Little Maria Mountains
I had camped just outside Blythe in the middle of someone's farm (on a dirt road, not his crops) away from the city lights. I was up early and drove to the Starbucks where I was to meet Matt at 5:30a. They open at 4a, earlier than most other stores in much larger cities - good deal! Birthday frappuccino in hand, I tossed my gear in Matt's car and we headed north out of town on Midland Rd. Our goal today was the unnamed highpoint of the Little Maria Mountains. I had done an enjoyable loop the day before on the east end of the range whereas today's would encompass the western end. I'll still have to come back some other time to do the peaks in the middle.
We spent an hour driving paved Midland Rd, good dirt Arlington Mine
Rd heading west, and then a 
rougher 4WD road north to our starting
point at the base of the Little Maria Mountains, near the Standard Mine still
operating. Evan Rasmussen had
climbed the range HP years earlier and had reported it both fun and
tricky. I had ignored this last part and didn't really pay any attention
to the route he had used though I had his written description. Probably
could have helped. We were here to climb the range HP in conjunction
with another summit to the northwest that sported 750ft of prominence.
The two combined would have more than 2,000ft of prominence but I don't
think we get to count that as a P2K. Based on the previous day's
experience in the eastern part of the range, I was expecting the ascent
to be straightforward and the traverse between the two to be the tricky
part. As
it turned out (and Evan might have predicted), the ascent was rather
tricky and the traverse more straightforward. So it goes.
From our 
starting point at the junction of two old mining roads, we
followed the road heading northeast a little more than a mile before dropping
into 
a wash system on our right. This we 
navigated for a short
distance before realizing we had walked up the wrong wash - oops - and
had to climb up and over a low ridge between our wash and the
adjacent one that wound deeper into the range. As we neared the end of
this easy walking, we noticed the various fingers of the wash ended rather
abruptly against the 
steep limestone walls that line the south side of
the range above the drainage. We exited the wash to our right where we
immediately had to climb the left side of a dry waterfall that was a bit
above our climbing grade. Reaching higher, we found the steep limestone on
our left to be tougher than we could manage and eventually
traversed back
into the channel well above the dry waterfall. We were treated to some good
class 3 scrambling
in places, but mostly found too much broken rock littering
the slopes in place of the good limestone scrambling I had hoped to find.
We gained the 
South Ridge
shortly before 9a, but the navigation only got more
complicated. We couldn't climb the ridge directly and found obstacles on
both sides of the ridge that we had to avoid, threading our way through
and over various 
side gullies
and aretes before we could see a clear way to the summit.
After 
reaching the crest of the range, we found the last 10min
an 
easier cross-country effort that brought us to
the summit just after 9:30a. We found a 
1948 benchmark and
a 
newish register (2013) in a plastic
tub that had become brittle and broken due to exposure to the sun. We tore
out the only page of the notebook and left it with a more weather-proof tin
can register.
Following a 15min break, we spent the next 2hr+ 
traversing the crest
towards the NW for some three miles. It was more relaxing than the ascent
because the route was more straightforward. We found some
good scrambling in places as we went over several intermediate points,
including one near the halfway mark that sported a solar-powered
telecom installation. We 
stuck to the ridge where we
could, making for some unnecessary (but fun) 
class 3-4 moves,
generally having a nice time as we enjoyed 
the views north and south
from the crest. We had to drop down to 
a low saddle before making the
750-foot climb up to the bonus peak, a straightforward climb up the
class 2 East Ridge. Gordon and Barbara had left a register here
in 1987, recording a previous ascent by a geology student
in 1978. There was only one other party to visit since, and we managed to
squeeze our own entry in, keeping the register to two pages. At this rate, the
little booklet should last a few hundred years, at least.
While Matt 
ate his lunch, we contempated our descent options,
eventually
choosing to descend back down the East Ridge to the low saddle, then south
down the drainage from there. Our only obstacle was a 100-foot
dry waterfall about halfway down that we 
bypassed
on its east side with some easy class 3 scrambling. We soon reached
easier ground as the gradient eased and the gully became
a wash. Another hour saw us out to the periphery of the range where we
continued to navigate one wash or another past some 
old mining sites
and eventually 
back to our vehicle around 2p.
Black Hill
As we were driving back out on the Arlington Mine Rd, we considered that we had enough daylight for a last easy peak, if we could find one. We settled on a small peak on the west side of the Big Maria Mtns, not far from Midland Rd. With the help of some OHV routes, we got within a quarter mile of the summit on its
south side which made for a short climb that took less than
15min, all class 2. Barbara and Gordon had left a register here, too, this one
from 2003 and more popular with 8 pages of entries. We took a
few photos after leaving our own entry, then headed down to the car -
about as easy as a desert peak
gets without being a drive-up.
We drove back to Blythe where we showered before meeting up with Iris for dinner in town. She would be joining us, along with Scott who would arrive much later, for the next several days near Yuma. We drove south on SR78 for almost an hour to Black Mtn Road where we would hike the next day. Here we spent the night a short distance off the west side of the highway, to get away from the noise some. More fun in store tomorrow...
Continued...