I now had five others joining me in the middle of my nine day desert trip and
one of the requests I'd had beforehand was to *not* have the usual generous
helpings of driving from one area to the next between days. I had brought us to
Hole-in-the-Wall in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve because I had
found enough summits to keep us busy for two full days without hardly driving
at all. Not all of the summits were named, and not all of them were very good,
but most had been climbed by Matthew and CP a few years back. They were in turn
inspired by an Andy Smatko TR from the early 1970s, all of which seemed good
enough reason for me to follow suit. Today's four summits were all located on
the east side of Black Canyon Road, and included a range highpoint, a P1K, and
some class 3 scrambling. We left my van at the north end of the area in the
early morning, reconvening at the Visitor Center where we'd begin our hike. This
would allow us to make a one-way hike, with options to cut out early at the
intermediate summits. Karl and I found the others at the Visitor Center when
we arrived around 6:20a. This would not be the 6a start I had advertised, which
perplexed those not used to a late start when I'm around. I knew Laura would
want to enjoy her 
morning coffee
and was not to be rushed. The distance was not
long today, and I figured we'd have plenty of time. So it wasn't until after 7a
before breakfast was packed away, our day packs were shouldered, and we were
on our way.
Across the highway is the entrance to the group camp area and the government
housing for the NPS employees. We turned off on an little-used road before
passing either of these, going instead past
an abandoned home that looks like it was occupied
at one time, though never completely finished. Possibly it was
a modern version of a miner's cabin, but it has long been left to decay at the
hands of the elements and vandals. We left the road and crossed the wide
Black Canyon Wash,
turning to follow the sand and gravel wash for about a mile to
the southeast as it swept around the southwest side of the Woods Mtns. After
rounding a buttress between Rustler and Grass Canyons, our first peak of the
day came into view, Tortoise Shell Mtn. It is one of the weaker peaks in the
area, but also one of the few with an official name. Since Matthew and CP had
thought to climb it, so it seemed should we.
Leaving the wash, we traversed across the rocky volcanic slope towards our peak.
Cacti in 
various forms
grow in modest numbers throughout the area, though not
nearly as prolificly as the nearby Providence Mountains. We would have to be
careful to watch where we stepped, but overall the cross-country was no great
difficulty. "Pleasant" would be a more accurate adjective to describe it. From
the wash we had not seen that 
Burro Canyon
cuts through 
the slope leading to
Tortoise Shell. This would involve a short bit of down climbing, though nothing
tricky. There was some looking at maps and contours and discussion about which
route was the more direct, but this mattered little - it was just a small canyon
to cross in order to get on with 
the business
of climbing Tortoise Shell. Our
little band of six took almost two hours at a leisurely pace to reach
the easy summit.
A register had been left 
in 1996 by Mark Adrian and a second one by
MacLeod/Lilley 
in 2006. The peak seems to be climbed about once a
year. Shane
Smith had visited it in 2009 as part of his AAA Roadmap tour - climbing all
the highpoints depicted on the AAA maps. Was Tortoise Shell really one of these
points? This seems hard to believe. Unfortunately I don't have a San Bernardino
AAA map to check this, and couldn't find one online. Perhaps someone reading
this can check their own map collection and let me know for curiosity's sake.
CP and Matthew's entry 
from 2010 was there, though CP had aliased
himself as Marco Esquandolas, which
itself is an alias for Mark Daubert, the drummer for the band Phish which I
would never have known without the wonder that is the Internet. The Wiki article
made no mention as to why CP would use this to sign the register. The most
recent entry is by Rebecca and David whose TR I later found online
when searching for Tortoise Shell Mountain. Interestingly, they visited some
cool petroglyphs nearby that we knew nothing about and never saw on our visit.
From Tortoise Shell's summit, we next set our sights on the highpoint of the
Woods Mtns about 2.5mi to 
the northwest. This involved more uphill
cross-country following the 
indistinct ridgeline between
Burro Canyon and the adjacent, unnamed canyon to the east. 
Portions
are made easier by the fine burro trails that can be found criss-crossing the
region. Characteristic 
poop piles are found periodically along the
way. The last mile 
grows steeper and our party split up
at this point, with Sean leading up a face far to the right ("leading" is a bit
misrepresentative - no one actually followed him out that way), myself and most
of the others sticking to the left and climbing up through a few easy cliff
bands to the east of Pt. 1,675m. As is often the case, Sean's swift scrambling
skills made up for any difficulties his route choice might have otherwise made,
allowing him to reconvene with the others without losing any time or distance
on the rest of us.
The two highpoints are found half a mile apart. The SW summit, only two feet
higher, is not obvious unless you happen to have a GPS with the proper
coordinate (I did). Four of us got to the summit about ten minutes before 11a,
with Karl a few minutes back and Laura no longer in sight. She was eventually
spotted by Tom climbing halfway to the lower NE summit (guess who didn't have a
GPS?). Tom shouted over to her, an unitelligible shout was returned, and
eventually our party of six was again 
back together.
The register found at the summit was a bit of a gem, left
in 1970 by RS Fink,
of the Angeles Sierra Club (he has an HPS peak named after him in the San
Jacinto Mtns). Most of the entries seem to be from park employees (dating from
after 1994 when the area came under the custodianship of the NPS). Others are
hunters, geology and botany students and of course the usual collection of
peakbaggers. Ours was 
a nice perch atop
this small range with views off in all
directions. We sat on the slabby south side to take a break out of the wind
(which wasn't so much high velocity as it was chilly) and in the sun. There is
a good view of Hole-in-the-Wall CG and Barber Peak to 
the west
with the much higher Providence Mtns behind them. To 
the north
was the distinctive shape of
Table Top, our last peak for the day. We were not quite halfway through the day
and it was time to be moving along. Laura was having blister problems and
decided to call it a day, descending down the west side of the range (with a
handful of interesting cliff bands to negotiate which she reported as, well,
"interesting"). The rest of us turned our attention north and getting back down
out of the Woods Mountains.
