Distance: 11.7 miles round trip on trail and cross country
Summit Elevation: 3392'
Elevation Gain: 3311'
Elevation Gain (in Empire State Buildings): 2.6
Round trip time: 9 hours
Recommended water: 108 oz.
Parking/Fees: Free at Elephant Trees Trailhead
Difficulty: Strenuous
Elephant BM is the elephant in the room when you visit the Split Mountains by Ocotillo Wells. It dominates the local area and was named after the rare elephant trees that grow nearby. Elephant trees are mostly found in Baja, Mexico. The trailhead was the Elephant Trees Discovery trail, a one mile loop that has a couple living trees along the trail. And a couple of dead ones. "Hardcore" Henry Chen joined me on this excursion. I had mapped a route up the major gully north of Elephant to Starfish Cove, a confluence of five drainages. Then, up a long gully to a ridge behind the summit. Facts on the ground made us abandon part of the plan.
We hiked to the end of the Discovery trail, then continued cross country toward the major gully. The flood plain was filled with rocks and braided washes. We followed a path of least resistance until we entered the gully. Before reaching the gully, we passed a healthy elephant tree and found another on the way back. Once we got to the gully, the going was easier, with a sandy floor and easy dry falls. We made steady progress as we snaked our way up. When we reached Starfish Cove, I was expecting a wide, sandy flat. Instead, it was turbulent and chaotic, with criss-crossing washes full of boulders and mud walls. We made the turn into the ascent gully and took our first break. The gully was passable, but full of obstacles and low visibility. We decided the ridge looked more appealing and headed up. Rocks on the ridge were solid, cactus and agave were abundant, and nothing exceeded class 2. We had some concern the ridge would not connect, but after two false summits, we saw the path to Elephant.
A small boulder marked the summit and we found a register dating from 1980. Elephant gets an average of 2 visits per year. The last one was in March, 2022. We signed in and read the entires of the adventurers from last 42 years. Views were great in all directions. It had taken us longer to reach the summit than we expected and we decided to take one of the ridge lines down. We picked a ridge south of the ascent gully, but were confident it was unbroken. We scrambled down the class 2+ ridge slowly, dodging cactus. When we reached the top of the final ridge section, we decided to drop into the major eastern gully. That section was sketchy and loose. Henry waited for me to get most of the way down before following, since both of use were creating rock slides as we went. We joined up in the gully and made our way back to the ascent line. In hindsight, it might have been faster to stay on top the ridge to the end. By our lights, most of the eastern ridge lines will go, and more efficiently than going up from Starfish Cove. When we got back to the trail, we took the other part of the loop, finding the largest and healthiest elephant tree of the day. A fine day in the desert.
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