Sitting in a motel room in Lone Pine, I was poring over maps and online
descriptions for peaks ranging all over the state, trying desperately to find
some peaks I could enjoy climbing in the remaining six days of my trip. The
Sierra had turned out to be a bust with excessive cement-like snow that made
outings more of a grind than enjoyable. The previous day's outing to Mt. Inyo
and Keynot had been fun, but I had climbed the rest of the DPS peaks in this
range earlier in the year. There were still a few DPS peaks of interest in
Death Valley, but it would be too hot by this time to enjoy them. What to do?
I was ready to pack up and head to Southern California when I struck upon the
idea of heading to the Charleston Peak area near Las Vegas. The peaks there were
high enough to be doable in the summer despite the desert surroundings, but the
drive would be quite long. About four hours long, it turns out. I went to bed
by 7p so I could be up and on my way by 3a the next morning. Driving through
Death Valley at night was enjoyable, temperatures in the high 60s. I hit a bat
near Panamint Springs which I came to find later had cracked my windshield, but
had no other collisions with the wildlife. At one point I had to come to a
complete stop to keep from running over a rabbit, but it was the thought of
larger mammals crossing the road that had my full attention and my eyes glued
to the road. I reached the
Trail Canyon TH in Kyle Canyon just after 7a. A large
party of 
Koreans
was just starting off on a hike up the trail. It took only a
few minutes to toss my pack together before I, too, was heading up the trail.
All that I had gleaned of the peaks and the 
Mt. Charleston Wilderness
had come
from the DPS guide. There appeared to be two main loops, aptly named the North
Loop and the South Loop trails that looked to make a good tour of the area.
I hadn't realized that the area is really a mountain island in the desert,
forming a large C-shaped crown with Kyle Canyon draining the middle. The two
trails together covered almost all of the region above 10,000ft in elevation.
Cockscomb Ridge, an interesting formation worth another visit,
rose high on my right side as I hiked up the trail, gaining several thousand
feet in a few miles. 
Mummy Mtn, my first destination, rose before me
still higher, with 
Charleston Peak to the west and
Griffith Peak behind me to the south. Not long
after a trail junction (which put me onto the North Loop Trail proper) I passed
by some cliffs that had obviously been developed for sport climbing.
Switchbacking still higher, I overshot the turnoff for Mummy Mtn, thinking I
had one more higher switchback before turning off. The climb up to the main
crest from the trail was steep and tedious over loose sand and dirt - a far
better descent path.
I found a 
random cairn
at a saddle where I reached the crest, about 100 yards
west of the usual ascent point. I 
turned east,
heading for Mummy Mtn and the
gap used to access the summit through the cliff band that surrounds the peak. I
found a well-ducked use trail snaking up the ridge and then left across the base
of the cliff band to the gap. 
The gap
proved to be easy enough, what one might
call "high class 2". Harder than the gap were a few hard snow banks that blocked
portions of the trail on the way to the gap.
I reached 
the summit in just over two hours, arriving by 9:30a. There
are two rounded summits, the south one nearest the gap being where the summit
register and 
benchmark could be found. 
The register did not
go back far, only
to 1996, placed shortly after Patty Rambert's death as a memorial to her.
It took another three hours to make my way over to Charleston Peak. Along the way, not long after returning to the trail, I encountered an elderly hiker asking if I had seen his dog. I had not. Ten minutes later I found his dog coming up the trail behind me. I shooed the dog back down the trail in the direction of his owner, and only after several efforts did the dogpack-toting canine reluctantly turn and go back. Later in the day when I returned to my car I found a note on my car. The owner had evidently come back without his dog, typed up a Missing Dog notice on his computer and distributed printed copies to the vehicles in the area.
Where the trail turned to the southwest as it switchbacked up the northeast
and east sides of Charleston, I encountered 
large banks of snow that
blocked
the trail across the steep slopes. I had no axe with me, but I did carry
crampons which I used to my advantage to cross these sections. Luckily the snow
was starting to soften up so I didn't find the same hard conditions I had
encountered on the way to Mummy. The last set of switchbacks I avoided
altogether (they were about half covered in snow) by climbing directly to the
summit up boulder and talus slopes.
There were several hundred ravens about the summit, congregating on
rocks and on the snow. They looked to be feeding on insects that had been
blown into the snowbanks, but many were just taking it easy. Others were playing
in the drafts running up the west side of the mountain. It was almost like
a scene out of The Birds. There was a small radio antenna and what
looked like some kind of 
storage shed with a solar panel atop it. A
summit register 
ammo box
was welded to a pipe fixed to the ground about waist
level. The box was full of papers, torn registers, and other junk - a very
popular mountain it would appear, and I was unmotivated to bother signing the
book myself. A set of colorful 
prayer flags
was the most interesting adornment at the summit.
Not staying more than a few minutes at the bleak, vegetation-free summit, I
wasted no time starting down the South Loop Trail off the
southwest side of the
peak. I encountered a couple of 
younger guys
on their way up only a few minutes
after I had started down. They were the only other folks I ran into on the trail
the rest of the day. It took less than two hours to cover the distance between
Charleston and 
Griffith,
an easy, delightful trail that follows along the south,
mostly snow-free side of the crest through 
forest and
grassy meadows. The 
summit
of Griffith had another ammo box secured to a pipe fixed in the ground,
though this one looked to have been clobbered by someone wielding a large rock
in an effort to knock if from its perch. What we won't do for fun...
Returning from Griffith Peak back down to Kyle Canyon took another hour and a
half, made non-trivial by the presence of a 
great deal
of snow on the north
and northeast-facing slopes. I followed the boot prints of other hikers where
I could, shortcutting switchbacks buried in snow, wandering a few times through
the forest understory in search of the trail when I lost it. After returning
to the 
South Loop TH
and starting back down the road to my starting point, I was
able to hitch a ride from a man and his son who had driven up for the day from
Las Vegas "to check things out." They were quite kind to give me a ride for the
last half mile. 4p saw me back at the van.
It took an hour to drive in to Las Vegas, with heavy commuter traffic as I neared the city. From past experience I knew that $6 would buy me a shower at the Circus Circus KOA campground along with free use of one of their computers in the air-conditioned guest lounge. It was hot, 103F when I drove in. I stayed there until almost 9p waiting for the weather to start to cool. After finding a Subway for dinner (there's a Subway every other exit for more than ten miles along Interstate 15 heading to CA), I continued driving back to California. I stopped at an off-ramp about 30 miles northeast of Baker where I found it a cool 68F outside at around the 4,000-foot elevation mark. This made for a comfortable sleep in the back of the van before continuing on in the morning.
Continued...