Fri, Apr 10, 2020
|
With: | Tom Becht |
Tom and I had camped about a mile west of US95 on the utility road heading towards the Stepladder Mtns. We drove in two vehicles to keep with social distancing guidelines, part our effort to continue peakbagging in the era of COVID19. I had been to the DPS Stepladder Mtn 12yrs earlier and had agreed to repeat it for Tom's sake as one of the bones I would occasional toss him for following me around on the more obscure desert summits. We would do some other summits in the area to make a full day of it. A late-season storm had stalled over Southern California bringing moisture and cool temps to the desert in early April. This had the unpleasant effect of wetting the brush and grasses we walked through, leaving our boots and feet soaked for most of the day. The occasional light rain would mean tossing our rain jackets on one moment, removing them the next. This was more than compensated by the greening of the desert landscape and profusion of wildflowers that delighted us all day. Our main outing covered 12.5mi and more than 2,000ft of prominence, keeping us busy for 7.5hrs. On our drive back out we stopped to tackle a last summit just off the roadway that had almost 800ft of prominence.
After descending the class 3 section, we moved southeast and then
descended
the southwest side of the peak on our way to Conical BM
which could be seen as the highest point in
the southern part of the
range. It would have also been possible to descend directly off the west or
southwest side of Stepstool, but
we couldn't see the breaks in the cliffs there until we had viewed them during
our descent. We landed in a wash, following this
south for a quarter
mile or so before exiting to begin our climb up Conical BM. The terrain on this
second peak was more rugged than the first, requiring a bit more effort. We
ascended
a wide gully northeast of the summit as it seemed to offer
the most
straightforward way up. The gully became steeper and more class 3 as we got
higher, eventually leading to a small saddle on the north side of the peak. The
last stretch up the North Ridge was more standard class 2 fare, getting us to
the top shortly after 11a. The wooden survey tower
still stood at the
summit,
rusty guywires holding it up over what must be many decades now. We knew that
Gordon McLeod had climbed Conical BM back in 1971, but alas we were unable to
find the hoped-for register hidden in the summit cairn. We left
a new one,
adding Gordon's name at the top, before starting back down. There were several
other rugged peaks between Conical and Stepladder that appear on LoJ, but
these would not be easy objectives on the way to Stepladder, so we decided to
leave them for a future visit.
After descending back to the high saddle north of Conical BM, we chose an
alternate descent line down a narrower gully to the north. This proved to be a
more enjoyable way than our ascent line. It led down to the same wash system
we'd used earlier, this time heading north and following it for more
than a mile as it turns northwest to bring us to
the east side of
Stepladder Mtn. We followed the standard DPS route up that side, what looks
like a stiff little scramble from a distance but is really much easier. There
is some short class 3 moves on
the lower parts of the cliffs but
quickly leads to
some long ledges that are easy class 2, almost like
they were designed for the purposed. The route has been
amply ducked
and by 1p we had found our way to
the top. Though the topo map shows a
spot elevation at the northern of two summits, the southern
one is clearly higher. The DPS register is found at the base of the highest
point which requires some modest class 3 scrambling to surmount. The register
in the ammo box had been left
in 1999 by a large DPS party (there's a
TR in their archives describing the debauchery that accompanied them). Oddly, I
could find no sign of my previous 2008 ascent. Later, I noted from my earlier
TR that there had been an older summit register, now gone. I had probably signed
into
that one rather than the newer book from 1999. Before heading back down, Tom
watched while I spent about 15min exploring route options for the north summit.
Matthew and I had failed on the previous visit and I wondered if I had any
better skills than I possessed then. I did a much better job of exploring
options, but all of them ended in extremely dicey sections of crappy rock -
apparently my skills were no better than 12yrs ago. We descended back down the
regular route, then made
our way back across the flats to
our jeeps parked miles away. It was now 3:40p, but I still had one
more idea for the day that Tom was easily talked into.
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Stepladder Mountain
This page last updated: Wed Apr 15 15:05:01 2020
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