Day 3 of my 9-day desert trip saw three of us parked alongside Camp Rock Road
about a mile from Interstate 40. Laura had met me the night before at the
Starbucks in Barstow where we then had dinner at a local diner.
Karl had driven in
from Santa Cruz arriving around midnight at the appointed spot on the road
where Laura and I were already fast asleep. Today's objectives were a couple of
range highpoints, the first in the Newberry Mountains. The small range and
accompanying Wilderness lie just south of the interstate. The Newberry HP is
located in the southern part of the range and most easily approached from a
side road off the dirt Camp Rock Rd. Leaving two of our vehicles, we drove in
Karl's Element to the 
starting point near Hadden Well. There is a
ranch located
here, with cattle seen in the nearby desert flats grazing what they can from
the scrub and feeble grasses.
Starting shortly before 7:30a, we followed 
an easy wash to the north
for several miles to the base of our mountain. Along the way we
came across several 
tortoise shells lying empty on the
gravel wash. I have yet to see a live tortoise in the desert, but
its always interesting to find the shells. The 
south slopes we
climbed were steep but no more than class 2, while sporting a modest amount of
sharp, 
spiney vegetation to watch out for. Watch where you're
walking or you're sure to get
stabbed. Most of the mountain and range are composed of volcanic rock and there
were acres of softball-sized ones to negotiate on our climb. In all it took
about an hour and a half to cover the nearly three miles to
the summit. The views take in many square miles of brown desert:
Barstow to the northwest, the Newberry Mtns to the north and
northeast and the Ord Mtns to 
the south. A set of nested
yellow cans (the new color?) were found among the summit rocks. The oldest scrap
dated 
to 1975. MacLeod & Lilley visited 
in 1977, leaving
a small film cannister which was later upgraded when 
Dave Jurasevich
left a larger notebook in 1992. Probably half the names in
the nine pages were recognizable as the usual collection of desert peakbaggers.
Andy Smatko climbed it in 1990 and left a note that he had previously
climbed it more than 15yrs earlier. 
We lounged about the summit in
no particular hurry for about 20 minutes until I gathered up the troops for the
return.
Our descent was nearly the route, using 
the main wash leading south.
We found more 
tortoise shells including one of a juvenile and
started finding many 
tortoise holes dug in the sides of the wash
that we had not noticed during the ascent. We found no tortoises at home, look
as we may. There was also an unusual gourd or 
desert melon that we
found in several locations. These were never seen
to have been eaten by the desert animals and could lie unrotting on the desert
all summer and fall it would appear. It was nearly 10:30a by the time
we returned, just over 3hrs for the round trip.
It would take us two and half hours to get to our next TH for the Bristol Mtns
HP. This much larger range is located further east, in the Kelso Dunes
Wilderness, just west of the Mojave National Preserve. The highpoint is located
almost 13 miles due north of Ludlow. A high clearance dirt road starting from
Ludlow gets one to within five miles of the highpoint from the west, but makes
for a long drive. Once again, we left two cars at the large gravel truck parking
at Ludlow and took Karl's north. The worst part is in the very beginning
where the road has had washouts, but soon gets better. In the dry season one
can take the direct route 
across Broadwell Lake which proved to be
the best part of the entire route. We could easily reach speeds of 50mph on the
surprisingly smooth surface which Karl reported to feel "spongy" and
unsettling. A 
cloud of dust kicked up behind us which would have
reduced visibility to anyone behind us to nearly zero. It was almost like racing
on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Almost, but not quite.
Not long before 1p we found 
a place to park
off the road that services the
powerline we parked under. We headed southeast to the opening of a broad wash
that would lead us to the interior of the Bristol Mtns and our highpoint. It
was 
easy walking through open desert.
There were hardly any cacti at all in
this area which always makes things easier. We spent almost two hours walking
across the flats and then up 
the sandy wash. The broad wash splinters
into a bunch or 
narrower canyons and we had our choice of two that
looked to head in the right direction. We chose the left one, finding it windy
and narrow and 
a bit of fun with some 
class 2-3 steps to
overcome. Eventually it opened to a wider jumble of rock and reconnected with
the right fork of the wash that we had forgone earlier. There was more winding
our way 
up the canyon until we were only half a mile from our summit.
