Feb 21, 2024
|
With: | Iris Ma |
Tom Grundy |
Today's effort was to a trio of summits in the Arrow Canyon Range NE of Las Vegas, all found in Purcell's Rambles & Scrambles. The range is primarily rugged limestone and offers some challenging scrambling opportunities. The rain from the previous day had expended itself, leaving things overcast and chilly, but dry conditions. We left Tom's truck at our trashy campsite near the Pilot truck stop and took the Jeep out to the end of a BLM road at a low saddle in the western half of the range, starting out at 8a.
We chose to do this loop in a counter-clockwise fashion because we did not know if we'd be able to find our way back from Landfill at the end of the day when we were tired. There is an intermediate ridgeline we'd have to go over, and the west side of this looked terribly steep from where we parked. So we figured it would be best to see if the route worked at the start of the day in case we needed to make adjustments to it. Our route started by descending into an inner canyon, crossing it, and then heading west up a steep, rubbly gully that would grow steeper as we neared the high saddle. It was a bit of a mess for most of it, but the upper part was more solid and the scrambling never got past class 3, much to our satisfaction.
Once at the high saddle, we had to go back down the east side, an hour into the outing and our first summit, Landfill Peak, now in view. The east side of the saddle was an easier gradient, all class 2, giving us time to eye options for getting up Landfill across a second inner canyon. Beforehand, I had drawn in a route going up the NW Ridge, but that was looking unlikely with a series of cliffs that could be seen in profile, none of it looking realistic. Instead we focused on the West Face as we crossed the wash at the bottom of our descent. The easiest way appeared to be to the right, up class 2 slopes to gain the South Ridge, but of course our group wasn't always keen at taking the easy way when there is a more challenging direct route. Tom led us up through the class 3-4 West Face, eventually working our way onto the South Ridge near the top. We concluded it was no more direct or faster, but certainly more fun. Once on the South Ridge, the rest of the route was standard class 2, getting us to the summit by 10:30a.
Adam Walker had left a register at the summit in 2021, having combined
two of our peaks with Pasture Mtn well to the north on a 17mi+ solo adventure -
props for that one! We had his GPX track from that outing, so knew that the East
Ridge could be used for descent. It was not as direct as the NW Ridge would be,
but it was the safe bet. This time we chose the safe option because getting
cliffed out on descent is much more frustrating than doing so on ascent. Iris
had to take a work call while we were descending
Work call concluded, we continued down to the wash between Landfill and
Cave Butte, noting tire tracks in the sandy wash (and a possible easier way to
approach these peaks from the east). Tom and I went further up this wash before
ascending the south side of Cave Butte to reach its
East Ridge, while Iris jumped on the same ridge from its start. It was
pretty much all class 2 as expected, and it was after 12:30p before we were
atop Cave Butte. The summit is the lowest of the three and does not
have wide-ranging views, more or less surrounded by higher summits except to the
east. But it does have prominence, so it had that going for it. Our last summit,
Marble Mtn, was another mile to the SSW and another 700ft higher, marking our
highpoint of the day.
We dropped to the saddle with Marble Mtn to the SSW, finding
it a fine spot from which to view Landfill's NW Ridge. We then
spent the next 50min climbing class 2 slopes following the
various ridgelines in a roundabout fashion to reach Marble Mtn
from the northeast. A Kevin Hume party had left a register here in
2022, ours marking the second entry two years later. The summit offers
nice views in all directions, the range highpoint seen some miles to
the north. Seems there are a number of bigger fish in this range in
that direction. For the descent, we initially started down the SE Ridge, class
2, before deciding to drop more directly to the SW down a steep gully
that would lead to the wash below. Most of the route looked promising though
the slope was steep and somewhat loose, so down we went. Where the topo
map shows the most crowded contours about halfway down, we ran into some class
3-4 on questionable rock that gave us pause. Tom led down through this
section, making it look reasonable (which it wasn't really), and then gave
encouragement as Iris and I followed through the tricky moves. There
was some minor class 3 below this, and eventually we reached
easier ground as the gully flattened some and led out to the wash and
the first inner canyon below. We had a last climb up tame slopes to get
us back to the Jeep shortly after 3p.
The stats came in at only 6mi, but the 3,800ft of gain on the day had us pretty
tired. Tom would comment the next morning that his legs were a bit sore, a rare
confession.
We drove back to the Pilot at the US95/I-15 junction to retrieve Tom's truck.
Iris was due at the airport for a flight to Phoenix in the early evening, so
Tom headed off for that duty before meeting back up with me southwest of Las
Vegas. We found a quiet spot between Jean and Goodsprings, on what Google calls
the Goodsprings Bypass Gravel Haul Route - quite the mouthful for what is
really just a service road for a minor transmission line.
Continued...
This page last updated: Wed Mar 6 14:09:29 2024
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