Iris and Tom were planning a long roadtrip to Northern Nevada and invited me
to join them. I told them I would be able to join for the second half and
began to make plans for peaks around Reno and places to the east. As the time
was approaching, the weather up that way was taking a nasty turn with
temperatures forecast as low as 23F. I suggested a redirect to the Pahrump
area where the weather would be better, and we agreed to meet up on Wednesday
evening. I left San Jose early, around 4:30a, so that I might have some time
in the afternoon for a few summits after 8-9hrs of driving. The shortest route
via SR127 north from Baker was closed, so I had to take the longer route
through Trona, Furnace Creek and Death Valley Junction. Between these last
two settlements, I paid a visit to a few peaks near Dante's View, then a last
summit near Pahrump before sunset.
False Coffin Peak - Coffin Peak
These closely-spaced summits are located in Death Valley, southeast of Dante's
View in the Black Mountains.
I had visited the officially named Coffin Peak in 2011 when I was busy
collecting summits in Andy Zdon's
Desert Summits. False Coffin is an
unofficial name given by Courtney Purcell in his later book,
Rambles &
Scrambles. It's not clear which is higher - PB has Coffin as the higher
while LoJ anoints False Coffin, the difference due to PB using clean
prominence and LoJ using average prominence. I had known nothing of
False Coffin on that first visit and had bypassed its summit by a hundred
yards on my way to Coffin Peak. Today, I drove most of the paved road up to
Dante's View, stopping short of the final steep climb when I was almost due
west of False Coffin, and just off the roadway. I made the
to False Coffin in less than 30min and continued on to
, only 15min further. I picked up
traveling between the two, and would use it for most of the return as well.
There was no register atop False Coffin that I could find (there are several
points vying for highpoint on the ), but there was one
atop Coffin Peak. It was not very old, the most weathered scrap dating only
, left by my nemesis, Laura Newman. I suspect she may have
absconded with the older register once she found my name in it.
Peak 3,370ft
I spent the next hour driving east out of the park and through Death Valley
Junction on paved Bell Vista Rd that continues to Pahrump. I had planned to
meet the others off this road to camp for the evening. Since I still had some
daylight upon my arrival, I decided to visit nearby . This
somewhat isolated and low summit lies at the southwest end of the Last Chance
Range. A dirt road runs to the south of it, lined with a dozen informal
shooting ranges. There were several parties practicing with various weapons as
I drove by. These would continue until sunset when the parties packed up and
headed home to Pahrump. The hike up the is short,
taking less than 20min to climb about 600ft. There is a nice view of Pahrump
to and the we would be
climbing over the next four days. I was back down by 4:20p, shortly before
sunset. I took a shower
and then drove back out the dirt road about a mile to where I was to meet the
others. I spotted Tom's truck turning off Bell Vista Rd within a minute of my
arrival at our campspot - impressive timing...
Continued...