Continued...
I was camped out in my van at the
in the Spring Mtns outside of
Las Vegas, on my way to Telluride, CO, taking the scenic route to get
there. It had been 100F+ in Las Vegas the day before, but it was in the 50s
in the early morning hours at 7,500ft where I parked. Unfortunately it was
also raining. Not heavily, but a steady, drizzling rain that kept up much of
the morning, keeping me inside. I used the opportunity to catch up on some
needed sleep, finally getting up after 10:30a and starting an hour later. The
rain had stopped shortly before I got up, but of course most everything outside
was wet. I had trashed my toes a few weeks earlier on an aborted backpacking
trip, hiking more than 15mi with wet feet, and was loathe to do so again. I
had planned to climb Harris Mtn, but since that was an all cross-country
route I decided a trail would give my feet a better chance of staying dry. So
I chose to climb a few peaks that would keep me mostly on trail.
Fletcher Peak
This easy-to-reach summit lies less than 2mi SE of the much grander Mummy Mtn,
one of the monarchs of the Spring Mtns and a DPS summit. Fletcher rises a few
hundred feet above the magic 10,000-foot mark and gets mention in Andy Zdon's
Desert Summits. The shortest route to
Fletcher is from the north starting at Hilltop Campground off SR158, but I used
the longer approach via in order to add
on my way
back. Trail Canyon is a wide and well-maintained trail that worked nicely in
keeping my feet dry while the moisture took its time evaporating from the flora
that day. The trail passes over the east shoulder of Mummy Mtn before descending
the other side, passing less than a mile to the NW of Fletcher. A duck marks
of a very good use trail that goes all the way to the west summit.
Fletcher has two closely spaced, forested summits with the same number of
contours shown on the map. The GPS was unable to distinguish which of the two
was higher. Both had , but the
was weak by comparison. Neither had much in the way of ,
especially considering the dismal weather conditions.
Cockscomb Ridge
This was the far more interesting of the two peaks. Courtney Purcell in his
Rambles and Scrambles of the Las Vegas area, along with other source
cite the South Ridge as a class 3 climb, and is probably the quickest way to
get there if this is the only peak you're doing. I wondered if I'd be able to
climb it from the north, starting from the saddle where Trail Canyon meets the
Charleston Peak Trail. There are some pinnacles and a deep step that make it
nonobvious when viewed from the trail. It turns out you can, though I made a
minor mistake in following what looked like a use trail that almost immediately
traverses around to the of the ridge. This disappeared into
nothingness and I soon found myself scrambling up steep slopes and back
to the ridgeline. Better to simply start off along the use trail that follows
, abruptly ending at a large step just north of the
summit. From here the route passes down to the east
side where use trail and ducks lead up through
to join the route from the south maybe 30yds from the summit. Unlike Fletcher,
sports no trees, leaving
unobstructed. I found in a cracked plastic jar went back
only a few months.
From the summit, it took but an hour to return to
which I reached not long before 4p. Some blue skies were already evident and by
the time I had driven SR158 from Lyle Canyon to , the clouds
were beginning to
dissipate, suggesting better weather to come. I spent the night parked at the
end of the pavement just above the ski area in a large clearing used as the TH
for the Bristlecone Trail where I planned to hike the next day. I'm not sure
whether camping is allowed in one's car here, but I managed to sleep through
the night undisturbed...
Continued...