Kelbaholt Peak P300
Peak 3,687ft P900
Fools Point P300 LLT
Peak 3,336ft P300
Sat, Apr 11, 2020
| With: | Tom Becht |
Sat, Apr 11, 2020
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| With: | Tom Becht |
I had been intrigued by one of Adam Walker's trip reports that I'd stumbled
across in semi-random fashion. Part of a 20 peaks in 6 days effort back in 2019,
he had described a tricky attempt on Kelbaholt Peak, a name I'd never heard
before. It is located in the northern part of the Turtle Mtns that I had visited
a few years earlier. Like me, Adam had been there mainly to tag Carson BM, a
P1K. I recalled walking up a broad wash and noticing some impressive-looking
crags on both sides of the small valley. Kelbaholt was one of these,
unofficially named. More research found that it had seen a number of ascents
by DPS folks in the late 1970s through early 1990s, then went mostly quiet. The
name comes from the combination of three ascentionists from 1927 that had left
a type-written note at the summit. 
This and 
other summits are
easily visible for
much of the drive in. Wondering which other points we might be able to climb in
the area, Tom and I planned to spend a day exploring the possibilities. We found
some really great scrambling and exploring, some of the best days either of us
had spent in the California desert.
headed out around 7:45a.
It took only seconds for the big accident of the day. While distracted by his
phone, Tom attempted to step over the steel cable across the trail at the start
that was intended to keep vehicles out. His foot didn't clear it as expected
and he immediately went down, face first into the rocky trail. He let out a
sharp scream that had me looking back only a fraction of a second after he'd hit
the ground. His glasses were off to one side and his face was nuzzled against
the trunk of a decaying cactus. I suggested he roll over first before getting
up so that I could examine his injuries. He looked pretty good despite the hard
fall, so I declared, "Doesn't look bad at all," before snapping
a picture before he
could stand. He had some minor bleeding on his legs and would complain about
bruising on his face later in the day, but it never got discolored and it seemed
he got off only a little worse for the wear.
After dusting himself off and recollecting his things, we headed off again,
aiming southwest directly for Kelbaholt. It's NE Face looks difficult from a
distance and doesn't appear to have many options even as 
we approached
the base (it was only after we got to the summit that we thought to download a
GPX track that Tracy Fouts had posted on PB). Our best guess was that the route
would go up a narrow gully ramping right to left, found on the left side of
the NE Face. We made a somewhat sketchy 
class 3-4 start to get
to the bottom of 
this gully, only to discover the top portion looked
to go nearly vertical and not all that inviting. I suggested checking to the
left (south) of this for other options and that turned out to be the key. It
led to the far left side of the NE Face where a standard class 3 route presented
itself as the only logical option. It 
turned back to the right where we
reached the edge of a cliff, scrambling up through 
a notch and then up
a series of 
short gullies, well ducked now and not hard to follow.
Working our way west up the face, the route then 
turns south when due
north of the highpoint which is out of view for most of the ascent. There is
a downclimb of about 100ft on a wide, loose rock ramp to get around
difficulties along the North Ridge. One then has several options to climb back
up. The easier way we discovered on the descent is to move to the left and climb
directly to the summit, all class 2. We chose a route more to the right that
returned us to 
the North Ridge and more difficult 
scrambling,
though not unpleasant. It was a fun, highly enjoyable effort that took us almost
two hours to complete, landing us on 
the summit by 9:30a. I found 1/2
of a nested set of rusty cans about 10ft below the summit, the other tucked
under the summit cairn. It's exposed contents consisted of two badly shredded
paper scraps, mostly illegible, all that was left of the summit
register. This was a little disappointing as I'd held out this vague hope that
we might find the original note from 1927. We left a 
new register while
we sat about the summit enjoying our success.
Our high perch among these 
craggy features was quite satisfying as we
considered our next moves. There were other summits looking north, a few of
which we knew Adam had climbed already. This was the direction we had originally
planned, but as we looked south, there were options there that looked enticing.
In particular, 
Peak 3,687ft which has the same surveyed height as
Kelbaholt, looked like it had a viable route up from what we could see. It lies
less than half a mile south of Kelbaholt, but the intervening geography is very
complicated and it was far from obvious that we could even reach the base of the
peak. But it seemed like a fine adventure and we resolved to give it a try.
