Continued...
Tom had come out to the Joshua Tree area to join me for the weekend. We met up
in 29 Palms around 7a and then carpooled in his Jeep for the rest of the day.
We made a driving tour through the western part of the Pinto Mountains,
utilizing BLM roads through Gold Park and Music Valley. We spent much of the
first hour driving into Gold Park where our first hike was located. The
temperature was on the cool side to start, but it would end up around 60F with
a breeze, quite nice for hiking.
Peak 4,091ft
This peak is located about a mile and a half inside Joshua Tree NP, southeast
of Gold Park. We parked off the BLM road that skirts the park boundary, then
followed upstream, towards our peak lying at the head of
the small valley. A 4WD road shown on the topo is no longer open to traffic, and
there is almost no trace of it remaining. It's an easy hike in the mostly sandy
wash, then a steep climb with decent footing up of the
peak. We reached north of the summit and followed
it to , taking about 40min. There are three points along
the ridgeline
curving to the east at the head of the valley, all with the same number of
contours on the topo map. LoJ conveniently has the first point we reached as
the highpoint, and our amateur eyeballing to the other points decided it was
probably good. Or maybe we were just being lazy. Richard Carey will probably
take his level up there and prove us wrong. We left and
the east side, dropping into the same wash we could follow
north to the Jeep. Just shy of two hours for the outing.
Peak 3,641ft - Boise BM
We spent the next 30min driving from Gold Park into Music Valley, along a road
that roughly follows the park boundary. Where the road turns south, the valley
narrows, eventually becoming a wash that drains into the park and Pinto Basin.
The road becomes less and less traveled the further south one goes, the last
part entering the park before ending where have been planted
across the drainage to exclude vehicles. We were only about half a mile from
where I'd hoped we could drive, so it would suffice. The two peaks are located
on the east side of the drainage, some of the more remote summits in the Pinto
Mountains Wilderness. No ascents have been recorded online. We hiked down the
wide, , a pleasant bit of hiking. After about 15min, we
started of the drainage to our right, gaining an
that take us up to of Peak
3,641ft. There is a lower summit to the west that we bypassed by traversing to
the saddle between them, then up the final bit to the summit from the west.
Some broken pieces of wood remained from the survey team that did the spot
elevation, left among a small pile of rocks. We took in while
taking a break and leaving , then the
South Ridge along the to Boise BM, about a mile t
o the SSE. It was a pleasant traverse, taking us about an hour between them.
As expected, there is atop Boise BM, with nice views
into Pinto Basin and the center of the park. Eagle Mtn, Monument Mtn and Pinto
Mtn are all easy to identify. We left another here before
, working our way northwest and west back to the
main drainage. There was some to negotiate before
dropping into the wash, but , it was an easy, pleasant walk
for a mile and change back to the Jeep. There were lots of
in the drainage, unlike the slopes on either
side which are relatively bare of much color. I almost stepped on
as well, camouflaged as it was with the surrounding rocks.
This was the longest outing of the day, taking us more than three hours.
Peak 3,792ft
We drove back north into Music Valley, Tom deciding to rest his recovering
knee while I did this peak on my own. Peak 3,792ft is located a little over a
mile east of Music Valley in the Pinto Mtns Wilderness. Unlike the earlier
peaks, this one has a great deal of
jumbled about, making for a
slower effort. There is narrow wash that helps make this a whole lot easier
than it might otherwise be, but I had trouble locating it at the start, making
for some wasted effort. Once located, it
until within a quarter mile of the summit on its west side. A final
of about 300ft to the summit where
I found a couple of old, quart-sized tied together
by a thin wire. A green bottle had no label, but the clear one was an old
Barq's root beer, probably at least 60yrs old. Cool find. I left them at the
summit with a last I carried with me.
On the way back, it was much easier following ,
though I still had a quarter mile at the end crossing some
over some minor washes and rounded ridges. I was
about an hour and a half on the outing.
Twentynine Palms Mountain
Twentynine Palms Mtn is the 2nd highest and 2nd most prominent summit in the
Pinto Mountains, towering high above the north side of Music Valley. I had
visited this summit in 2012 with Adam Jantz, most of the details forgotten as
Tom and I were driving north through the valley. We marveled at the impressive
road that climbs up out of Music Valley and I knew that Tom would probably
enjoy driving it. I suggested I wouldn't mind tagging it a second time. There
is a gate low on the road that Adam and I had been stopped at on that first
visit, making for a much longer climb than Tom's knee was going to allow. So
we were a bit dejected when we discovered the gate with a shiny new chain and
lock. We'd found enough of these to know that you should at least check it out -
often one finds the lock open or other ways to bypass the gate. My initial
inspection did not bode well, the lock firmly closed. But on a second look, I
noticed the chain was not connected to the metal post, merely slung around it
to
look secure. I gave Tom the thumbs up, removed the chain from the
post and opened the gate for Tom to .
We were able to drive quite high, stopping at
before the road goes downhill (the road services a
small radio facility about a mile and a half north of our peak). The saddle is
only 300ft below the height of 29 Palms Mtn, and maybe 2/3mi to the northwest.
We didn't quite appreciate the intermediate summit
which would
double the elevation gain to 600ft, but it was still much easier than hiking
from the gate. It would take us an hour for the roundtrip effort, a fairly
tame outing. The old register has disappeared, replaced by
, only
two weeks old, left by Mark Adrian. There were two other entries from visitors
that had climbed earlier the same day as ourselves. It was 5:15p by the time
we
to the Jeep and time to call it a day. We would spend much of the
next hour enjoying our beers and the drive back out to town where we dined
at Edchada's. Decent enough food, but service a little slow on a busy Saturday
night...
Continued...