Clark Mountains, Hart Mountain, Kingston Peak, Potosi Mountain

December 1957

By: Bob Bear

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Thanks to Trudie Hunt, I have the following account of this trip.

The Hunts, Bob Boyd, and John Robinson left Christmas day to climb in the Las Vegas area.

Thursday we climbed Clark Mountain. Clark is a short steep climb with magnificent views to Baldy, San Jacinto, San Gorgonio, Charleston, Providence, and Telescope. Friday we attempted to find the Auto Club marked road from Searchlight, Nevada, to the New York Mtns., but washouts prevented our getting through. Instead we climbed rocky Hart Mtn. (climbed by DPS in '51) which has hundreds of geodes at its base. Saturday we met another carload (Bud Bingham, Chuck Miller, Don Clarke, and Charlotte Parsons) below Summit Pass to climb Kingston Peak, a dominating mountain range northwest of Clark Mtn. This proved a strenuous seven hour climb, for the peak lies far from the ridge reached by the climb out of the canyon, and is reached via a rocky up-and-down ridge-strictly class 2 unless one wants to climb directly up the cliffs.

Sunday we climbed Potosi Peak in Nevada, starting at the wrong edge of the ridge, for we had no contour map--only an Auto Club map. Potosi is a spectacular mountain with great bands of cliffs which make route-finding interesting. The view to snow-covered Mt. Charleston, over a desert area marked by reddish cliffs such as one finds at Zion, was quite a surprise. We descended the mountain in two groups. One was directly down two canyons, which would make an ideal route except for the presence, of icy snow at this time of year, and the other was by chutes and narrow snowy ledges which seems to have nothing to recommend it. We all hope others will be encouraged to climb these mountains which have fine views and good strenuous climbing."

Potosi and/or Kingston will very likely be scheduled next fall.


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