Doug Kasian finishes Pima County, AZ

[TeresaGergen]

Prickly pear, cholla, shin-dagger yucca,
scrub oak, manzanita, catclaw,
100 degree temps, heatstroke, packs with gallons of water,
Indian reservations, bombing ranges, Border Patrol,
border crossers, drug smugglers, bounty hunters,
4WD roads, tecnical rock spires,
rattlesnakes, gila monsters, scorpions,
mountain lions, bobcats, and bears --
OH MY!

And you thought finishing Pima County, AZ was "only" a big deal because it has 740 RANKED PEAKS!

Huge congrats to Doug Kasian on a peakbagging feat that will almost certainly never be repeated!

And he writes well, too.  If you'd like to read some interesting stories, take a look at
http://www.desertmountaineer.com/blog-3/

[mikeofferman]

Wow, that is quite the list! I have also enjoyed reading his trip reports.

[John Kirk]

Indeed - congrats Doug! It's been fun to follow along with your blog.

Not only is this the first completion of Pima, but it's the first completion of a county in AZ.

[Al Sandorff]

Isn't that also the county with the most peaks that's completed?

[John Prater]

I've also really enjoyed reading his blog. Congrats Doug! Hope you've got lots of other desert climbs planned so you can continue to keep me entertained.

[John Paul]

Doug Kasian you are a beast. Sick accomplishment. Forver and ever! jp

[dhgold]

Good work! As coincidence would have it, I'm typing this with a palm full of Arizona cactus spines, so it's fresh on my mind and I know first hand (ha ha) how punishing those peaks can be.

How long did that quest take you? I'm sure I'm not the only person wondering.

[Steve Knapp]

Congrats Doug! Wow, what a tough project. I didn't know about your blog, read some of it today. Really interesting stuff in there. Thanks for writing up your adventures.

[Doug Kasian]

Hi Everybody,

I didn't know all this conversation was going on, but thank you all for your kind words. John Kirk emailed me to tell me about this.

I did the first one of my Pima County peaks back in 1986, but at that time had no intention of doing such a project. The first one was the county high point, and that was while I was doing Arizona's county high points. The next bunch happened while I was doing the high point of each mountain range in the county (while I was doing the high point of each of the 193 mountain ranges in the state, a list I dreamed up and worked on, finishing those in 1989). Many more were climbed when I decided to climb the 401 peaks on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. By then (2006) it occurred to me that i might as well finish off the rest of the county. There were some pretty fierce technical climbs left to do, and with the help of leaders like Brian Rundle and Andy Bates, I made it up those too. It was a long and winding road, for sure.

A huge problem with completing this list now is the tremendous amount of danger, because some ranges are overrun by the drug cartels. Scouts are posted on many mountaintops 24/7, while men carry loads of drugs north from the Mexican border under the protection of the scouts who use sophisticated radio gear to send encrypted messages. Some of us, simply by the amount of time we spend in these ranges, have become (whether we wished it or not) experts on the situation. It can be traumatic and stressful. Every trip into those ranges makes us wonder if we'll even make it back home in one piece, or at all.

In any case, I'll keep reporting on the situation on my website with weekly stories about our outrageous adventures. http://www.desertmountaineer.com

Best regards,
Doug Kasian sierramadre001@gmail.com