McCullough Mountain, Potosi Mountain

7-May-94

By: Patty Kline

Saturday morning at 7:30 am our small group of 4 people met at the Potosi roadhead. Erik Siering substituted as Co-Leader for Bob Sumner, who had work commitments he couldn't get out of. Our group consisted of the leaders, Jim Camp and Peter Doggett. The skies were dark and cloudy. We had lunch on the 8514 foot top with the communications antennas as a backdrop. On the way back we found some interesting limestone caves and a mine shaft that went way in the hillside. People from Vegas were checking it out. Some kids with their dads had been in there 3 hours exploring the various musty, dark shaft paths. Creepy! The front of the mine was covered with graffiti and we proudly posed for pictures. The whole day was about 6 miles round trip and 2900' of gain.

The 4 of us had dinner at a large casino that night in Vegas, getting an all you could eat buffet. Then Erik left our group, so we had just Peter, Jim and me for camp that night and the next day. We went to State Line and drove a few miles behind the Primadonna Casino to sleep just beyond the railroad tracks. It was pretty noisy, even though the glass and metal of our trucks we were in blocked some of the sound. It would have been better to get farther away from the trains. Sunday morning under cold and cloudy skies we drove the long 4x4 drive into McCullough. The hike was through wooded country with 3 miles round trip and 1800 feet of gain. It started to rain on the 7926 foot top as we were having lunch. The washes we drove through coming and going to the peak had a lot of vegetation. So much that Jim cut out as he drove to save the paint job on his immaculate 4 Runner. I don't think he has been truly initiated into the art of desert driving.