Continued...
Iris had gone home, leaving the four of us to fend for ourselves. We were
camped off Essex Rd south of I-40, very close to the middle of nowhere. The
Mojave Desert is spectacularly huge and it takes a good deal of time to realize
just how big it is. Our goals today were high on the obscurity list, places
that almost no one would recognize and we'd have forgotten about ourselves in
a few weeks if I didn't bother to write down a few notes regarding them. It's
not by coincidence that a desert rat's memory gets foggy with time.
Castle Dome/Peak 2,903ft
Castle Dome rises prominently on the south side of the Clipper Mtns, the only
officially named summit in the range. Though it has little actual prominence,
its unusually rocky shape rising from the desert makes it visible from long
distances. We had seen it a few days earlier while climbing in the Marble Mtns
to the west.
Our approach may or may not have been the shortest route to Castle Dome, but it
looks shortest on the topo map. We were 2.7mi southeast
when Matt wisely decided to call a halt to our drive up
. We had missed
where the poor road we were following exited the wash but it mattered little -
the wash was only modestly more difficult than the road. Starting off not long
after 6:30a, we would spend the first hour ,
in and out of
half a dozen minor drainages that we needed to cross - going against the grain
can make for extra work. The of Castle Dome shows an
obvious class 2 route up and it was to this after
crossing the last wash. We noted some fed by
piping coming from a narrow channel to the east as we climbed. Scott and I
visited this on our way down and found that it was the
, first constructed in 1984 with additional
work done in 2004. Judging by the large amount of sheep droppings in the area
and the configuration of , we guessed it was
the sheep the builders were primarily concerned with helping. This was later
confirmed with an online search that turned up
the SCBS, of which Marvin Wood was a
longtime member.
Our route went up the that we traversed below to the
east before continuing up to which we
reached soon after 8a. The rocky top has fine views overlooking the desert to
the south. The range highpoint rises another 1,200ft higher to
. There are many nooks
and crannies in the cliffs on all sides of the formation, providing ideal
rest and shade spots for the sheep when they visit the area (though we saw none
today). While snacking on the summit and enjoying the views, we left a register
under a small cairn - a very deserving summit.
A mile to rises unnamed bonus Peak 2,903ft, and it was to
this that we headed next. Scott and I lost track of Matt and Karl on the descent
as we made an unplanned side
trip to the guzzler, but we met up with them again in the wash between the two
summits. There are a couple of minor guarding the upper
third of
the mountain that can be a little intimidating. Not liking the look of it,
Karl was about to back off and meet us down around the other side when Scott
talked him into continuing. It worked out to be no harder than
and we all enjoyed the bit of scrambling it provided. It,
too, had that we spent about 15min at before
. We descended the west
side through more easy class 3. A lies near the base of
the west side that we all gravitated to. It is vertical or overhanging on all
sides and quite difficult-looking. was the only one that gave it
a try, but didn't get more than a few feet off the ground. We left its summit
untrammeled. It would take us another 45min to recross the
to return us to by 10:45a.
After returning to our campsite at Essex Rd, we drove our cars out to I-40,
then east about 15mi to Mountain Springs Summit (stopping at
to
refill on water and use the facilities). There were five summits in the area I
was interested in and wasn't sure we'd get to them all with the remaining time
we had, but it turned out they were all fairly tame.
Goffs Butte
The summit of this isolated peak is crowned with a 4G cell tower providing
modern service to a forlorn desert. A rough road leads to the summit. The first
part of the road to a saddle north of the summit is in
that most cars can drive. The road then becomes
for the next two switchbacks. We drove the first
leg of this rougher road and then where the road turns sharply,
avoiding further unnecessary abuse to Matt's vehicle. A
along the road leads to the summit. The highest point was left unmarred by the
, nicely. There are from the
summit and very good 4G cell coverage, too.
Whistle Peak/El Tren Peak
Found at the northern end of the Piute Mtns, the two peaks were named by
Courtney Purcell in his book,
Rambles & Scrambles, for the frequent
trains that run across the north and west side of the range through Fenner
Valley ("tren" is spanish for "train"). Both peaks are short hikes of less than
half a mile from the powerline road off Mountain Springs Rd that runs east to
west between them. features a very
that looks to have
taken hours to construct, very sturdy too, as I found I could climb it with
ease without the rocks shifting. El Tren is starting
from a saddle over which the powerline road passes. is the
steep, loose embankment adjacent to the road, after which it becomes an easy
hike. There is a good view of from its .
Mt. Walter/Muppet Mtn
Mt. Walter is the highest point in the Piute Mtns north of I-40, sporting over
800ft of prominence. The combination with Muppet Peak (both of these were also
named by Purcell, btw) makes for a nice outing covering about 2.5mi with a
little over 1,000ft of gain. We drove about as far as seemed reasonable on
a spur road before
parking and starting up Walter's SW Ridge. About ten minutes before reaching
, Scott and I came across the first of three desert
we'd come across during the outing. They seemed to be on decidedly
untortoise-like terrain and we wondered how they'd gotten here. We noticed they
were all junior-sized, about 6-10 inches in length and thought maybe they'd
been preyed upon by a large raptor - perhaps dropped by an eagle to break the
shell? Curious, to be sure. We found a John Vitz register
with only a handful of other entries. Courtney had been
five years earlier. The lower Muppet Mtn can be seen
rising sharply to about
half a mile away. Matt and Scott had thought it was to the north, but that point
is a slightly lower cousin of Mt. Walter with little prominence. We made our
way to the second summit via the ,
going up and over an
intermediate point along the way. Karl avoided this middle point by dropping a
little lower with some sidehilling to the east but it proved no faster as we
reconvened at the second saddle before climbing the to
Muppet. Our route back from Muppet made a loop of it by going over a lower
saddle and then sidehilling to the northwest to to the car. It
was after 4:30p and nearly sunset upon our return. We would drive back to the
Interstate to pick up our other cars
and reconvene back off Kelbaker Rd at a dispersed camping spot south
of the freeway. With Matt's BBQ supplies exhausted (actually it was the charcoal
that was exhausted - he still had a supply of hotdogs), it wasn't the same
culinary treat we'd had the past two nights, causing us to resort to soup and
more of the other usual roadtrip foods we'd
brought with us. We had one more day before heading home...
Matt's Video
Continued...