Continued...
I was in the Red Rocks area on the last day of an extended roadtrip and needed
to be home in the evening. With an 8hr drive ahead of me, this meant finishing
up around noon. I decided to tag nearby Red BM (500ft+ prominence) along with a
few of the summits in the Calico Hills that I had missed on my first effort
three days earlier.
Red BM
Located less than a mile and a half SE of SR159 and the north
to Red Rock Canyon NCA, Red BM makes for a short,
easy outing. There is a large
adjacent to the highway as one starts out. While some might find
the noise disturbing, take solice knowing that your fellow Americans are
practicing to defend us from tyrannical government and foreign enemies. If that
doesn't provide any comfort, consider that they are dumping large sums of money
in the form of spent cartridges and lead poured into earthen berms, money that
they are otherwise not using to support causes you probably don't care
for either. Still not happy? Perhaps do the hike in the early morning when the
range is quiet. One can stay outside the range and on BLM property by following
the ridgeline, or cheat a bit and use old roads inside the range east of the
ridge (not recommended while class is in session).
I spent about 45min hiking to the where I found a 1950
and the of a tin that once served
to hold a register. There is a fine view of to the
west in the morning and of Las Vegas in the evening (though not so good in
when the view is washed out).
Calico Hills South/Red Book Point
After returning to the TH I drove a few miles west to Calico Basin and the
at the south end of the .
I had done a half-day scramble
around the summits to the north earlier in the week but run out of daylight
for these other two to the south. In his book
Rambles & Scrambles,
Purcell mentions a traverse of these summits as a fine outing but never gives
any sort of description, which in the end was probably a good thing. The
route-finding is quite tricky and any such wordy description would probaby have
been merely a source of delay and frustration. Getting to Calico Hills South
is fairly straightforward from Red Spring. A boardwalk trail inside a fenced
area gives one a tour of the formed by the spring. An
unsigned
trail goes
outside the fence and can be used to access the main body of
the Calico Hills. I headed southwest to gain the southern end of the ridge
to of Calico Hills South,
taking about 30min to reach it, nothing more than easy class 3. From here
gets far more interesting - it took more than an hour and a
half to cover less than a mile to the northwest. I found myself wandering
around some huge cliffs on the of the ridge (the ridge
itself looking far more formidable), wandering up and down
various formations to link together a route to continue to Red Book Point. I
came across a number of odd items including a , a bolted
and an unused . Occasional
can be found amongst the rocks - a of
too-easy access from Calico Basin (to the east) and the Scenic Loop
(to the west). There is a low saddle requiring a large drop as one nears Red
Book Point (Google Maps labels this as "Guardian Angel"), the hardest part to
figure out. I tried all sorts of ways to reach it before finding a key
that led down, followed by another steep gully with
leading up the other side. There were none of
the usual ducks anywhere on this traverse, keeping me on my toes and making it
a bit more fun than usual.
I found a small at in a circular tin,
signed my name and looked for a way down. There appear to be several gullies
one could follow down the east side - one going northeast towards Ash Creek
Spring and another (the one I chose) and east back
into Calico Basin. There were lots of of water left from
the previous evening's light rains and the gully had some
as well. I was back in not long
after 11a and back to in another 15min. Having gotten my fill
of sandstone
scrambling for the week, it was time to head home, but I would already be
plotting my return in a short while back to this wonderland of rock...