Continued...
Our trip to the Las Vegas area had been primarily to pay a visit to
Valley of Fire State Park, about an hour east of town. None of us had
been to this area, purported to have fantastic sandstone scrambling and
picturesque scenery. We would not be disappointed. Most of the summits
we climbed were purloined from Purcell's Rambles & Scrambles and
made for good scrambles as promised. Interestingly, the two not found in
his guidebook were the best of the day, I thought, short but exceedingly
good.
Five Arch
I had picked out the 4-starred summits from Purcell's guidebook to give
us the best the place had to offer. First on our stops was Five Arch,
the easternmost of the peaks, less than a mile north of SR40, the main
road through the park. No one was manning the entrance booth when we
drove in, so we stopped at the self-pay station to pay the $10/vehicle
fee. I get the strong impression that no one actually checks to see if
you've paid during your visit inside the park, just upon entering or
exiting
if the booth is manned. We parked just west of the John
Clark Memorial Monument, a service yard in poor condition and
hiked up a wash and along some to the base of our peak on
its south side. From there we scrambled up a class 2 and
made our way around to the north side where our guidebook said we would find
a set of five arches and the key to the route up. Try as we might, we
found no arches on the north side of the summit, or at least nothing that
any of us would describe as an arch. After some time looking around and
a bit of frustration, I went up the only plausible-looking route, a
short bit of
that eventually led to the top, with some features
described in the book identifiable. No one was quick to follow me, so
after finding my way to
rather easily (the crux was the only
tricky part), I descended a slight alternative down through a keyhole
(I was exploring to see if there was a way off the east side, but
nothing doing there), eventually circled back to the crux. Scott had
just come up, and after I descended the crux the others went up
, on to the summit and . No register found
aloft and none left. A good
but not great scramble, and much too short. We returned back around the
west side of the formation just for a change of pace, eventually returning
via the same wash we had ascended in beginning.
Crimson Stairway
This next one was better because it had a good deal more scrambling. We
didn't follow the route Purcell describes starting from Mouses Tank
because that seemed unnecessarily long and convoluted. Instead, we
approached from the south, about one and quarter mile each way - half
the distance of the Purcell route, again parking along SR40 again.
We followed
heading north, going over a low saddle and dropping into
the wash connecting with Purcell's route. Again, we had trouble
identifying his descriptions. We found no "crimson stairway" just as we
had been unable to identify the five arches, and little else in the
long description seemed to fit anything around us. We didn't spend
much time looking for the expected and simply made up our
. It was but we
in and enjoyed very much - this one
was worth all four stars. On the return I led us down
near the bottom in hopes we might yet
find the ellusive stairway, but alas, no such luck. We did find some
formed by that had Iris and I
squealing like the excited kids we were. We liked this one very much, thank
you.
Seven Sisters
This a neat little picnic area off the south side of the main paved road
going through the park. There are seven that rise from
the desert floor, detached from the main hills on the north side of the road.
Confident in our scrambling abilities, we jumped out of our vehicles and
to what we guessed were the highest ones and quickly had
our egos deflated. These were serious endeavors that were not going to give up
their summits easily, perhaps not at all. We saw no sign of hangers or
other climbing activity and wondered aloud if climbing was even allowed
here. There were no signs indicating one way or the other, but it didn't
really matter since we didn't have any serious rock climbing gear with
us. Of the seven formations, only the one closest to where we parked the
cars looked like it would be within our abilities. Not convinced that
even this one was doable, the others let me about halfway
before decided to follow. It was a tricky bit of
scrambling that falls into what I would call class 3-4 - not overly
technical but very exposed. I was up and down before the last of our
party had reached the summit because I wanted to get a few of
them to show . A very worthwhile
stop, this one, and not in Purcell's book.
Balanced Rock
This was the second stop we made not described by Purcell. It is
just west of the , right off the road,
and one can't help but draw attention while . The large
cube-ish rock balanced on a pedestal looks to be overhanging on all sides and
not accessible to the unroped scrambler. Scott and Iris discovered
(north side) has a weakness that can be surmounted, though
in the low class 5 range. I went up and down this one first again, finding it
pretty darn close to what I would be (un)comfortable soloing.
is a two-step process to get up the summit weakness - a first step onto a
downward-sloping platform followed by a beefy haul up onto the block above.
Scott and Iris did this in good style, both having far better reach and
flexibility than myself. Tom decided not to try it, so the two of us wandered
about the base while the other three gave it a go. Matt was the last one to
, his words and actions in the attempt making the rest of
us pretty nervous. Iris and Scott were with him at the crux point to
offer advice and guide him through it. The downclimb was particularly
nerve-wracking and Tom & I went back to the van to grab a rope and gear
for a back-up plan to get him down via rappel. He managed to reverse the
moves with some help from Scott, the rope & gear staying in the bag. I
think it pretty safe to say it was the hardest thing Matt had soloed
to date.
