Peak 4,425ft P300
Peak 3,562ft

Continued...

It was the last day of a nearly two week roadtrip to the Las Vegas area, and Tom and were nearly back to where we started at its beginning. We had planned to drive a powerline road west-east through the Clark Range, tagging summits along the way, but Tom's truck was not up to the task and we had to modify that to mostly use the Jeep. Today's summits were the easternmost ones we'd abandoned since we had to drive back out to the west to retrieve Tom's truck. Today we would visit these two summits before heading for home. We'd camped behind the Whiskey Pete's Casino in Primm, NV, leaving Tom's truck there while we took the Jeep to the THs in the morning.

Peak 4,425ft

This summit lies in the Stateline Wilderness, the lowest of the three summits with prominence in the Wilderness. Stav Basis had visited this summit two years earlier on a more ambitious outing that covered all three summits in a large loop. We parked very near where he had off the rough BLM road, but our route was very different, primarily because of our (my) route-finding challenges. When we started off around 7:15a, we initially headed almost due west because we thought the peak was in that direction. After traveling a mile across the very wide wash system, I realized I had mistaken the Wilderness HP for Peak 4,425ft, and we began to divert more to the southwest. We were still aiming for the wrong summit, thinking it was about 1/4mi to the northwest. There is, in fact, another closed contour of the same height located there, but it was not the LoJ point and would prove lower. It wasn't until we were at the base of the range that we had the correct point dialed in, and began following a rocky gully that rises to the southwest between the two points. The limestone gully becomes more solid in the upper half and we eventully steered a more direct line to the summit to the southeast for the last 10min or so, some class 3 involved. Not the most direct route, but an hour and a quarter after starting out we found ourselves at the summit. During our brief stay we left a register before choosing an alternate route for the return. We headed down the East Ridge, then turning northeast on a subsidiary ridge that we followed all the back down to the flats. The route proved more direct, all class 2, also not the route used by Stav. We were back to the Jeep not long before 10a.

Peak 3,562ft

This is a very short hike from the powerline road on the south side of the Wilderness. 35min of driving got us from the previous TH to the south side of Peak 3,562ft. Candace Skalet had the only TR posted to this LoJ-only summit from her visit only four months earlier. She called it class 1, but I don't think that's accurate - it appears to be class 2 via the easiest route. To keep things sporting, we chose to ascend the SW Ridge and then down the East Ridge, both class 2-3 on decent limestone. It was just over 45min for the roundtrip effort, pausing long enough at the summit to leave a second register there. We were done by 11:20p, a pretty short day, but I still had more than 7hrs of driving to get home.

We returned to camp and Tom's truck where we parted ways. Tom would take an extra day to get home, taking I-15 and US95 through Las Vegas, stopping for an extra peak south of the city, then another summit the following day. I drove the opposite direction, passing through Barstow, Bakersfield and eventually home that same evening. Speaking of Bakersfield, probably my least-favorite city in the state, I was happy to find that the SR58/US99 interchange through town has finally been completed after what seems like a decade of work (I think this was a huge Central Valley make-work program). For the first time ever, I could drive across Bakersfield without having to stop for a single light. Thank the gods...

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