Standard Hill P300

Continued...

I had spent the night camped a short distance west of Standard Hill on BLM land. The peak lies south of the town of Mojave in Kern County, west of SR14. The peak has a sordid history as an open pit mine that now appears abandoned. Solar farms have begun to encroach on the peak, surrounding about half of it. LoJ lists the summit as having 379ft of prominence, but that has been reduced by around 30ft due to the mining. I was surprised to see that it showed no ascents on LoJ, and is not even listed on PB. It was a chilly 38F when I started off the hike early the next morning just after it was light enough to do so. It took about 20min to hike to the summit, first across open desert flats, then up unstable rock rubble that had been discarded from above by the mining operations. The final stretch was along the road network used to disgorge the mountain of its useful minerals. It was too chilly at the highpoint to wait around for sunrise, so after taking a few lame photos of Soledad Mtn to the south, the windmill farms to the west, and the town to the north, I head back off the mountain via the same route. Where I had camped was an informal shooting range with the usual collection of target detritus and other trash littering the area - typical of desert lands close to residential areas. Back by 6:30a, I started home to San Jose, arriving there around noon to finish a fine 9-day roadtrip...

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