Stepladder Mountain 3x P500 DPS / DS
Malo BM P300
Tue, Nov 8, 2022
| With: | Tom Grundy |
| Iris Ma | |
| Karl Fieberling |
Tue, Nov 8, 2022
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| With: | Tom Grundy |
| Iris Ma | |
| Karl Fieberling |
We left two vehicles parked where we had camped the previous evening, and
drove south in the Jeep to the end of the road on the eastern edge of the
Stepladder Mtns Wilderness. We would then recreate the same basic route
that everyone takes to reach Stepladder, a 9.4mi roundtrip effort, much of
which is a pleasant hike southwest 
across the desert flats. After
reaching 
the base of the range, we headed up 
a broad drainage
to the west. While
walking up the wash, Karl spotted a rusty kid's wagon just above us to the
south, a very odd find. Tom tried to give Iris 
a ride in the wagon, but
it was too rusted to be serviceable and 
the effort was soon abandoned.
We crossed into 
an adjacent drainage over a low saddle, then
headed up the 
lower half of the mountain over moderately steep
class 2 terrain. We 
regrouped at 
the start of the
class 3 scrambling, took a short rest, then 
finished the route to
the summit 2.5hrs after starting out.
We very quickly ascertained that the south summit was obviously higher,
bringing into question my memory of the summit, obviously incorrect. We
scrambled up 
the summit conglomerate block,
signed the register, took in
the views and the usual rest period. Expecting to be much slower on the
descent, Karl started down first while the rest of us 
went over to
take a better look at 
the north summit. We did no better than I had
done on two previous visits, but at least I was satisfied that Tom found nothing
obvious I had missed. We concluded that it was within our abilities to
climb it with the gear we brought, but since it wasn't higher, we
lacked the motivation to do the sketchy climb. Back 
down we went.
We 
found Karl resting on a rock at the base of the mountain, not as
slow as he had imagined he'd be. Tom went off to climb a nearby bonus peak I
had done on my previous visit while the rest of us 
headed back to the
Jeep, 
finishing up after 12:30p with a roundtrip time of 5hr20min. Tom
made good time and was back only a few minutes after we had
opened beers to mark the occasion.
the base of the peak.
Part of the peak is 
signed as private property belonging to a Needles
rock hound club. It looks to date to the 1960s, and as far as we could discern,
has been depleted of any valuable gems and rocks. It took only 15min
to climb the short distance to 
the summit. We found one of the
reference marks, but it appears the benchmark has been removed. It was
very windy, so much so
that we would get easily blown off our feet if not properly braced against
the wind. A winter storm was racing
across the state and threatening rain at any time. We could see rain
falling in several directions, but none on us while we were out hiking.
After 
finishing up on Malo BM, we drove into the Turtle Mountains where
Karl and Iris had already established camp in the northern part of the
range, near where we planned to hike the next morning. The strong winds
continued all evening and through the night, such that we didn't dare try
to have a campfire. It was surprisingly warm (about 66F) so we mostly sat
about outside under the nearly full-moon. The moon would mostly be hidden
behind the pervasive clouds overhead, but it would make regular
appearances as the clouds danced across the desert sky - quite the lovely
evening. It didn't start raining in camp until nearly 9p, and by then we
were comfortably ensconsced in our vehicles for the night...
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Stepladder Mountain
This page last updated: Tue Nov 15 14:01:09 2022
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