Continued...
Tom had brought his Jeep for our visit to the White/Inyo Mtns this weekend and
we planned to make full use of it. Our target today was a group of 9 summits
around the Crooked Creek drainage in the White Mountains, all of which can be
found in Walt Wheelock's Desert Peaks Guide and/or Andy Zdon's Desert
Summits. I hadn't actually given the exact number to Tom in the morning
when we started, saying something like,
"I think there's seven or eight". It was only after I
kept noticing yet more tracks I had downloaded to the GPSr that I realized how
many there were. All of these summits could be reached with a low-clearance
vehicle, but not in a single day. I guessed that probably three days would have
been needed if I had just the van due to the long hike down Crooked Creek Rd.
Even with the Jeep there were no drive-ups
and only the first two were trivial, but none were really hard - unless you try
to put them all together in one day...
Sage Hen Peak / Iron Mountain
We started with the two peaks furthest from the pavement, almost eight miles
worth of driving. We turned off White Mtn Rd at the dirt Crooked Creek Rd
signed for the .
We passed this and spent almost an hour driving the remaining
seven miles to the peaks. Zdon recommends walking the last 4-5 of these miles
due to damage that vehicles have made in boggy areas where the creek crosses the
road. In the current drought conditions, there was no water actually running in
the creek, probably as dry as it has been in decades in June, and we found no
such boggy places. The two summits lie on a high plateau above Crooked Creek
to the east, from each other by less than a mile. Despite
this, we lazily
drove to each separately, getting as close as the roads would permit,
which in these cases meant less than a quarter mile. Sage Hen had less than
200ft of gain, an over low desert scrub. From the summit
we could see White Mtn Peak to ,
a familiar sight that could be seen from each of the summits we visited. John
Vitz had left a handful of pages to serve as a register ,
Sue & Vic Henney adding a notebook . was the
first entry in three years on this seldom-visited summit. We returned to the
Jeep and drove close to Iron Mtn's summit on a we had spied
from atop Sage Hen. The hike to the top was , all
of seven minutes. Iron had a much older register, a MacLeod/Lilley version
that has proved slightly more popular than Sage Hen's. I
snapped a picture of the , and the register
pages before we back down the slopes.
Red Peak
Red Peak is located a little more than a mile west of Sage Hen across Crooked
Creek. We drove several miles back down to Crooked Creek along
we had driven in on, to our a mile
and a half north of Red Peak. We were happy to find a very
good (it appears to be a cattle trail between pasture areas)
shortly after crossing over (a trickle of water found
here). We followed the trail for more than a mile until we were at the northwest
base of the summit, less than half a mile away. More low scrub covered the
we climbed . Another John Vitz
was found, this one with three pages. So far, Vitz and the
Hennys were in all three registers, apparently doing a similar peak-hopping
venture like ourselves. The summit has a brownish tint and if you use your
imagination you can almost see how the peak was named. On the way back we took
a slightly different route off the summit to allow us to pick up
sooner than we would have otherwise, following it
to the start. We spent an hour and forty minutes on this one
with about 1,000ft of gain - at least we were breaking a sweat now.
Station Peak
We drove a short distance north on a spur road to
. It's pretty darn far from Deep Springs Valley,
but it appears to be a summer grazing area for the Deep Springs College located
down in the high valley for which it's named. The camp currently consists of
two small cabins for , avoiding
mosquitoes or staying out of the rain. Not that it rains here much. We hadn't
seen a mosquito yet
and I don't think I'd want to stay in one of these hantavirus incubation
chambers. After examining the cabins we drove a short distance further to
, about 3/5mi from the summit. With a bit more brush than
the other peaks and some loose to contend with, this
700-foot climb seemed harder than the 30min it took us to reach
. The we found here was far more
popular than any
of the others - perhaps the ranch hands need something more to do than watch
the cattle mow the grass. One of the entries had a more modern term for cowboys
- "The Deep Springs College Management Resource
Team". If you haven't heard of this unusual college that combines a free
liberal arts education with farm/ranch work, check it out
online. We detoured
to find an we'd seen from the
summit but found it offered no advantage. An hour after we'd started
out we were crawling back to the Jeep.
Bucks Peak
Located two miles west of Red Peak, the two share similar hikes - about 1,000ft
of gain over 3.5mi round trip. From where at the junction
of the North and South Forks of Crooked Creek, a good cow trail leads south
towards
Bucks Peak and Sage Hen Flat. Once at the base of the mountain on the north
side, Tom and I split up as he headed slightly left to a saddle for lower-angle
climbing and I went up the steeper, more direct route. Tom found a use trail
halfway to the saddle which proved just the extra bit he needed to beat me to
the summit by a few paces. located at the summit
commemorates a 25yr-old
Deep Springs Cowboy who would have been just a few years older than myself
if misfortune hadn't befallen him. A busy MacLeod/Lilley
had entries
by Vitz and the Henneys again, though not the same dates as those on the
previous peaks - we were beginning to out-bag the lot of them, thanks to the
Jeep. We both returned via Tom's route with the that we
followed until we lost it the mountain. We soon picked up
the original and followed it to the Jeep.
Blanco Mountain
Just before we returned to White Mtn Rd, we searched for a Jeep road heading
south towards Blanco Mtn. Finding it, we were dismayed to see that travel along
it was no longer allowed, requiring a hike of 2mi, one-way. It was around 2:30p
by this time and we had to admit we were starting to get tired and probably
couldn't manage all nine that I had planned. We decided to triage the remaining
peaks, leaving this harder one for another time. This would leave us enough
energy for two others that were shorter.
County Line Hill
It's a funny use of the word "hill", for an 11,000-foot summit with more than
800ft of prominence. Though the hike was only about a mile and a quarter each
way, it gained more than 1,000ft. We drove south on White Mtn Rd looking for a
turnout and a good starting point on the peak's west side, not finding one until
we were almost a mile SSW of the summit. Another vehicle was parked here and we
could see a use trail heading up a
so we guessed it might be the unofficial summit trail. Turns out the trail only
went up the draw, not to the
summit, but it worked anyway thanks to brush that wasn't much trouble. We came
across
on their way down as we were heading up (older here is relative - they
weren't
that much older than Tom and myself), undoubtedly
the occupants of the other vehicle. In passing I commented, "Popular summit,"
to which one of them replied with a chuckle, "At least today!" We found no
register at ,
the first time for missing one. To rose
Blanco Mtn, mocking us it seemed, only a mile and a quarter distance. The
distance wasn't the problem for us at this point, but the high valley between
them that required dropping and then reclimbing almost 1,000ft. Neither of us
felt like we had that much left in us, so we returned the way we came
to our car.
Campito Mountain
Two miles NNW of County Line Hill, Campito Mtn lies only half a mile off White
Mtn Rd. It looks deceptively close when one
but there is more than
,
some of it on crappy talus before one reaches the summit
behind a false one. I'd have probably called this one trivial if we'd started
on it in the morning, but in the late afternoon it was as much as we could
manage with a smile. We took a little less than 30min to climb to the top,
finding
but no register. 45min after starting out we were back down at
the road.
Clem Nelson Peak (aka Reed Mtn)
By the time we returned from Campito it was after 5p. We still had three hours
of daylight but had run out of energy and enthusiasm. As we headed south on
White Mtn Rd we paused as we came up to the saddle in the road nearest to Clem
Nelson. I noted the stats for it were pretty much the same as Campito. It would
probably take us less than an hour but neither of us cared by this point and we
called it quits. Time for a shower and a beer...
Continued...