Continued...
With Matt heading home the previous afternoon, we were down to a party of
four for our second and last day in Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park. Much
like the first day, I had a handful of peaks from Purcell's
Rambles & Scrambles to keep us busy for the day.
It was a nice selection that included the sandstone highpoint of the park
and a retry of The Orphan that we'd failed on the day before.
Valley of Fire Summit
This is perhaps the longest summit hike in the park and one of the trickiest,
making for one an excellent scramble. The sandstone highpoint lies
only 4/5mi west of Mouse's Tank and the paved road, but our wandering route
would cover more than five miles in a busy loop that had few easy sections.
We started from the picnic area at Mouse's Tank, the same place we'd used for
our BBQ the day prior. We up one of many different
we'd
visit on this circuit. I had gotten a GPX track from Matthew Hengst off PB and
was using this to guide us to the summit and back. We made a few improvements
on the route, but overall found it a good one. Our ascent route was from the
north, taking us about an hour to reach the base of the peak on that side. We
traveled past , up several , in
of more washes in the process. in particular
was narrower than the width of
one's body with vertical sides rising high on either side - it was necessary to
slip sideways through this, sometimes with back and chest against the opposing
walls - not a place for the claustrophobic. The
we ascended was a neat
staircase of patterned sandstone rising up to the highpoint. There is a split
partway up where one can choose one of two options. Tom and I headed left to
a point just across from the highpoint but a few feet lower - and no way to
get across from one to the other. Scott and Iris, having taken the right fork,
mocked us from the true summit as Tom and I headed off to backtrack our
way to in the chasm that we could step across - a most
unnerving manuever. We reached with the others by 9a after
an hour and half's effort. There are from
which we enjoyed a great deal
despite the early morning chill still in the air. After about 15min, we headed
down to check out the odd
below the summit to the south, next
to a tenaja with a fine, clear pool of water. Supposedly, these tables are used
by wedding parties helicoptered here - no getting around that we were just a
short flight away from Las Vegas.
The
that we used for the descent was far than the
ascent route and without the GPX track it might have taken us much longer. It
was quite convoluted, but we did well to follow it with a couple of shortcut
improvements, too. After descending most of the "ridge", the route turns east
to into the complex of and
where options are
more abundant and strictly follow the track not really necessary. There were
some surprisingly and a few delicate
, but most
of this was a romp that could go in almost any direction. Shortly after 11a we
ended up
with a half mile hike back to the picnic area. We had
actually staged our second vehicle nearby to make it even easier, but since I
was ahead of the others when we got to the pavement, I just kept walking past
Tom's Jeep to the start of the route, arriving less than a minute before the
others pulled in with the Jeep.
Silica Dome
Tom had injured his foot on the return of the morning hike which was why he was
slower exiting to the road. He didn't think he was going to be able to do
any more serious scrambling, so we chose to do the easy hike to
, a
short outing not on our agenda. The roundtrip distance is about
a mile with less than 200ft of gain from the Silica Dome TH where we started.
goes most of the way to , with the last few hundred feet over
solid sandstone footing. The popular hike is perhaps
too popular,
judging by the amount of
carved into the soft rock around the summit.
The top provides a good viewpoint overlooking the park and the half dozen or so
features we'd already climbed. Tom planned to take it slow on the way back so
we there before heading down.
White Domes
This pair of sandstone features are found immediately south of the White Domes
TH at the end of the paved road. We were surprised to find the TH closed, the
road gated at the Gibraltar Rock parking area, as it had been open just the
day before. , we found,
was closed to allow a construction crew free access to the
TH to build a retaining wall behind the restrooms. Luckily, it was easy enough
to park at the Gibraltar lot and hike
as it was only a quarter mile
due east of the White Dome TH. The two rock formations are separated by a wash
running north-south and composed of red & white sandstone. The east dome has a
bit of in which probably keeps
this short climb from being more popular. It took about 45min to climb
both the and formations, each providing nice views
from to complement the enjoyable scrambling.
The Orphan
From White Domes, we headed
for our second attempt at The Orphan in
as many days. Having studied the maps a bit better, we aimed for the NE side of
the formation by going around the south and west sides. Most of this walk from
the White Domes TH is easy enough up through various washes and modest
scrambling. The key is getting through the low saddle immediately west of the
summit. Though Scott had the saddle nicely marked on his phone/GPS, I ignored
his suggestion that we go further west when I started up an adjacent canyon. I
figured it would be a shortcut and it was, but only with a spicy
that would have been completely unnecessary if I'd listened to him.
Once through ,
it was an easy walk around to the northeast side where there is a
huge we guessed was the way to go to match Purcell's vague
NE aspect description in the guide. It looked very promising as we made
it up to of the amphitheater easily enough, but then things
got sketchy when we had
across sloping sandstone slabs to the right to
gain the upper reaches. This seemed much harder than Purcell had described so
we eventually backed off, determining that the amphitheater was a dead-end,
route-wise. We explored more options to the northeast before finally coming
across
that would lead us a fun and intricated route
that matched Purcell's "
much easier than expected" description. There
were , some tunneling and other enjoyable highlights to
the route
that we all thought was one of the best we'd done yet. Interestingly, we went
right below the point where we'd turned around the day before when it had
looked so hopeless. We were atop the summit by 2:30p, having spent something
over an hour on the effort. There are several options to
reach the highpoint, we used the one with a tunnel on the ascent and the shorter
option for the descent. Once off The Orphan, we returned east through the maze
of rock and gullies to about a third of a mile from
where we'd parked. Iris wandered ahead of Scott and I along the road singing
little songs and to the car. It was a nice way to
mark the end of another fine desert trip...
Continued...