Continued...
Day 11 of my desert road trip had me in the northeast corner of Clark
County, NV. The primary reason for being in this area was to climb
Davidson Peak, a P1K, but there were a handful of other peaks in the area
I did
as well, some in Purcell's Rambles & Scrambles, others not. All in
all, it was a pretty moderate day. The weather was cold and chilly to
start, but it warmed up nicely and was one of the better days,
weather-wise.
Beacon Peak
I had camped near the base of this peak on its southwest side, up before
6a and had driven to the summit before 6:20a. There is a telecom facility
just below the highpoint which with a hike of about
50ft from . As it was well before sunrise, the
photos were a bit weak, matching the peak nicely.
Little Davidson Peak
This one is nearly a drive-up as well. Purcell doesn't mention this, just
a vague
Class 2-3 via North Slope. The roads ends at
a quarter mile
on its southwest side. The hike would be a simple
class 2 romp except that there is a 20-foot cliff band just below the
summit. I tackled this directly via with small
footholds. On the way down, I first looked for an easier way off, but the
alternatives seemed worse, so I the same moves. This one
was a little bit of unexpected fun.
Davidson Peak
I drove back down Little Davidson and then took a rough road over towards
the small valley between Davidson and Little Davidson,
at the base of Davidson's East Ridge.
I was about 1.5mi from the summit at this point,
starting off at 7:40a. It took me an hour and a quarter to hike
to the summit, and quite
enjoyable with fine views from the ridge overlooking the
to the south. The rock (as was all
I climbed today) was primarily limestone with good footing. The summit
affords good views to
and Mormon Peaks. The former is
a DPS summit I'd climbed a decade earlier with Matthew. The latter was on
the agenda for tomorrow. The
of Davidson looks interesting as
well, with vertical cliffs on its west side. Purcell had given this a class
4 rating but I couldn't figure out where one was supposed to start on it.
I found no register on this or any of the summits I visited today. My
return was a slight variation of the ascent, basically returning back down
the East Ridge.
Peak 3,100ft/Peak 3,180ft
These were two found just
, between Beacon Peak
and Little Davidson. With warmer temperatures, I did these two in a very
casual loop of about 2.5mi, taking far longer than normal. I lazed about
the second summit on
to soak up the sun for almost half
an hour. Sometimes I get to feeling lazy, but it's usually short-lived.
Candy BM
It wasn't yet 1p when I finished up with the two easy summits, so I looked
around for something to occupy myself for a few more hours.
Since I was heading
south on I-15, I looked for something around Glendale where I'd be
exiting for Mormon Peak the next day. I found Candy BM, an isolated summit
of no great elevation but almost 900ft of prominence. It would do nicely.
I got off at Exit 100 and then drove north on a dirt road (high-clearance
recommended) for about 3.5mi. A rougher road (4WD recommended) forks to
the northwest to get one
of the summit on the ENE side.
I from where I parked, not using either the East
Ridge or East
Canyon mentioned by Purcell, instead following a vague route up
with some really fun but short sections of class 3 scrambling. I
spent about 45min on the ascent, enjoying the late afternoon lighting
on the desert landscape. There was a derelict
in a small
cairn, the benchmark presumeably buried under there somewhere. I descended
off the summit to start down the
. This went
well enough, but I got distracted when I started looking off
into the East Canyon. Purcell mentions an interesting cave there with a
hole in the ceiling. I decided to drop north into the canyon, finding that
I picked one of to do so. Despite this, I
meandered
through it with some short class 4 moves to make it work. As a
bonus, I had descended close to where
was, on the opposite side
of the canyon. Once in the canyon bottom, it was a short walk to get
back to the start of the NE Face I'd ascended with a very smooth, gentle
grade to walk the last 2/3mi .
The whole outing was a bit
over an hour and a half, and a good time to call it a day...
Continued...