Evan and I were awake to watch a
colorful sunrise over the Mojave Desert. It was
the fourth of five days in the desert around Mojave National Preserve. Today we
were outside the preserve, about a dozen miles southwest of Baker, alongside
Interstate 5. The first peak on the day's agenda was unnamed Peak 745m (2,444ft) in the
southern part of the Soda Mtns, a P1K summit (more than 1,000ft of prominence).
Leaving my van where we'd spent the night, we piled into Evan's truck and drove
east on Rasor Rd, then northeast on unmarked Arrowhead Trail for about a mile
and half. Both roads were surprisingly good. When we were perpendicular to our
summit, where I had originally assumed we'd have to start the hike, we spotted
a set of tracks cutting across the desert flat towards our peak. Should we
follow it? Could we? Evan thought we could, so off we drove. Going faster than
I was comfortable with, Evan explained that we had to keep up our speed to keep
from sinking in the soft sand. He did a fine job of driving along the track
until we'd reached our destination and needed to turn around. This manuever
proved too much for the truck, loaded down with the camper's weight. The wheels
began to slip and 
dig a hole into the sand. Time to go to work. While
I shoveled loose sand from under the back tires, Evan 
clipped a bush
that had stopped him while turning. In addition we took the back tire pressure
from 80lbs to 50lbs. More 
spinning in the sand followed, but there was
enough forward momentum to keep the truck moving and then back
on the firmer track.
Not a bad effort, getting us to within 3/4 mile of the summit.
Starting out not long before 7a, we headed up 
a rocky canyon
over 
terrain mostly free of cacti and brush. It was a fairly easy
climb of less than 1,000ft that took us barely 30 minutes. A
large cairn crowned the summit with a register tucked inside left by
John Vitz 
in 2007. MacLeod & Lilley had visited later that
year, then no additional entries until our own five years later. A rarely
visited summit, but visited nonetheless. The views stretch 
east to the
vast Soda Lake (dry), 
west to the Mollhausen Mtns and 
north
to the higher summits
of the Soda Mtns. It seems odd that this peak is lumped in with the Soda Mtns
when the two areas are separated by a large plain through which I-15 runs, when
really they are a compact set of hills quite separated. We dropped off the
summit 
to the west,
taking a slightly different route back to the ascent canyon.
This turned out to be a steeper, more challenging route that I enjoyed quite a
bit, adding some class 3 by staying in the primary gully with short dropoffs
and fun scrambling. Back in the ascent canyon, we descended back
to the truck in
a more casual fashion, returning by 8:15a, taking an hour and twenty minutes
total.
After returning to the van we drove both vehicles back to the Rasor Rd exit to look for a dirt road heading towards the Mollhausen Mtns that I had identified from the satellite view. Arriving first, Evan reported it fenced off and closed to the public so we gave it no more thought and continued on. Upon further review I think we didn't pursue this one well enough - it seems there should be access to this public land and folks have obviously driven out there. I'll probably come back in the future and just hike it from the exit if I can't find a way to drive closer. The Mollhausen Mtns do not show up on the USGS 7.5' topo map - they are shown as the southwest corner of the Soda Mtns. But the Benchmark Maps road atlas shows them as a small range, so it seems worth a visit. The highpoint has a prominence of just under 900ft.
We got back on I-15 and got off at the next exit to the west (Basin Rd),
following Zdon's directions for Cave Mtn. This fine-looking mountain lies just
off the south side of the interstate and had been on my todo list for years
since I first noticed it while driving back from Death Valley. I had tried to
climb it once before, but without Zdon's directions handy I could not manage to
find an approach road and gave up. Once again leaving the van near the end of
the pavement, we drove Evan's truck southwest on Basin Rd, a well-graded dirt
road that leads to an active 
open pit mine on the
southeast side of Cave Mtn. No operations were going on today, so we
parked the camper in an open flat and headed out at 9a.
We hiked west up a small, flat gully just north of the mine until we climbed out
to the higher, 
sandy slopes found on the south side of the summit.