We found at the uppermost cliff band extending around to the north side
and this proved to be a little tricky to get through. I watched Sean and Jen
drop down a small chimney before making
a final class 4-ish move to the easier
ground below before following them. Karl and Tom simply moved further east along
the cliff band and found a much easier way through. More vegetated than the
other sides, the north side sported thicker brush and even some trees, but
almost no cacti. We dropped into 
a small drainage that provided a
little bit of fun 
canyon scrambling,
making our way about halfway down that side of the
range before moving right out of the canyon and onto easier slopes that we took
to the flats below. We reached a road on the north side of Woods Mtns shortly
before 12:30p, a 
fiberglass signpost
indicating the Wilderness boundary. This
road goes east to Woods Wash where I suspect the petroglyphs can be found.
Our next peak was scheduled to be the highpoint of Twin Buttes, lying between
the road and Table Top further north. We knew the highpoint was the northernmost
of the two buttes, and the others had assumed we would hike west around the
southern butte to tackle the northern one. Knowing we had plenty of daylight
left, I had other plans and announced that I was going to climb the southern
butte first. The others of the less-will persuasion might have mutinied had I
not had a few eager takers who I had more easily convinced it would
provide some good scrambling. It also helped that I held the keys to the
vehicle that would take us back at the end of the day. We
followed the road northeast for a short distance before leaving it
to follow 
a fenceline up to the base of the southern butte where
things 
get steeper. Once again our party split up as we began to
ascend 
the south side, characterized by some huge boulders that made
for some fun
scrambling as advertised. Sean and Jen were out in front tackling one line
while I was somewhere in the middle to the east of them, Tom and Karl somewhere
below out of view. 
Jen and Sean were the first to arrive at the rocky
summit shortly after 1p, 
the rest of us following soon after.
There were only three parties to sign the tiny register before us, starting with
Smatko's party 
in 1969. He dubbed this summit "Woota Peak" and the
northern summit "Tawoo Peak". An NPS ranger had visited in 1994 and CP had
done so, sans Matthew, 
in 2010.
Our party of five had doubled the number of
visitors in one fell swoop. Getting off 
the north side
of the southern butte was easy enough. A loud, 
braying burro
that was grazing on the saddle between
the two buttes was not happy with our approach. When its loud display failed to
deter us (in fact it may have gone unnoticed if it had just stayed quiet), it
took off towards the east, looking back once or twice to see if we might not
have changed our minds (we hadn't). It took only half an hour to make it from
one summit to the other. The hardest part was the last 80ft or so up the south
side of the northern butte. 
Sean
was there again first, myself second via a
variation that went class 3. Spotting Jen below, Sean suggested she try the
"interesting" 
direct line up. It was probably closer to class 4 and
a bit spicy,
but she made it without incident. Tom and Karl came up to the base of
rock in turn, after which I directed them to 
the easier route
I had taken to the east. Bringing up the rear, 
Karl was beginning to
show a lttle wear as he sat down to take a drink. Only one more to go...
The register on the northern butte was similar to the previous one, found in
the 
small film cannister
favored by Smatko back in the day. CP and Matthew's 
entry 41 years
after Smatko had left the register was the only other one until
our arrival. After a short break we left the summit via some
class 3 scrambling off the easier 
north side, enroute to
our final peak, 
Table Top. It would take
us another hour to get to Table Top, which aside from the initial scrambling
off the north side of Twin Buttes had 
no particular difficulties.
The plateau atop Table Top was an eerie, 
other-worldly scene.
Trees had grown across the
top in the past, but a not-too-distant fire had burned across the terrain
leaving little besides the charred remains of the trees.
The highpoint was found at the northwestern end of the plateau just
before it drops off in a cliff band on that side. 
A register
found in a small cairn was fairly busy for a desert peak, probably because it
is the highest summit in the area. Less than a mile away on
the north side is a small community of 
private homes that
Evan and I had used on an ill-fated attempt to
reach the summit earlier in the season (a homeowner had run us out). Black
Canyon Road lay about two miles to 
the west.
It took us until almost 4p to find our way back to the road and the van
we had left there. Getting off the summit of Table Top worked out to be no more
than class 2, though the cliff band at the top had looked like it might pose a
problem. Turns out the 
West Ridge dropping down from the summit took
care of this little problem quite nicely and we found ourselves soon enjoying
a nice jaunt across the flats of 
Gold Valley. There was
some 
fencing and cattle from a nearby ranch that we encountered
shortly before 
finding the road,
but they proved no more impediment than the cacti (which were largely absent
north of the Woods Mtns) had earlier. We had maybe half hour of daylight left
which gave barely enough time to drive back to the campground and to get a
lukewarm shower before the evening chill set in.
Having gotten back hours earlier, Laura had begun preparing the anticipated
birthday burger feast. I had tried to keep things simple when she asked what I
wanted for a birthday dinner, not dreaming she'd go to the length of baking her
own hamburger buns and other "extras." Along with
roasted asparagus, homemade
backed beans, she had prepared a potato dish and two types of burgers - the
cow flesh lovers variety and the white meat, turkey variety - no room for
vegetarians at this one, sorry. We even had 
a campfire to go along
with wine and song (ok, no song) and 
great food which all
would have been that much better
if it hadn't been so damned cold out. Though I had four layers on, I was still
cold and had to sneak away for half an hour at one point to warm myself inside
the van. I can really be a wuss that way...
Continued...