Bob Burd's Trip Reports

Continued...

Today was primarily a jeeping adventure with some short hikes scattered between driving stretches. None of the day's peaks are actually in the Valley of Fire State Park, but the BLM area north of the park includes a large section of sandstone that is part of the same formation as that found inside the park. The area is known as the Logandale Trails, home to off-grid camping and popular with the off-road folks. We left my Jeep and TomG's truck at the I-15 junction with the Valley of Fire Hwy, the four of us piling into TomB's Jeep for the outing. The Logandale Trails are a mix of sand and rock, some of the routes quite challenging. I was happy to let TomB do the driving because he enjoys this sort of driving far more than I. He would have his fill by the end of the day.

Peak 2,247ft

This was the northernmost and most prominent of the day's peaks, as well as a drive-up. None of the roads we drove to reach it are shown on the topo maps, though portions are depicted in Google Maps. The key was to use the satellite view to verify what we could actually drive. Our approach to the summit was

from the south, the final stretch up a steep gradient.

The summit is composed of broken limestone rocks with very little vegetation and unobstructed views

all around.

Peak 2,215ft

We spent the next half hour driving back down from the previous summit, then south and west to get us within a quarter mile of Peak 2,215ft on

its south side. This was the first of three summits in the sandstone formation, and as expected, made for the more interesting summits of the day. This summit was pretty straightforward, first following

a gully up to the northeast (some easy class 3), then NNW up class 2 slopes to

the summit. The very summit had a thin layer of the

overlying limestone that used to cover all the sandstone here. About 30min for the roundtrip effort.

Peak 2,326ft

Back at the Jeep, we continued west and south past the Indian Pictograph Park indicated on Google Maps. We parked a quarter mile

NW of Peak 2,326ft, then went up

a gully/ramp to the SE, then onto

the summit mesa and across to the highpoint at P18>the western edge. This one, too, had a limestone cap. We left

a register in the summit cairn before

returning the same way, about 45min.

Overton Ridge

Like the first summit, this limestone peak lies to the east of the sandstone areas and makes for

another drive-up. There are two points of similar height, the slightly lower northern one found only on PB. We

visited both before returning back the same way. There are other, steeper options to climb this summit with a vehicle, but they looked daunting (even for TomB) and we chose the easier, but still challenging gradients.

Momo Peak

Easily the most interesting peak of the day, a modest sandstone gem. The peak was named by Stav and pals when they visited it a year earlier. We essentially used their route

from the southwest, climbing partway up

one wash/gully before

exiting to the right and into

a higher wash before the final approach from the east. Fun class 3 on this one and tricky route-finding. We tried to make the

more direct route in the original gully work on

the way down, but were stopped by a dryfall we could not circumvent. During our

summit stay, we signed

a register left by another party in 2022, that included entries from Stav's group in 2023.

Overton Mesa

We spent the next 45min driving back east to exit the area by a different route, stopping for this last summit, the highpoint of

Overton Mesa. The rock here is quite different, more like

badlands of Anza-Borrego and elsewhere, none of the nice sandstone. The hike was a short one, taking all of ten minutes to reach the highpoint at the far southwest end of

the mesa. The only (slight) difficulty was a short cliffband at the top that had a class 2 exit we found without any trouble. We were done by 2:15p, but still had some driving out to Overton and then back to the other vehicles along Interstate 15. This was TomB's last day with us, so tomorrow we would be down to three...