Continued...
We had traveled back into Arizona and the Mohave Mountains southeast of
Needles, CA, to visit some peaks of interest there. Powell Peak has more than
900ft of prominence and is the highpoint of the Havasu Wilderness. We would do
that in conjunction with Peak 2,274ft, a neaby bonus. The other three summits
are short outings near SR95 that are found in Purcell's
Rambles & Scrambles. We were camped at the BLM's Lone Tree Campground,
a popular dispersed camp area near the highway about five miles north of Lake
Havasu City. It wasn't an ideal spot as it was somewhat crowded (not exactly
"dispersed") and too close to the highway, but it could accomodate Jim's RV,
unlike some of the more primitive roads we might have used otherwise.
Powell Peak - Peak 2,274ft
Powell Peak is located on the eastern edge of the Havasu Wilderness. Between
the Wilderness and SR95 is a large track of BLM land with a network of OHV
roads and trails. The drive to reach a suitable starting point is long-ish and
requires high-clearance, possibly 4WD depending on current road conditions. One
can approach from the north at Interstate 40 or as we did, from SR95 to the
east. This got us within a mile of the summit on its southeast side. The topo
map shows a jeep road forking west from the better road we traveled, but this
showed no signs of vehicle use so we simply parked and started
. We followed the wash west, reaching
in ten minutes, and continuing past it until
we'd traveled 3/4mi and were half a mile due south of the summit. We turned
north and climbed onto the peak's , becoming the
near the top. It was a pretty standard class 2 desert climb
with no difficulties whatsoever, taking about 45min. There was a ridiculously
at the summit, hours of toil by whoever built it. A register
had a notebook dating with a brittle scrap from a USGS surveyor
dating . As the highest summit in the northern half of the range,
stretch over many miles and across three states. The next
highest summit, Crossman Peak, is the range highpoint rising 14mi to
. A more interesting summit, Tumarion Peak, lay almost two
miles to . It has more than 700ft
of prominence and looks like it might be a difficult scramble - a bit much for
today's crew, so I put it in my mental back pocket for a future visit.
Instead, we focused on the bonus peak to the southeast. Our car was parked
nearly equidistant between the two, so our first order of business was to
return back to the jeep, using
since it had worked so nicely.
Once back at the jeep, Eric decided to take a break, leaving Jim to keep me
company, a tag-teaming effort that served them well on this trip. I found Peak
2,274ft to be a more interesting climb as we made our way to the summit in a
pretty up . The topo doesn't show it,
but the peak has
two distinct summits, the southern one being the highest. They are separated
by only a few minutes' effort, so while Jim was busy
between the two, I was perusing the register left by MacLeod/Lilley
. Gordon was 85yrs of age at that time, Barbara 80yrs. Not a
trivial peak by any means. There were only until our
arrival, ours making the fourth
entry and first since 2016. Jim had been intrigued by a structure on the west
side of the mountain that I guessed was a game guzzler, so we descended
of to make a loop of the
short outing and give Jim a chance to check it out. Found not far from the dirt
road, it was in fact surrounded by a fence. We
guessed that maybe the bighorn sheep
could jump over the fence while the burros could not, or perhaps it was just
for gamebirds. Once back on the road, it was an easy 4/5mi walk
and Eric.
Goat Hill
We drove back out to the highway and then to our campsite across the road,
dropping off Jim who had tagged Eric to join me for the afternoon's agenda.
All of these were short hikes that suited Eric just fine - turning red dots to
green ones on the peakbagger app with minimal effort. was
the easiest
of three and first that we tackled. The summit has a collection of
and a rough road leading up to them. The jeep was able to negotiate
the` road to about 2/3 of the way up, leaving us a ten
minute walk to the summit. Almost as easy as it gets. Another visitor in a
passenger car had to park down at the base of the mountain. Poor bastard.
Little Haystack
These next two summit are found just off the east side of the highway, striking
features that look difficult from all sides. Little Haystack proved the easier
of the two, a solid from a saddle on its
. 15min from the car to . Cool
little peak.
Shangri La Butte
Though seemingly named out of the blue, I suspect the name comes from
found on the utility building atop Goat Hill. This one turned out to be the
toughest summit of the day, and indeed of all the peaks on this trip with the
exception of Iguana Peak. There looked to be a gully on the northwest side that
goes
almost to the top, with a scary-looking step that might be a
problem. So we drove around to
and decided to ascend from
there, much as we did on Little Haystack. This turned out to be quite an effort,
right at the edge of Eric's growing comfort level. The
of the
ridge wasn't too bad, but we had to move left to avoid an impasse, landing
us at the top of a talus slope on (that would prove an
easier descent route). Above this was some and some
pretty good
scrambling and route-finding that kept us busy nearly all the way to
.
Despite all the difficulties, it still only took 25min to reach the
top where we congratulated ourselves. Not satisfied that we had found the
easiest route, we spent some time trying to downclimb to the top of the gully
on the northwest side that we had first considered. After two careful attempts
that both ended in unacceptable drops, we returned to the summit and reversed
all the moves back to the talus slope on the southeast side. From there its
easy class 2 .
This one is definitely worth the detour if you
find yourself in the area.
After returning to our campground, we decided to have dinner in Lake Havasu
City. We ended up at Blondies Bar & Grill (not to be mistaken for BlondZee's
Steakhouse, nearby) where we had mexican food and margaritas for $3.50, some
sort of Taco Tuesday special. I don't think I can ever recall paying so little
for a margarita (pretty good ones, too) since I turned 21 back in 1981. Go
Arizona.
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