb of the Vekol Mountains out on the reservation – a great climb on a perfect day. I don’t believe I saw you again until the day arrived for your list finish climb – it was a gathering of friends you had invited to the Goldfield Mountains north of Apache Junction. After a night of listening to idiots shooting their guns all-too-close to us, we all headed to Dome Mountain in the morning. It was December 5th of 1998 when we celebrated your finish on the peak. You were only the 4th person to ever complete the list, and it was a joy to share it with you.

We saw each other in the spring of the year at Dave’s cookouts all the way through 2010 when the last one occurred. That was it, though – other than the cookouts, we weren’t getting together to do any climbing that I recall. That changed forever in early 2012 when you and Richard contacted me and suggested we get together. February in the Sonoran Desert – it doesn’t get any better than that, it’s like you died and went to heaven. We set aside a week for the trip and met at a spot known as Big Horn along the interstate, then drove down to the edge of the bombing range and camped. The next day, we climbed a beautiful Class 4 peak called Jack In The Pulpit, only climbed once before when it was soloed by our friend Andy. We followed it up the next day with climbs of Slag Benchmark, Desolate Benchmark and Peak 2667 – no climbers had set foot on any of these before us.

We left that area and drove for hours to reach a remote area of an Indian reservation, where we spent a long day traveling a road that time forgot. We climbed a peak, then motored on for hours through amazing country on a road that was so hard to follow that we often had to walk ahead to locate it. It was so forgotten that tribal members never used it, and the Border Patrol had no interest in even trying. It felt like we were on the back side of the moon. We spent a restless night on a forbidden part of the bombing range, then climbed a couple of great peaks the next day.

The trip had been such an enjoyable success that a year later we found ourselves meeting north of Yuma. We spent time in the Castle Dome Mountains, then moved on to the Kofa Mountains for a day, finishing with several terrific peaks climbed in the Tank Mountains which were stealth climbs on the Army proving grounds. From there, we headed south on to the Luke Air Force Range for a couple of challenging climbs, one of them being Peak 1894, an aesthetically-pleasing Class 4 beauty.

Another year passed. You and I started talking about what we could do next. By then the stealthing bug had bitten us, big-time. It may have been the climbs in the Tank Mountains that really got us going, but by the time winter had arrived in early 2014, we were ready for just about anything. We settled on a mountain range that was filled with unclimbed peaks. The only problem was that there was no water to be found there, so it would mean carrying the huge amounts we’d need to survive for 9 days. It was daunting. We contacted all of our climber friends and put the question to them – “Would you like to carry inhumanly-heavy loads for many miles, day after day, no doubt with plenty of pain and suffering, with the reward being plenty of first ascents in a wilderness range of great beauty?” Nobody took the bait even with all of our pleading, so we were on our own.

On the morning of the third day, after having climbed all of the southernmost peaks in the range, we staggered out of our Camp One with insane loads. All of our gear and food, plus every drop of water we could manage, came to a full 100 pounds each. For the next week, we painfully made our way north along the flank of the Granite Mountains, setting up one camp after another and climbing everything along our path. In spite of all the water we carried, we ran out at the end of the eighth day. Our situation would have been grim if we hadn’t cached some in a remote spot. We looked back upon that trip as being brutally hard, something we would never repeat voluntarily. They say about something as trying as what we did, that if it doesn’t kill you it damages you. To this day, I don’t know how we pulled it off, quite frankly.

Truth be told, that trip to the Granite Mountains only served to whet our appetites. By mid-2015, we had already started to plan our next big trip. This one would be a real doozy, one for the ages. We would stealth our way on to a forbidden area of the bombing range and climb every single peak in the Aguila Mountains. The range high point, we’d already done years before. That was the only peak in the entire range that had ever been visited by climbers – the other 12 peaks were untouched. We would go in between Christmas and New Year’s, what we felt would be the quietest time possible.