East Face, aiming for a steep gully that we believed would lead to a
saddle between the two peaks. It was a steep 
class 3 scramble up a dry
wash that kept us guessing constantly as to whether it would go or not. Once at
the saddle, there was an 
easy stretch of class 2 that we
followed to 
the base of Peak 3,687ft that we'd seen from the
summit of Kelbaholt. More class 3 scrambling along its
North Ridge (easier ground if one stays mostly on 
east side
of ridge) goes over 
a small arch and onto 
the summit where we
arrived just after noon, elated with our second success. John Vitz had recorded
an ascent of this summit in 1980, but finding no register we added his name to
a new one we left while we were there.
the southeast, about 1/3mi in that direction to
Peak 3,323ft which we would come to find had been given the name Fools Point.
After descending the 
upper portion of Peak 3,687ft we dropped into
a drainage south of the saddle, followed it for a short while, then
made our way up to a notch on the main crest northwest of the third summit. The
top of the pointy summit looked to be ringed in cliffs and we held out only
modest hope of reaching it. 
From the notch, a loose rock ramp went up
most of the way and seemed our only realistic possibility. We figured we had to
at least give it a try. The ramp starts off as class 2, becoming class 3 with a
few nervy moves to reach its end about 40ft below the summit. It was a dramatic
point with cliffs dropping steeply off the east side. There was a class 3-4
crack going up from our point that we could not see from below, renewing hope
that the route might work. It was only after I turned to watch Tom join me at
the top of the ramp that I noticed 
a small duck at the point - seems
someone saw fit to mark this, boosting our confidence. I was happy to find the
crux went easier than I expected and turned to 
watch Tom and offer
support. The rock here was fairly solid unlike most of the route, a fortuitous
happenstance. The 
small summit featured a large cairn. After looking
about for a register, I noticed a white-painted rock at the base and removed it
to find a 
white PVC tube behind it. I instantly recognized it as one
of the Leaping Lizard Tribe's 
registers. Based out of Lake Havasu City
and headed by Tim O'Connor, the tribe had installed 17 or 18 registers on
various summits that can be seen from Lake Havasu City. They all seem to have
been placed around the 2002-03 timeframe and so far on the three I've stumbled
across, there were no other entries in them save their own. This one had been
dubbed "Fool's Point." As part of our social distancing routine, Tom let me
handle all the registers, 
adding his name with my own to keep from
sharing pencils and booklets. While I was busy with the registers, Tom would be
on his phone adding the ascent to the peakbagger app - mountaineering
in the 21st century.
descended Fools Point back to the notch
on the crest, then traversed high 
over a saddle on Fools Point's SW
Ridge, and then 
across the drainage between the two summits. There are
actually two summits in that direction, the other being the slightly higher
Peak 3,339ft to the west. We aimed for 
the saddle between the
two as it looked like the most likely way we could figure to climb Peak 3,336ft.
The other summit looked to be extremely difficult, impossible for us, with
vertical cliffs rising for more than 100ft 
on all sides. If there were
any unclimbed summits to be found in the California desert, this seemed a likely
candidate. Though easier, Peak 3,3336ft was still a good challenge with plenty
of 
class 3 scrambling found 
on the way to the summit. The
topo maps shows a double summit with the northern point being the highest, but
it actually has three points along a summit ridgeline, with a middle summit not
shown on the topo map's contours. We scrambled up to the point between the
middle and 
south summits, then made our way north to the top of the
middle summit. It was here that we noticed a third summit another 100yds further
north. Finding no register at the middle summit, we continued on to the north
summit where the surveyors had made a spot elevation (1017m). There was no
register here either. Tom insisted that the middle summit was higher which I had
to agree looked to be the case despite my GPSr showing the north summit
2ft higher. 
The traverse between the two had been a little tricky and I
didn't really want to return to the middle summit, so I left a
new register at the 
north summit.
After 
returning to the saddle with Peak 3,339ft, we began our return
to the TH by descending 
the SE side of the saddle into the major
drainage between our peaks and Carson BM. This easy 
class 2 route would
occupy the last hour or so of our day, following 
the main wash heading
north, then picking up 
a faint BLM trail that we could mostly follow
back to the jeeps. It would be after 5p before we were done and ready
to start 
the recuperation process. We had
planned only to spend the one day in this area before heading to the Whipple
Mtns, but Tom was quickly receptive to my suggestion that we could spend
another day here. This made for a lot less driving. After showering, we settled
in at the Lisa Dawn Campground about 3/4mi away, closer to Lost Arch Mine Peak.
Though primitive with no water or toilet facilities, it had a covered metal
picnic bench and some flat camp spots that we'd have to ourselves, and free,
too. A very fine day overall...
Continued...
This page last updated: Sat Sep 5 14:38:03 2020
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