On the last day of my desert roadtrip I planned to do a few more peaks from Walt
Wheelock's Desert Peaks Guide. I had spent 
the night parked at
the Minietta Mine located at the base of Lookout Mountain on the west side of the
Argus Range, above Panamint Valley. It was from here that I would start the first
of the day's hikes.
Lookout Mountain
Really just a subpeak on the side of the range, Lookout Mountain is an interesting pile of rock that drew the attention of prospectors starting in the 19th century. Jack Gunn operated the mine here for more than 30yrs, finally calling it quits in 1918, but not before various portions of the mountain had been drilled, crushed and extracted. 4x4 roads allow one to drive virtually to the summit but without such a vehicle I would have to be content with hiking it from the tamer gravel road I had driven in on. The route I took up the
East Ridge
starting before 
sunrise was a decent enough one, with moderate
scrambling and no real
issues. At the top of the ridge in about half an hour, I passed by the Modoc
mine which had a number of crumbling 
rock cabin ruins situated at the
top with a 
fine view. Several 
prospect sites were located
nearby. 
The highpoint is located almost a mile further west, following
a mundane hike along one of the aforementioned 
4x4 roads I came across.
Thomas Gossett had left a register here 
in 2009 with a few pages filled
during the interim. Somewhat surprising, the 
last entry was in 2010.
The view of the Panamints to the east might be quite fine in the later afternoon,
but this early in the morning there was only bright sunshine in that direction.
Behind me rose the Argus Range, part of whose crest I had hiked the previous day.
To make a loop of things, I dropped down the short, steep 
North Ridge
into 
Stone Canyon where I picked up an old, 
rough road
following down the wash. I stopped along the way to visit a 
mine site
that looks to have suffered a 
cave-in on one of its 
shafts.
A secondary shaft was put in around the corner
without seeming to bother with salvaging the original one. Back down at Nadeau
Road, about 3/4mi north of where I'd parked, I made the short hike up to visit
the highpoint of 
Ash Hill as an easy bonus. A road, now washed out,
used to run up to 
the plateau that forms the ill-defined highpoint. I
was 
back at the van by 9a, the whole outing taking less than two and
half hours.
Trona Peak
This officially unnamed summit lies at the southernmost end of the Argus Range. Along with nearby Wilson Peak, it is found in Wheelock's guidebook. I had climbed Wilson Peak earlier because it was a P1K - I wish I had known about Trona at that time because it makes better sense to do both together. This time I studied the maps a bit better and found another unnamed P500 that I could do on the way to Trona. If you're not interested in Peak 4,122ft, mine would hardly be the best route to Trona since it involves losing 500ft of gain along the way.
I started from the same inactive quarry I had used for Wilson Peak about 2mi NW
of Trona. This time I ignored the No Trespassing signs to allow me to
drive another 1/3mi 
into the quarry for a slightly shorter hike.
Judging from some of 
the signs one finds at the quarry periphery, I'd
guess that at one time trespassing was highly discouraged, but no one seems to
care these days. After walking through the quarry I followed a
burro trail across Wilson Canyon Wash to the start of the East Ridge
for Peak 4,122ft. This was a fairly tame climb, not too steep, good footing and
views opening up 
across Searles Valley very soon after starting up.
There was 
more green in this part of the range than I had seen
elsewhere, some 
flowers even, and I found it quite pleasing to the eye.
It took about an hour and twenty minutes to reach 
the top of Peak
4,122ft. There were several rocky points competing for the highpoint and I
visited each in turn, not really surprised to find no register. There were,
however, the usual areas of 
disturbed earth where a prospector of old
had dug into the earth to examine a curious bit of rock, perhaps hoping for that
next big find.
As expected, there was a 500-foot drop to the saddle with Trona Peak, another
mile and a half to the southwest. 
My route
to Trona followed the most obvious
and direct path up the NE Ridge, taking another hour and ten minutes from the
top of Peak 4,122ft. Arriving at 12:30a, about 2.5hrs after starting out, the
summit of Trona is not hard to find. The Gossett brothers of Trona had fashioned
a sign
of aluminum and affixed it in the summit rocks. The summit is just visible
from 
the town almost 5mi to the east. It's a nice perch overlooking
both the 
Searles Valley and 
China Lake areas. To
the northwest rises the higher Wilson Peak with the even higher
Argus Peak dominating the view to the north. Register scraps found at
the summit dated 
to 1968, left by members of the China
Lake Mountain Rescue Group from which the Occasional Peaks Gang (OPG) derived.
The Gossett's left a register 
in 1992 and most of the entries are from
other Trona and Ridgecrest locals. The 
last entry was dated 2009 but
the lack of more recent entries may have been due to the difficulty in opening
the container. It took me
some time to open it, tapping the rusty lid against a rock so as not to break
the glass jar.
I still had most of the afternoon available and decided to take a bit of a
roundabout return. I had been eyeing the next ridge to the south and thought
it would make a nice loop return even if somewhat longer (the fastest return is
likely to the NE down to Wilson Canyon). There were some fairly
green areas found
along the easy route and I enjoyed the extra time in the hills a great deal. I
spent about 2hr15m on the return, 
getting back
just before 3p. After showering
I drove to Ridgecrest for gas and caffeine before starting the long drive back
to San Jose. I hope to get in several more desert trips before things start to
heat up - I'm very interested to see just how green the desert might get this
year...