Gibralter Rock
We next headed north on the spur road going past the Visitor Center
and the popular Mouse Tanks to a large parking lot between White Domes
to the west and Gibralter Rock to the east. For some reason I thought
this was going to be an easy 15min ascent, but somewhat confused it
with another description in the guidebook. In fact, this one is quite
tricky - Purcell says there are at least 3 class 4 routes to the summit
and it seems we would find two of them. Once again feeling supremely
confident, we nearly tripped over ourselves running out of the cars and
over to of the formation. Any hope for a quick ascent
from that side soon evaporated as all looked hopeless. Our merry band then
virtually disintegrated as we chose various alternatives to explore.
Tom and I went up one gully, Scott ran around to the north side to attack
it from there, Iris and Matt getting lost in the shuffle. Seems Iris
ran into a cactus and needed to spend a few minutes extracting it from
here ankle. The Tom and I went up had
allowing us to
escape to the east from the walls closing in on us. Above, I ran into
Scott who had found another way up from the north. But we were still not
at the highpoint which was further to the southwest with a cliff face
presenting itself wherever we looked. We checked several options, only
one of which seemed doable, but highly exposed on crappy rock and
looking
much harder than what Purcell would normally describe as
class 4. I backed off as Scott and Tom looked on. Scott then joined me
for more searching further south, eventually finding our way down a
class 3-4 chute to the ground below without finding a way to the
highpoint. Tom (and now Iris and Matt who'd caught up with him) waited
about 15min before deciding Scott and I weren't coming back. Seems we
had a bit of a miscommunication there. Ooops.
Perplexed, Scott and I returned to the west side, having nearly
circumnavigated the highpoint with no idea how to get up it. We had
returned to the park trail with plans to go back to the cars and wait
for the others when I spotted a very large cairn at the top of
on the west side. Excited, we both ran off to investigate.
The cairn marked the start of a very steep crack/gully that we had
dismissed initially as impossible, but once around the corner to
investigate up-close, it proved to be the key. A very cool route through
chockstones and other fun
to in about 10min - seems
there was a 15min route afterall! With cell service at the summit, we
attempted to call our compadres to help guide them to the cairn. No
answer. Somewhat deflated but happy with our own success, we descended
back down and returned to the TH in another 15min. As we neared the cars,
we heard shouting behind us and turned to see our other three friends
waving at us from the summit. This also caught the attention of the
dozens of other visitors plying the trails in the area and it created
somewhat of a scene. Scott finally managed to get one of them on the
phone to understand how they'd managed to get up there without us seeing
them. Seems they had found one of the other class 4 route on the
east side and had gotten up shortly after we'd descended. Rather
than try to explain to them how to find the west side route for the
descent, we let them go back the way they came and about 30min later we
were all back at the cars - great fun, this one.
The Orphan (failed)
Matt was planning to head back before we did any more scrambling, so we
drove back to the Mouse's Tank picnic area to give him the opportunity to BBQ
for
us one last time (so very kind of us, I know) before he headed home. It
was quite a feast that would send Tom and I into a meat coma due to the
excessive consumption of delectable treats. Seems Matt was BBQing for
five but only three of us were eating - Scott and Iris decided to go off
and climb nearby Cairned Peak, instead. I wasn't exactly complaining,
mind you, but there was little doubt that I had over-consumed, probably
enough meat to satisfy me for a week under normal circumstances. After
Scott and Iris had successfully reached the summit and returned, we all
said goodbye to
Matt and then head north for a last bit of scrambling before we'd run out
of daylight. The Orphan is found northwest of the road's end at the White
Domes TH. We parked at the far north end of the lot there and headed off
for what seemed easily doable with the remaining daylight, the distance
less than 1/2mi. All that we could glean from the guidebook was that
there was likely only one route to the summit from
the northeast
aspect. We to what we thought was the northeast side
and up some in about 30min, only to find ourselves
separated from by what looked like two large chasms and a
whole lot more scrambling than we had bargained for. We decided it was
better approached from a different direction and turned back.
In hindsight (from a successful attempt the next day), we were
unwittingly already on the right track and probably only 20min away from
the summit had we continued. It was just as well, because when we
returned to the TH, we could hear a ranger over a bullhorn warning all
the remaining visitors that the TH was closing in a few minutes (closes
at sunset) and any cars still there would be ticketed. So we saved
ourselves a ticket by returning - a good call.
We drove back out of the park and returned to our campsite off a spur
road west of the park, a good place to camp. There were several other
parties camped here as well, but the area is large enough to
accomodate us all without cramping. Tom and I would pass on dinner
tonight - we were still trying to digest our hugely generous lunches...
Continued...