The big day arrived. We parked our trucks, then rode our mountain bikes 23 miles into the bombing range and ditched them. From there, we backpacked deeper into no-man’s land to a reliable water source at Thompson Tank. That saved us the misery of having to carry all our water. We set up camp there, then spent glorious days in perfect weather climbing everything in sight. There were plenty of challenges, but we persisted and left a register on every one of the dozen peaks. The trip took 6 days in all, but with none of the agony of the Granite Mountains, only the ecstasy of a clean sweep of the entire Aguila Mountains.

What could we possibly do for an encore? We were really smitten by the stealthing bug but were running out of options. What was left to do in the Arizona desert that could offer a real challenge. One characteristic of the Aguila Mountains was this – other than aircraft flying over, there was no military activity on the ground, so we were pretty much left on our own. By late 2016, our plans were set – we headed in on Christmas Day, once again on bicycles, to a remote spot where we set ourselves up for a week’s worth of climbing. The two main features of the range we had chosen this time were as follows: there was no water supply anywhere in the range; the entire area was bristling with military activity. We weren’t concerned with planes flying over, or the ones dropping bombs – we could deal with all of that. Something over which we had little control was, as it turned out, the tremendous amount of military traffic on the roads. No matter where we went, day or night, vehicles were on the move. We used our bikes every day to get to the far-flung peaks, and managed to stay one step ahead of the military. Well, almost. There was that time when they spotted us along one of the roads and we had to use the cover of the desert to elude them. Talk about a dramatic moment!! We even traveled at night to remain hidden from prying eyes. In the 7 days spent out there, we managed 14 peaks. To this day, we haven’t publicized where this took place – it’s still our one great secret.

What would we try next? Another year passed, and we cast our net for peaks that had seen no action by other climbers and, ideally, would be stealth climbs. Perhaps it’s no mystery that most of the peaks that fall into that category are in areas that are closed to the public, such as military bombing ranges or proving grounds. Climbers are too afraid to go to such places for fear of being hurt from falling bombs or detonating unexploded ordnance, or being caught and arrested. Parts of some military reserves may be open to the public at certain times with a permit, but the vast majority of such lands are always closed to civilians.

Years earlier, we had visited an area that was lovely, unspoiled desert, a place that had left a strong, positive impression on our minds. It abounded in peaks that were untouched, that were just begging to be climbed. I’m talking about the Tank Mountains in the southwestern part of Arizona. This range ticked all of the boxes – the part that we would visit was on the Yuma Proving Grounds, but on a part of it that saw little to no military activity; it was bristling with unclimbed peaks; it was scenically beautiful and remotely quiet. We knew for certain that we’d see no Army vehicles out there, but it was the province of the rare hunter or prospector.

Once again, we chose the Christmas season to do the deed. As always, we planned every move, every peak well in advance. We put together a list of 16, 13 of which appeared unclimbed. As usual on these trips, we never saw another soul during our week out. Every day brought new surprises, new wonders out in this untouched stretch of desert. There were some challenging peaks that we didn’t expect, climbs that tested our route-finding skills. On this trip, we brought all of our own water. Unlike our trips in previous years, we drove to all of the areas in which we wanted to climb, so were dependent on our vehicles. The advantage of that was that we could bring anything we wanted along with us, without having to carry it all on our backs. We accomplished everything we wanted, even though my vehicle failed near the end of the trip.

Came December of 2018, when once again we had a most challenging trip planned. This one would also be on the Yuma Proving Grounds. Unlike the previous year, it was in an area that was devoid of roads. There was limited water available, so we found ourselves carrying staggeringly-heavy loads as we had done years before in the Granite Mountains. It was difficult, to put it mildly. Aren’t we getting too old for this kind of physical abuse? We persevered, though, and time passed with new peaks climbed every day – we left a register on every one of those virgin summits. Our plans were working out fine until, on the morning of the 5th day, an accident occurred. I was lucky to escape with only injuries to my arm, nothing life-threatening, but we were forced to retreat back to civilization so I could receive medical treatment. This was the only one of our trips that ended prematurely without having climbed all of our peaks.

A year later, I was unable to undertake such a trip again with you. Who knows what the future will bring, but hopefully more stealthing is in our future. Ojalá que sí. It has been an amazing run.