Continued...
We had camped in a wash along Gold Crown Rd in the Pinto Mountains,
strategically chosen to give us an immense amount of available firewood, much of
which we used for a roaring fire for hours the previous evening. We were up and
ready to go at 6:30a, leaving my Jeep at New Dale before taking Tom's for an
off-road adventure to an obscure peak near the border with Josua Tree NP. We
would add a few other summits in the wider area before Tom had to head home in
the late afternoon. Having been to this area many previous times, I was mostly
picking up orphans today, and Tom was gracious to allow me to do so, as well
as doing all the tough driving.
Peak 2,116ft
After leaving my Jeep at New Dale, we drove 4-5mi southeast through the range
to reach the edge of Pinto Basin, just outside the northern border of Joshua
Tree NP. Some of these stretches were exceedingly rough for my liking - I was
grasping the grab handles in the Jeep with an intensity that caught Tom's
attention, providing him much humor. I only conceded that it was to keep me
from bouncing forward into the windshield. On my own, I would have balked at
the first mile and left the summit unvisited. It took us the better part of an
hour to negotiate those few miles and it wasn't until nearly 7:45a that we got
started on the hike. Tom had driven further than I had thought we'd
be able to, leaving less than a mile to the summit.
Peak 2,116ft is exceedingly minor and is soft-ranked with a bit less than 300ft
of prominence. The drive was the excitement for this effort, not the hike or
climb. We had first to cross about 3/4mi of desert wash draining south into
Pinto Basin. Our took us across the grain of
, but there were no deep washes to cross and the going
was fairly tame. The climb, too, was mild, an easy class 2 effort with less than
400ft of gain, taking us only 30min to reach . There is a fine
view into the park and of the immense Pinto Basin to . We left
here before the rubbly slopes
along the same route we'd used for the ascent.
Peak 3,106ft
It would take us almost 2hrs of driving to return to New Dale, retrieve my Jeep,
drive both back out to SR62, then east to our starting point for Peak 3,106ft.
This summit is the easternmost in the Pinto Mtns, a few miles east of Outlaw
BM, a higher summit I had visited some years earlier. We started from an old
road off SR62, just west of Clarks Pass. The road is now part of the Joshua
Tree Wilderness. Our route would follow almost for 2.5mi,
crossing almost two miles of pretty easy - no real washes
to cross until we reached the base of the moutain. From a distance,
of the mountain looks to be covered in dark green brush,
more typical of the coastal mountain slopes. This is an illusion, however, as
the brush is aboout as sparse as that of the flats we crossed, the dark lava
rock having blended nicely with the existing brush to make it look denser. We
what might pass as , loose in places
but more annoying than dangerous. There is a very large
at the summit that we reached after an hour and a quarter. John Vitz had left a
register here and there were two other entries before our
arrival. 1/3mi to is another contender that
looks
of equal height, but the topo maps has it as 9m lower (saving us the trouble of
an extended visit). We descended off , a somewhat gentler
grade than the ascent route, albeit slightly longer. We then returned north
to to the Jeep, just under 3hrs for
the whole outing.
Peak 3,015ft
We drove a few miles east on SR62 before turning off on another old road, also
and now part of the Wilderness. is the
westernmost summit in the adjacent Coxcomb Mtns, about 1.2mi from our starting
point at the Wilderness boundary. These peaks, composed almost entirely of
granite of varying rock quality, stand in contrast to the dark volcanic rock of
the Pinto Mtns. are larger than in the Pintos and
seemingly piled up in haphazard fashion. Though not as challenging as the main
Coxcomb range, this front range summit still makes for a fun scramble. We
ascended approaching from the northwest, and
to the south of this, finding both good fun. The
summit held a register left by MacLeod/Lilley back without
another entry in the ensuing 42yrs - quite the find. Almost exactly two hours
for the roundtrip effort on this one.
It was after 3:30p when we and time to call it a day. We
relaxed with a beer and snacks at the TH for an hour or so before it was time
for Tom to head home. I would spend the night here, not far from SR62, but happy
that there is fairly sparse traffic on this road during mid-week nights.
Continued...