Continued...
With a few days remaining of my birthday desert trip, I was camped off
SR78 on Milpitas Wash Rd with plans to hit up a few Wilderness
highpoints. Following that, I paid a visit to the Palo Verde and McCoy
Mountain ranges, tagging a handful of minor summits found in each.
Milpitas Wash Wilderness HP
As the name suggests, this Wilderness covers a vast tract of the
Milpitas Wash on the west side of the highway. Unfortunately, it doesn't
take in any real summits, leaving the highpoint to be the very
unexciting southwest corner of the Wilderness. One drives about 5mi
from the highway west on Midway Well Rd to reach it, the "highpoint"
found . It's pretty flat all around with no noticecable
point in the broad wash higher than another. Take your pick.
Well BM
This is the highpoint of the Buzzard Roost Wilderness. Richard Carey
had visited in 2015 and left a set of wayopoints on PB. I didn't use
his route, but the was a good one, with a turnout on
the west side of the highway. As Richard points out, the trick is to
minimize the number of ups and downs on the way to Well BM as one
navigates the many small ridges and washes. Luckily cross-country is
easy and the ridges aren't all that high. I followed up one set of
drainages flowing west before cresting a low rise to another set of
washes flowing north. As I got close to the peak, I
followed split in two with neither fork seeming the obvious choice, so
I simply started up between them. This worked nicely,
perhaps not the easiest way to the summit, but , some class
3 rock encountered along the way. Of note were the high number of
ocotillo that were , in sharp contrast to those we'd seen in
AZ earlier in the week. There are two summits to the peak, though this
is not indicated on the topo map. The and
found on
the northern one, but is 4-5ft higher and has its own
.
There was a paper scrap from along with a
newer register left by Carey, no other entries until my arrival. I
descended a ridge and
west off the south summit, taking a more southerly
route which seemed to work just as well. I spent
two hours covering a bit under 4mi on the roundtrip effort.
Palo Verde Mtns
After returning to SR78, I drove north to Milpitas Wash Rd, the same
location I had camped for the night. This road and a spur one forking
north provide access into the Palo Verde Range. The
splits the Palo Verde Wilderness into two halves, either a travesty or
a plus, depending on how you view Wilderness area access. The two peaks
lie on either side of the road, a few miles south of the range
highpoint, Palo Verde Peak, which I'd climbed some years earlier. I
parked off the road in the main wash and went to the eastern summit
first, , less than half a mile. I went up a rather
that provided some on decent volcanic rock, taking
me to the summit ridge just south of the highpoint. provides
a nice view to Palo Verde Peak to the north and the many square miles of
the Milpitas Wash to . I left here before
heading back down, choosing a different route to the north of the
ascent gully, finding the scrambling a bit tamer but still enjoyable.
I crossed and road north of where I'd parked, continuing
west to . This was an easier summit, class 2 by almost any
route including which I used for the ascent. McCloud and
Lilley had left a register here , with only one other visit by
Mark Adrian in 2018. I descended halfway down the South Ridge before
turning east to drop into and return
, taking 2hr20min for the 3mi effort.
McCoy Mtns
The afternoon was spent hiking in this range north of Interstate 10,
an hour's drive from my parking spot in the Palo Verde Mtns. I used the
Mesa Verde exit of I-10 (also used for the Blythe Airport), then Black
Rock Rd, a frontage road on the north side of the interstate that is
paved to Black Rock. It goes around the north side of Black Rock to
become a powerline road heading west. Several BLM roads fork off heading
north. The first goes to a lower telecom installation, the second to
a higher one near . I took this second road up to a locked
gate at the saddle between Peak 1,420ft and . There is a
large turnaround area here with to park. I first
visited the lower Peak 1,118ft, dropping down from to the
southeast into a wash before climbing up to the peak. This avoided some ups and
downs along the connecting ridgeline and was a more direct route, too.
Mark Adrian had left here back in February and I was happy
to provide the second entry. I returned to the saddle via a different
route, descending a gully which proved more interesting but probably
longer. Back at the jeep I headed up to
,
then another five minutes to reach the
highpoint of Peak 1,420ft. Someone had scratched the initials D.K.
near the summit with a date of 1970. No register found here. To
rose the higher Peak 1,853ft about 1.2mi away as the crow
flies - the ridgeline to reach it looked long and somewhat arduous and
I was in no mood to do it twice. More driving would be needed.
I returned to the powerline road and then found another spur heading
north up a broad drainage between the last two summits,
and . Getting tired, I wasn't sure I could do both, so set
off for the easier of the two to the west. I had to go across several
washes before reaching the base of the peak. There is a rough mining
road on the east side going halfway up the mountain. I avoided this by
staying to the right as I went up the class 2 northeast side, perhaps
a little too quickly since a look at the time showed I had plenty of
daylight for the second peak. I left before dropping down
the East Face, through the mining area and down the road into
.
I continued east across half a dozen washes, somewhat tedious, to reach
on the southwest side of Peak 1,853ft.
had some fun
scrambling, but seemed quite long, but probably less than half an
hour. I reached a saddle , then took another
10min to get myself to the top shortly before 4p. I left another
here before descending . I then
traversed around a small bump on the ridge to a second saddle that would provide
a more direct descent back to the car. faced west and
provided more , even better now that I was going down. It
would be 4:20p before I got , a long day with an
especially long afternoon. The sun before I could finish my
shower and get ready to head back out.
The fun was not over, as it turned out. I drove west on I-10, exiting
at Corn Springs with plans to hike in the Chuckwalla Mtns the next day.
I was parked not far from the pavement at a flat spot on Corn Springs
Rd, whiling away a few hours with dinner, writing and reading. I went to
warm up the car before going to bed only to find the starter wouldn't
engage. Great. I would call AAA in the morning, hoping the problem was
simply a drained battery. It could be worse of course, requiring a new
battery, perhaps an auxillary battery (yes, 2018 introduced a second
battery to the jeep wrangler). I had a terrible time sleeping with all
the many options running through my head, made worse because I had to
get on a plane to Hawaii on Tuesday and couldn't afford several days in
the shop. I didn't even know if AAA would service my car since it wasn't
on the pavement (I'd been denied previously), and I had no way to get
the car out of park or unlock the steering wheel to move it myself. All
this led to an overactive imagination and very little sleep...
Continued...