Castle Peaks

How much time, money and effort are justified in reaching a goal?  It depends on the goal, you say. 

Suppose you’re nearing the end of a month-long stay on the Mojave Desert and all of the hot spots (the really important rocks and cacti you wanted to see) have been visited, photographed, and mostly posted on your website. 

So it was that I might have spent a bit more resources getting to Castle Peaks than it was worth.  But that’s a judgment call.  It depends on how enjoyable a destination is and how much I enjoy the journey.  It also depends on how much I might learn, and on more subtle aspects of being alone doing something that is difficult and undone by almost everyone.  After reading on, I ask your opinions.

Castle Peaks is a cluster of spires at the northeast end of the New York Mountains in Mojave Natioinal Preserve.  It takes an hour from Las Vegas just to get to the end of the paved road.  From here I had only begun.

Most of another hour brings you to the end of a graded dirt road, to where four-wheel- drive is needed.  And still you are not even close to Castle Peaks.

The faithful jeep climbed for another hour into the mountains, without complaining, spinning its tires a little and hesitating only a few times, seemingly happy with the challenge.  All the time, it was showing me some lovely flowers and bushes of the higher elevations.

But the jeep could not go all the way.  I continued with backpack and plenty of water, trudging higher, and finally came to the first good view of Castle Peaks.

Granite of mostly quattz and feldspar

andesite - volcanic rock

The rocks up here are igneous, either intrusions of granite, in which prospectors have searched for gold, or andesites of lavas and volcanoes.

Finally, I stood on a ridge just below the vertical faces of the spires.  Here, I realized that I had driven and climbed as far as I dared go.  From here, it was a long trip home.

Small Towns of Southern Nevada

After each of several hikes in the Mojave National Preserve and nearby wildernesses, I’ve stopped in most of the towns of southern Nevada, and across the line in California.  These are few and small, except of course for Las Vegas.  Here is what I’ve learned, and it won’t take long.

Nipton, California, is a store and a hotel.  It’s on a paved road east of I-15 by the railroad.  You can stay here for $78, but if you require bedding or towels , that’s $7 more; and there is no internet.  The train comes rumbling through several times during the night, but they offer ear plugs on request. 

Goodsprings, Nevada, on Highway 161 west of Jean, is a saloon and a store.  I stopped here for a beer.  It’s a fine old-west saloon with a small museum and a lot of history from the mining time before Las Vegas existed.  

Searchligjt, Nevada, is on Highway 95 south of Henderson.  It has a fine country café and casino, a good stop for a meal.  Sorry, I have no picture.

Bun Boy is gone, sorry to say

Baker, California, on I-15 south of Las Vegas, used to be a fine place to stop at Bun Boy and enjoy a good breakfast and observe the world’s largest thermometer.  The thermometer is still there and appears to keep good temperature, but Bun Boy and the motel are closed.  All that remains is Mad Greek Café and a new Denny’s Restaurant.  Gas is much too expensive here; wait til you get to Las Vegas if you can.  

Primm, Nevada, is a casino town just north of the Nevada state line.  It offers rooms without internet and a buffet that is not bad.

That leaves, not a town, but an enclave of solar expectation, costing more and expecting more that all the above mentioned towns put together.  I saw it best while driving west from Nipton—Ivanpah Solar plant south of Primm.  It opened on February 13, 2014 with a planned gross capacity of 392 megawatts of solat power.  That’s equal to the combined output of three of the 17 turbines at Boulder Dam.  The plant uses  173,500 heliostats, mirrors that focus the sun’s rays on boilers high three towers. It is the world's largest solar power station.

Arizona Hot Springs

Sometime after the morning of creation, some adventurous white rocks rumbled down from newly risen Wilson Ridge.  You remember the Ridge from my mentioning it on October 4, because you pay close attention to all passing comments in all the blogs and posts you read.  I remembered my distant view of Wilson Ridge after reading that the strange white rocks I saw today came from there.  They traveled some thirty miles and probably did it rather quickly, tumbling down a desert gorge.  They made a few lazy turns with each 100-year storm, and maybe traveled a mile in each 1,000-year gully-washer.  Isn’t it great to be jolted into remembrance from so long ago by something that happens today?  But first, an introduction.

I drove in morning darkness to Boulder Dam, crossed the Colorado River on the new bridge built in 2010.  Entering Arizona, and driving south on Highway 93 to the Arizona Hot Springs trailhead, I arrived with sun’s first glow.  And a glorious sunrise it was.

Calling it a trailhead implies there is a trail.  But I soon learned that it’s just the way a few people and wild burros have traveled.  I headed down White Rock Wash which would join the Colorado River.  This is low elevation desert below Boulder Dam, so vegetation is sparse and in the summer it can get very hot.  Today, in the low nineties and partly shaded within the canyon, it was pleasant. 

And there I saw them—the bright white rocks, so out-of-place with dark volcanic rock all around.  Strangers in a foreign land, they are no longer sharply broken as when they fell from Wilson ridge so long ago, but rounded from miles of tumbling and thumping with the push and splash of turbulent water.

Along the canyon wall, a conglomerate having many kinds of little rocks, cemented into the larger rock wall, and polished smooth by flowing water, like a terrazzo floor.  The little rocks are river stones from an older stream.