At this point we 
climbed out of the canyon to the right and made
our way up the last 800ft (very steep!) to the summit.
It was 3:20p when I pulled up at 
the obvious highpoint marked by the
broken remains of a survey tower. 
Karl joined me a few minutes later,
but we seemed to have lost Laura. 
She appeared another five minutes
later along the ridge further north, taking her time with photographs and
enjoying the surroundings before 
joining us. A
summit register in a pair of cans looked to have been left by
Evan Rasmussen less than three years ago. A few other names,
including Sue & Vic Henney appeared on the single page before our own names
were added. This struck me as atypical. A range highpoint without an older
register from Gordon & Barbara? I dug further into the summit cairn on a hunch
and came up with a second pair of nested cans. It wasn't exactly what I
expected, but it was several decades old. 
Dave Jurasevich had left
it with a scrap of paper in 1992, supplemented by a notebook when Adrian, Carey
& Hanna (the San Diego SC crew) visited 
in 1996. No sign of
MacLeod/Lilley, but at
least the peak hadn't been neglected as it first appeared. We tore out the first
page of the newer register and added it to the older one, then packed up the
newer cans and booklet - they would be better used on another summit.
After half an hour at the summit, I remarked to the others that we had only
about 40 minutes of sunlight left. They got the hint and quickly packed up. We
dropped down from the summit not too far south of where we went up, following
a slightly different course 
down the face and
into the drainage. Here we made
a slight change to our ascent route, following the southern branch back to the
main wash. This turned out to be slightly more interesting with a few
class 3 falls to 
entertain ourselves with. We were
snapping pictures of the 
orange mountainsides as the sun went down
shortly after 4:30p, and soon after we were back in the broad wash were we
paused one last time to check out 
a mine shaft cut in
the hillside. We still had something like three miles to get back to the car
and it was pretty certain by now it would be by headlamp. We kept up a good
pace for the remaining distance, Karl and I trying to see if we could outlast
each other before putting on a headlamp. Laura gave up on this game rather
early (we contend she simply doesn't have enough testosterone to compete
properly),
turning on her light somewhere before 5:30p. Karl and I persisted
to the end.
We watched the sky fade to grey and the stars come out above. Our vision dimmed
until we were only seeing the slight variations between light gray (sandy wash
sections) and darker gray (shrubs), aiming for the lighter colors and hoping
for the best. Occasionally we'd miss and run into a small shrub. This could
have been disasterous had we done this with one of the cacti. There weren't
many we knew, but there were some, and it was a chance collision with
one of these that we most dreaded. Still we wouldn't turn on our headlamps,
still we continued to joke and taunt each other, Laura not far behind us and
dying to say, "I told you so!" In hindsight we got lucky and made it back to
the car just before 6p, unscathed. Heh-heh. Of course this would only embolden
us on the next fool-crazy idea we might come up with.
We all agreed it was a pretty good afternoon, much better than the outing to the Newberry HP. We drove back to Ludlow where I took a cold shower in the gravel parking lot, almost admitting it wasn't worth the effort. At least I was clean. We treated ourselves to dinner at the Dairy Queen conveniently located across the parking lot. Yum! Afterwards, we had more driving to the Visitor Center at Hole-in-the-Wall in the heart of the Mojave National Preserve. Tom Becht was already here when the three of us drove into the small parking lot. We were ready to sack out in the back of our respective cars when we got a visit from the local NPS staff, the host of the nearby campground. We explained that we were there to meet our two friends, Sean and Jen, which was quite true. He did us one better and told us they were waiting for us at the campground. He was a clever one, he was. It was nearly 9p when we found the others at the campground. They decided to join us for camping outside the campground ($12 per site), north along Black Canyon Road where we'd leave a car in the morning as part of our planned shuttle for a one-way hike. They still had to disassemble their tent, but I told them we'd be easy to find just three miles up the road. It turned out to be more like five miles, and they gave up looking for us before driving that far. No matter, we'd all reconvene again in the morning...
Continued...