There was more sand than rocks, 
a dune really, and it was not
surprising that we found the going somewhat tedious. It was 9:40a before we
climbed to the top of the 
dune boundary, finally getting onto more
solid ground. Though much of it is 
talus and not such great
scrambling, it was better than the sandy ascent portion below. Along the
ridgeline we followed I came across 
a metal box containing
a bunch of old road maps in bad shape due to exposure to the weather. Evan
postulated they had been left or forgotten by a surveyor in the area, which was
better than any explanation I could come up with. The rock quality improves as
one reaches the 
upper portion of the mountain, but it was never very
good. I had to conclude the mountain simply looks better from a distance than it
does up close. We reached 
the summit around 10:40a, another large
cairn found there. There were several 
benchmarks nearby - no surprise
that this prominent peak (1,700ft of prominence) is popular with surveyors. A
register dating 
to 1988 had more than 50 pages filled - popular with
other folks as well! 
The views are
possibly the finest in the area. The only downside (or feature?) is the constant
sound of the traffic on the interstate down below. Looking across the freeway
to the 
Cronise Mtns,
they looked like a worthwhile little range. Though a range,
Evan had not been to the highpoint, having dismissed it as too insignificant.
Though I hadn't planned on it beforehand, I thought this one might deserve some
attention.
We 
descended
much the same route in the upper portion, then followed the South
Ridge down to near Pt. 2,643ft where Evan wanted to catch the
highest point of a tongue of sand we had noticed reaching to the
ridge. This worked out to be a marvelous 
descent route, both
easy on the knees and great fun, too. Evan commented that it was the first time
he had run in years, hip and knee surgeries putting a stop to that
tom-foolery long ago. We 
were back to the truck not long
after noon. We drove back to the freeway exit, then drove both vehicles over to
the north side of the freeway, driving to 
the end
of the frontage road where it
was washed out some years back. Here we ate lunch while I tried to talk Evan
into joining me for the hike to the Cronise Mtns. He was having none of it,
happy to relax the afternoon away while I did this last hike. It was only weeks
later that he admitted feeling some guilt and thinking maybe he should
have climbed it.
At one time the frontage road ran across the wash and then very close to the
southeast side of the Cronise Mtns. There were tracks indicating at least a
few vehicles had ventured across the washout, but these were likely 4WD with
tires that could manuever in the very sandy conditions. I would have to walk
about two miles across the 
Cronise Valley,
then about half a mile and 1,000ft
up to the highpoint. Perhaps the most interesting part of this afternoon outing
was the walk across the valley. The sandy flats are littered with decades of
old cans, bottles and other trash. Aluminum beer cans that require can openers
particularly caught me eye (Last night I saw the 1962 movie Hud with Paul
Newman where the main character opens up Coors cans in this fashion). There was
a veritable history display of the aluminum beer can including many intermediate
openings leading up to today's advanced design where the poptop stays attached
to the can. There was also 
old furniture, discarded
appliances, a random 
coyote skull and other curiosities. I
marveled at the 
crack patterns in the dried mud of East Cronise Lake
as well as at the wind-and--small-mammal 
sculptures found
in the sand.
After about 45 minutes I reached the base of the mountain. I picked
out one of the SE ridges and followed it up to the summit.
The rock was actually decent and made for a better climb than Cave Mtn. There
is a great view of 
the latter from the top, as well. I found two
registers in the modest cairn. The 
older one was a classic film
cannister left by Smatko in 1970. MacLeod brought a party (without Barbara, for
once) in 1978, then a second visit by a Smatko party in 1984. The second
register was left 
in 1995 by Dave Jurasevich who came back a second
time the following month with the San Diego Trio (Adrian/Hanna/Carey). The
last entry was in 2000, Gordon's second
visit, this time with Barbara. Mine was the first entry in 12 years. I returned
back down the same ridgeline, finding it the most direct I could see. Back on
the
floor of Cronise Valley I took a slightly different route as much to explore a
new collection of trash as to avoid some unnecessary bushwhacking I'd run
into on the way in. I was back to the cars around 4p, making for an outing of
about two and half hours. The sun would set soon, making for a
nice display
over Cave Mtn, at which time Evan and I headed to Barstow. We were to meet
Matthew the following day for a last day of climbing in the hills south of
town.
Continued...