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
from there. We followed the wash west, reaching
the Wilderness boundary 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 
south slopes, becoming the
South Ridge near the top. It was a pretty standard class 2 desert climb
with no difficulties whatsoever, taking about 45min. There was a ridiculously
large cairn at the summit, hours of toil by whoever built it. A register
had a notebook dating 
to 1994 with a brittle scrap from a USGS surveyor
dating 
to 1970. As the highest summit in the northern half of the range,
the views stretch over many miles and across three states. The next
highest summit, Crossman Peak, is the range highpoint rising 14mi to
the southeast. A more interesting summit, Tumarion Peak, lay almost two
miles to 
the southwest. 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 
our ascent route
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 
direct line up 
the NW Ridge. 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 
making his way
between the two, I was perusing the register left by MacLeod/Lilley
in 2009. Gordon was 85yrs of age at that time, Barbara 80yrs. Not a
trivial peak by any means. There were only 
two other entries 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
the southwest side of 
the mountain 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 
a wildlife guzzler 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
back to the jeep 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.
Goat Hill was
the easiest
of three and first that we tackled. The summit has a collection of
telecom towers
and a rough road leading up to them. The jeep was able to negotiate
the` road to 
a locked gate 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
class 3 effort from a saddle on its
northeast side. 15min from the car to 
reach the top. Cool
little peak.
Shangri La Butte
Though seemingly named out of the blue, I suspect the name comes from
a sign
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 
the northeast side
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 
initial part
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 
the SE side (that would prove an
easier descent route). Above this was some 
class 3-4 slabs and some
pretty good
scrambling and route-finding that kept us busy nearly all the way to
the summit.
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 
back to the jeep.
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.
Continued...