Continued...
I had intended to spend the day doing more desert summits in California, but
the ones I had picked out seemed to have a sketchy starting location, possibly
on private property, and I decided to drive into Nevada and look for something
else to do. My online wandering settled upon Mt. Wilson in Arizona, a P3K near
Hoover Dam that had somehow escaped my attention previously. It's been almost
10yrs now since those AZ speeding tickets went unpaid, so I wasn't so afraid
to wander back into the forbidden state. To be safe, I camped the night in
Nevada and only drove into AZ for the day - no need to push my luck. The other
summits were all clustered around a P1K near the CO River, Willow Beach Peak.
All of the day's peaks can be found in Purcell's guidebook, Rambles &
Scrambles.
Mt. Wilson
Judging from PB, the most common approach seems to be via the Black Joe Mine
Rd from the west off US93. My van was not up for the high-clearance recommended
road, so I parked at the edge of the pavement and hoofed it
. The first hour was spent hiking the remaining 2.5mi up the
rough (more rock than dirt), passing by a Toyota truck parked
near the start, the occupant sleeping, I assume. Once I reached
of the road the climbing starts, following a ridgeline just to the left.
continues for just over two miles, views improving as one
climbs, overlooking to the north, the
Colorado River to the west, Boulder City to the northwest and countless rocky
peaks and ridgelines in all directions. It took most of three hours for me to
reach from the highway, about 3,500ft of gain all told. With
unsettled weather, I could see rain falling down in
around me. Though it made me nervous, I was
happy that it was holding off for Mt. Wilson. The sun made a few efforts to
come out, but the clouds ruled the skies for most of the day. A geocache had
been placed at the summit in way of register, but most of the entries were from
peakbaggers. There were too
many to bother photographing, but I snapped a few pictures of
the
that caught my eye while thumbing through it. I found
remnants of the old survey tower but couldn't locate the benchmark, even with
the help of one of .
My descent route was very much the same, save for
I used near the end to return to the road a bit
more directly than the ridgeline. There were dozens of prospecting
found in the gully. They were about 1" in diameter and would be drilled 1-2"
deep, usually into granite. Nothing seems to have come of it, though.
Sarada Devi/Kenny Peak/Willow Beach Peak
Back at the van, I drove south on US93 about 7mi to the Willow Beach access
road. There is a pay station near the entrance, part of the Lake Mead National
Recreation Area. Federal Lands Pass works nicely here. The road winds down to
the Colorado River where there is a large marina, launch facilities and picnic
areas, but no actual beach that I could find. off Jumbo
Washington Rd, a dirt road that seems popular for accessing Willow Beach Peak
from the
southeast. Rather than attempt to drive this road with my limited abilities,
I chose to hike to the summits more directly from the pavement, which worked
well. is
very steep here, either up narrow washes or along narrow ridgelines, and makes
for some fine scrambling, none of it harder than class 2. There are cool
views of the Colorado River to and
during the hike. Not
actually a river, but the upper reaches of Lake Mohave which is formed by
Davis Dam in Laughlin. I used a combination of wash and ridge to reach the
, Sarada Devi in a little under an hour. The
threatenting rain was
not going away, but in fact getting closer, and I wondered if it could hold off
until I made it to the last summit. From Sarada Devi, I followed
to Kenny Peak with a 300-foot saddle between them,
taking about half an hour from one summit to the other.
is much closer to Kenny Peak
and has a higher saddle, and
would take only another 15min to
reach. All three summits had registers, the one on Willow Beach Peak being the
oldest, a John Vitz register .
Adam Walker had visited all of these
peaks less than a month earlier. I spent almost no time on each of the summits,
eager to beat the rain. It finally
caught up with me as I was starting my descent
off Willow Beach Peak and it would keep up with a slow, steady drizzle for more
than an hour. Nicely, it stopped for the last 30min I was descending back to
the car and though I was pretty wet, my fleece had kept me fairly warm without
resorting to a rain poncho. Much of my stuff would spend hours drying out in
the car. Rather than take a cold shower at the end of the day, I chose instead
to take a dip in the
at Willow Beach (ok, at the rocky shore
next to the fish hatchery at the end of the road) since it was conveniently
nearby. I believe it was my first
time ever in the mighty river, though admittedly nothing to write home about...
Continued...