Sun, Mar 18, 2007
|
With: | Evan Rasmussen |
Eagle Mtn stands just outside the east side of Death Valley along SR190, an
isolated mountain ridge surrounded by the barren desert. The Amargosa River
runs along the west side, a wide, generally dry wash that comes to life
periodically when it chances to rain in this hot, parched land. Today the river
was completely dry and
the crossing would be trivial. Further, we would be
climbing the mountain from the west which gave us a number of hours of shade
in the early morning before the day started to warm up as it was expected to
do.
The mountain makes for a short, but enjoyable climb, the best we found in the
six days of scrambling we had in the area. The approach was short, about a
mile, and the total elevation gain was moderate at less than 2,000ft. We had
no trouble finding the
DPS route that runs up the left side of the wide canyon
before us, well marked with ducks. There would have been little trouble even
without the ducks, as cliffs about halfway up begin to force one to the right.
We eventually made our way to the ridgeline, though further left of the DPS
route. I found a short bit of fun class 3 on
the edge
itself while Evan walked around to the
east side and circumvented the rocks about 20 feet below the
ridgeline. We met up again after only a few minutes, and only then did we
realize we had not yet found the start of the class 3 ridge traverse with the
class 2 bypass. This was further south, another five minutes up the ridgeline
and at that point it was hard to mistake. The class 3
knife-edge that was
touted was not as difficult as we had come to believe, and though it was short,
it was enjoyable. This dropped us into a notch or small gap in the ridge, then
the last class 3 climb of the
summit rocks.
This was the best scrambling on the peak - steep, but with excellent holds.
It was just after 8a when we reached the summit,
having taken little more than
an hour from the trailhead. We perused the register (with entries by many
notables including
Pete Yamagata and
Andy Smatko)
and took in
the views,
noting that an effort to to traverse the entire mountain north to south would
be quite an adventurous undertaking, one to keep in mind for a future time. We
stayed atop for almost 30 minutes, enjoying the cool temperatures, the morning
sun, and the views. On
the return Evan opted to take the bypass route around the knife-edge. It didn't
save him any time however, as we both reached the convergence point to the
north at the same time. We retraced our ascent route down the west side and
across the Amargosa,
arriving back at our vehicles at 9:30a.
Next up was the more arduous summit of the day, Pyramid Peak.
It would be our
eighth peak of the trip and the first one that was located inside Death Valley
NP. From the route descriptions we had we didn't expect much excitement from
this peak, and in that we weren't disappointed (nor pleasantly surprised as we
might have hoped). It was after 10a when we started on the long approach across
the desert floor, and temperatures had already warmed into the 80's. Because
the route follows up the the south side of the mountain, there was no
possibility of shade anywhere. After
climbing out of the canyon
at the base of the peak and reaching the
SE Ridge, we began
following use trails where we
could find them, covering most of the route up the ridge. This was fortunate,
because there is a good deal of loose talus that while not dangerous or
difficult, it was quite tedious. The use trails at least helped by packing down
portions of the route through this talus. The ridgeline was not continuous,
instead broken up into a number of humps or
false summits
whose underlying
rock changed color from brown to white to black and back to white again at the
very summit. It took nearly two and a half hours to reach
the top,
more than the whole outing to Eagle Mtn.
The air had become more hazy as the days had gone on, and by now at midday
the views were muted.
We could still see quite far, west to Death Valley and the
Panamint Range as far as Telescope Peak. But the details of the surrounding
ranges were washed out in the sun and haze. Our descent was back down nearly
the same route, though we split up near the base of the mountain to take
slightly different routes. I wanted to explore further along the ridge with its
minor bumps and rocky protrusions, but Evan soon grew tired of that and dropped
back down into the canyon we had ascended.
We got back shortly after 2:30p and I was eager to press the case for a third
peak in the day. The highpoint of the Greenwater Range is an unnamed summit
with the benchmark "Ryan." It wasn't a DPS peak (which would have made it of
interest to me), but it was a range highpoint and part of Evan's recent quest
to climb the state's range highpoints (Pyramid is the highpoint of the Funeral
Range). Arguing I was "throwing him a bone" on Ryan anyway, Evan decided he
still had enough energy left and agreed to the plan. We first drove into
Furnace Creek to refill the camper's water supply.
It was 98F while we were at
Furnace Creek,
but fortunately our stay didn't last long. We bought some
ice and souveniers at the store there, and looking like the desert rats in the
middle of a tourist resort we certainly looked and felt out of place. It was
kinda creepy for me with our 15 minute venture into civilization, and I was
glad to drive out of there and back out to the less-travelled areas.
We took the road out towards Dantes View, then continued up the broad Greenwater Valley on a fair dirt road. Trying not to inflict further damage on my van, I took it at a fairly slow pace under 20mph, while Evan followed in his camper truck, patiently riding in my dust for those five miles to the TH. There's no regular trailheads anywhere along this 30 mile road, and very few places to pull over out of the road. We found a suitable spot southwest of the peak where the road widened a bit at a fork. By 5p we were ready to head out.
The sun would be out for less than two hours, but that wasn't much of a problem
with this easy peak. About 1,400ft of gain over a couple of miles was easy to
negotiate on the mild slopes. It was an enjoyable time of day to be out hiking,
as the breeze and late afternoon sun made for mild conditions, unlike the
warm temperatures we had starting up Pyramid. It took an hour to reach the
summit located along the ridgeline a bit north of what we originally
thought would be the summit looking from below. We found no register, but we
did find the
benchmark and three or four odd cairns. Anticipating the
lack of register, we
had brought a couple of nested cans (the soup and ravioli cans from my dinner
the previous night along with a small pad and pencil - our contribution to
California's summits). We stayed around only a short while before heading back
down - dinner was starting to sound really good by now since we had forgone
lunch. We got down in about 45 minutes, just as the sun
had set behind the
Black Mountains to the west. We had double rations for dinner to make up for
the lack of lunch, had a few cold drinks, played a bit of cards, then bedded
down for the night.
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Eagle Mountain - Pyramid Peak
This page last updated: Sat Apr 7 17:05:08 2007
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