Story | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Day 3 of my desert roadtrip was a wet one. A storm coming up from Los Angeles and Tijuana was moving across the California desert towards Las Vegas. It had rained just a tad during the night, a light tap-tap on the roof of the jeep as I slept off Interstate 40. It was heavily overcast in the morning but not raining, and not looking to resume for at least a few hours. So I headed into the Sacramento Mountains, a modest range found about 25mi west of Needles and the Colorado River. I had been to the range on two previous trips to collect the range highpoint and some other summits. This trip would visit the three westernmost peaks in the range. I used a powerline road heading southeast from Interstate 40, then a pipeline road heading northeast. The powerline road was well-graded, the pipeline road less so (high-clearance recommended). I spent about 3.5hrs on the 6mi loop, all class 2, ascending them in a clockwise fashion, lowest elevation to the highest. None of the peaks had registers, though I left one on Peak 3,254ft. I was on this last summit and could see the rain advancing towards me from the west. I beat a hasty retreat down the mountain, with about 1.5mi to return to the jeep once I hit the desert flats. A light rain started with about 15min to go, so I didn't bother to get out the rain gear I had carried in my pack. The rain stayed very light until I got back out to the Interstate and was heading east towards Kingman where I was scheduled to meet up with my pal Eric in the afternoon. There were times of heavy rain but more often light or none at all. I stopped during one interlude to climb Yucca BM in Arizona, found just off the highway. I noticed that Laura Newman had climbed this, and not one to let my nemesis get one over on me if I could help it, I dashed out to claim it. Despite the loud and constant road noise, it made for a fun little hike, dodging through the cholla garden that grows on its southern flanks. A quartet of burros were disturbed by my appearance, but not overly so - they moved off only a hundred yards or so and watched me go up and back before they resumed whatever it is that burros do in these parts...
Continued...
This page last updated: Sun Dec 15 16:29:25 2019
For corrections or comments, please send feedback to: snwbord@hotmail.com