And I saw conglomerate rocks in the making, along the banks of White Rock Wash.  The cementing material, still soft enough to chip away with my walking stick, but in just a few thousand years, this might be another terrazzo floor.  Notice the little piece of desert above the conglomerate, the way a desert often looks when we don’t see underneith it. 

Further down the Canyon, the rocks are reddish brown.  They look somewhat like conglomerates, but show signs of another kind of flow.  Molten lava rushed along here once, a  pyroclastic flow, where many rocks and boulders were caught up in a matrix of hot, fast moving death, the kind that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD.

An enormous boulder that fell from the high cliffs above; it’s enough to make you stop and think for a minute.

The canyon deepens as I approach the Colorado River, with a fringe of jagged volcanic ramparts looking down.

And then around a bend in White Rock Wash, the great river of the west—the Colorado—with its guardian hound, collecting tolls, as on the Rhine.

I walked a rocky “use trail” downstream along its bank, looking for another gulch that should enter the river on my side.  (A use trail is just where people and animals have traveled.  It often splits, leaving a quandary as to which way to go.)  I scrambled along the steep banks of the Colorado looking for an entering watercourse which should be Hot Spring Canyon.

I came to a gulch with a small flow of water entering the Colorado.  On testing its temperature with my hand, I knew it flowed from a hot spring.

Turning into the canyon, I climbed up a few little waterfalls, as the water kept getting hotter.  In the narrow windless canyon, it was like walking in a sauna.

And then a deep clear pool of hot water, reminder of the earth’s hot interior that formed the pyroclastic flow.  A world still hot and waiting for the signal to strike again.

From here I had two choices for getting back to the car.  I could go back the way I came.  Or I could use the map, which indicated a fair overland route continuing up Hot Spring Canyon, then over a ridge and back into White Rock Wash near the trailhead.  I always hesitate going back via an unproven route, but this one seemed doable, and I had enough daylight to retreat if necessary.  I suppose if some major problem has arisen, I would have told you.  Who knows?

Keith Brantley

I returned in time to shower before driving to Keith Brantley’s monthly Poet’s Corner at West Las Vegas Arts Center to read a few things about wilderness walks and to ask if anyone knows where Mt. Charleston is.  One person did, but she had not been there.

You can enlarge any picture.  Just click on it.  Then click the “back” button to return to where you were.

Another try for Piute Gorge

I feel privileged to be free enough from the cares of life, to allow three weeks of soirées to desert places.  And even more privileged, after failing an anticipated venture, to have the time to try again.  You may remember this picture from October 8, where I wanted to get into Piute Gorge, but turned back because I was afraid the falling rain might make the creek-crossings impassible on return.

A book describing places to visit in the Mojave National Preserve describes Piute Gorge as having the “only year-round stream in the East Mojave Desert,” and “a spectacular mile-long gorge for the geologist.”  The book advises that it is not easy to get to the trailhead for Piute Gorge, “a four-wheel-drive vehicle is necessary,” and the rough road is ten miles long.  It further says that from the trailhead, there is a “use trail” which is often hard to find, and some scrambling is required.  A website shows these pictures, from someone who made it into the gorge. With that enticement, and time on my hands, how could I not make a second attempt. 

I drove from Las Vegas to Searchlight, Nevada, crossed the line into California, and again found the unmarked dirt road 5.5 miles south of the border.  I won’t tell you again about the deep sand and explain that four-wheel-drive truly is needed.

 I drove eight miles in an hour-and-a-half and made it to within two miles of the trailhead.  There, I looked at a steep rocky jeep trail proceeding into the mountains.  This is the way roads were before they were graded, graveled and even paved.  I had made it close to the trailhead and could make it all the way, even if I had to walk.  I had done it!  These were my growing thoughts as I parked the jeep in the hot sunbaked hills west of Highway 95. 

I can’t say that driving a jeep on roads like this is fun.  Some people think it is, but for me it’s just a necessity for wilderness experience.  I decided that walking would be just as fast and might avoid damaging my almost-new jeep.  And nice walk it was.  I was finally and thrillingly isolated from all humanity and fully on my own.  

The trail started out along a hillside overlooking Piute gorge.  I didn’t see the promised running water, but the green cottonwoods in these pictures are sure indicators of plentiful water.

The trail petered out after a mile, and I spent an hour looking for it.  Surely it would drop into the gorge, so I scrambled down a little dry-wash into the Piute Gorge, hoping to find the trail in the bottom.  A small trickle of water was flowing among the trees, just as the book said.  But the underbrush was so thick I could not proceed upstream.  So I climbed back up the side to look again for the trail.  

I proceeded parallel to the gorge, along the mountainside, looking for a trail.  Soon the slope became too steep to continue.  I climbed higher, looking for a passable route, but found none. I sat down to think.  My thinking seemed all grainy and sluggish from hard walking and from having slipped on the loose rubble a few times.  I was not injured, but considered the consequences if I were.  How frail the human body is against all that is sharp and hard.  If there was a trail into the gorge, I could not find it.  If I had hoped to prove my independence, I had done just the opposite.  These pictures are from the end of my ability go further.  I looked into Piute Gorge from far above, but could not find a way in. 

Having made my way bumpily, into this remote place, I made it bumpily back out.  I drove back to Searchlight and bought a breakfast of poached eggs and toast, a celebration of being alive, and having tried.

Back at the motel, a sunset outlining peaks.