Continued...
Weather was a bit warm today in Las Vegas - end of April isn't an ideal time
to be visiting Sin City, to be sure. Today's outings were accompanied by a lot
of dirt road driving (more gravel than dirt, really) to the north of town.
After dropping my wife off at the Convention Center in the early morning, I
headed north on US95 and then out on Corn Spring Rd into the Desert National
Wildlife Range. Mormon Well Road forks off from Alamo Rd shortly past the
Visitor Center, then some miles later I took a right fork on
. It wasn't until after 8:30a that I had reached
for Gass Peak.
Gass Peak
Others have
reported driving partly up this rougher road that now serves as a trail,
but it is now closed to the
public and signed as a "Service Road". Not sure what is being serviced as the
road only goes about a third of the way to the summit and there are no
facilities anywhere along the road. I spent half an hour hiking
while wishing I could drive it as it was already getting
warm - 70F and rising. From where atop a final steep
section, a very good use trail continues along
all the way to the summit - no cross-country, no route-finding issues on this
one. There is a small solar-powered telecom installation just below the
highpoint, mostly microwave relays from the looks of it. There is
and a very - too many pages to
bother photographing, only going back a few years. The views
were rather hazy and muted today, but there were
in other directions, commensurate with its P2K status. On
my way back down the trail I passed by on their way
up - busy peak, indeed.
Quartzite Mountain
Back at
by 11:40a, I contemplated what to do next. There is a
shorter route to Quartzite Mtn from the north off Mormon Well Rd which I had
planned to use, but I really didn't want to do an additional 20mi+ of driving
on these road. I decided to continue on the Gass Spring Rd a few more miles to
the and possibly hike to Quartzite from there where
the continuing road is closed to vehicle traffic. I knew there were at least
two more miles of road, but at the TH I was almost five miles as the crow flies
from Quartzite and with the warm temps I wasn't
feeling up to much cross-country. As a backup, there was an unnamed summit just
north of the road (Peak 6,610ft) after the first two miles, which I would do
if the road didn't continue. Turns out, it does - going 4.5mi to a saddle only
a mile from Quartzite Mtn, and it would do nicely. "Nicely" might be a bit
generous because the road/trail is mostly that can
be pretty
tedious in warm weather and tough on the feet. Motorcycles have gotten around
the barriers at the TH
and keep the road/trail serviceable, but the nicest thing I could
say about it was at least there was no brush to contend with. After climbing
almost 1,500ft along the road, I paused in the shade of the
growing at the higher elevations
and took a needed rest while guzzling some Gatorade.
After my break, I left the road at its highpoint and headed east up a ridgeline
to the main crest, finding the cross-country fairly brush-free and actually
enjoyable - the footing was better than the road/wash and a breeze was blowing
as I neared the crest to provide some needed cooling. I went by the lower (by
5ft) south summit on my way to the slightly higher where
I found a Greg Vernon register left . There were 13 pages of
entries all told, a more popular peak than I would have guessed. Perhaps it's
due to its inclusion on
the Sierra Club's Great Basin Peak List. I followed a
down from the summit that intersected the road/trail half a mile further
north from the saddle where I'd first turned off, but only about 100ft lower in
elevation. Once back to ,
I would spend most of the next two hours
hiking back to the TH, finishing just before 4:40p. There were still almost
three hours of daylight, but I would use half of this up driving back to the
highway and besides - my feet and I had had enough of the warm weather today...
Continued...