Continued...
This was supposed to be an exploratory climb to a cool feature called White
Fang in the Granite Mtns off Kelbaker Rd in the Mojave Desert. That didn't
happen because we got stopped by a fence. It's not often that wire strung
between wooden posts stops me, but this one had the right wording to get me to
turn back. Instead, it ended up being a collection of short, easy hikes. Nothing
special per se, but then almost any walk in the desert is special in my book.
Brown Buttes
These low hills are located just south of I-40 and the Mojave National Preserve
off Kelbaker Rd. We'd spent the night camped nearby and got up in the morning
to drive about a mile northeast on a sandy dirt road towards Peak 3,694ft, just
east of Brown Buttes. We were stopped by and parked. The
road continues to wind its way to the summit where an array of cell and
microwave towers are located. We walked the road only a short distance before
taking a more direct route to the summit up , an
effort that took all of 20min. We were happy to find
was and unmolested,
with nice views all around, just after sunrise. Our descent was a slight
variation with modest scrambling over mostly broken rock and talus. We then
repositioned the car to climb
from , another 20min effort. Our campsite was only
slightly further from the summit than Matt's car, so Karl and I descended off
to , getting back to
our vehicles in roughly the same time it took Matt to retrieve his car and meet
us there. Brown Buttes West is located on the other side of Kelbaker Rd, so
after repositioning our vehicles we to tag that one, about
3/4mi to the west up standard to . Karl
made to reconstruct the survey tower we found
lying about the summit area, but a lack of wire, skills and motivation doomed
his effort almost from the start. We had the preliminaries dispensed with before
9a and set off for the more interesting goal of the day.
White Fang
is a granite outcrop low on the southeast side of the Granite Mtns,
about 5mi north of I-40. From the satellite views it appears to be a tricky
climb, so we came prepared with rope, rock shoes and other gear. I didn't really
have a full rack since Scott had provided that for Old Woman Statue a few days
earlier (and had since gone home), but I had a handful of cams, biners and
slings and figured we'd see what we could manage. We parked to the east just off
Kelbaker Rd and towards the obvious feature. It was not
disappointing and looked like a tough bit of climbing from the views we'd gotten
on the approach drive. I didn't give us much hope, but it seemed like a fun
little bit of exploring and less than a mile from the road. We weren't out more
than 10min when we abruptly came upon signed for
No Trespassing and
Ecological Study Area. It was the latter than
disrupted our train and got us to turn around without getting closer than half
a mile to our objective. Later, I found this is state property managed by UC
Riverside, something called the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research
Center. There is a small collection of buildings tucked into the hills about a
mile west of White Fang that are rented out for educational research projects.
Recreational use of the land is prohibited, and this specifically includess
climbing activities. We'd have to leave it to other scofflaws to find out just
how difficult White Fang is. The feature is almost dead center within the
study area, so there's no backdoor way to reach it without going through the
state property.
Horse Hills
With our plans dashed, we went back to the vehicle and began a quick study for
something else to do since I had no more pre-planned summits in my pocket. We
hit upon the Horse Hills, a small collection of bumps between the Granite Mtns
and the Providence Mtns. We drove north on Kelbaker Rd and then turned off on
the dirt road towards Arroweed Spring, the starting point for the southern
highpoint of the Providence Mtns, a P2K. We were hoping to take another dirt
road southeast towards the Horse Hills, but signed for
No Vehicles, now apparently within the Mojave Wilderness. Interestingly,
, showed signs of heavy foot traffic, though to what
purpose we couldn't tell. There was even some
done for erosion purposes. We
speculated about the foot traffic, thinking maybe there were petroglyphs
somewhere in the area, but we never did discover where the traffic was headed
to. We followed the road/trail for almost two miles, an easy walk albeit
sometimes sandy, until we were within 1/3mi of the at a
point where the road goes over . The climb proved nothing
special, similar to the ones we'd done earlier in the morning.
had a register first left by John Vitz .
Terry Flood had visited in 2010. Barbara Lilley had left a second register
with visiting shortly thereafter.
That was the sum total of the entries before we arrived. We debated whether to
tack on Peak 5,462ft, a little more than a mile to the north as a bonus peak.
It was going to be a good deal
more effort than the one we had just done and we all seemed
to be pretty wishy-washy. We were all willing to go there if someone expressed
a desire to do so, but no one wanted to make the call. I think we were all
thinking about the long drive home at this point, so in the end we left it for
another day. Seemed like there was no point in climbing a peak if our collective
heart wasn't in it. We
to Matt's car by noon to finish the day. Lots
of driving ahead, for Karl and I especially, and it would be well after dark
before I got back to the Bay Area that night. A fun five days...
Matt's Video