22 April 1990
Six Desert Survivors from the absolute last, final, ultimate Argus Peak Barbecue and Poetry Contest were rarin' to get Maturango the next day, so I was elected (by default) leader of this creative act of trespassing deep into the mysterious heart of the Argus Range.
Everything worked perfectly. No one in the small, congenial group appeared to be too hung over to function well on the climb. The weather, which was a bit warm around the edges on Argus, was perfect-even chilly on the summit. No Naval counter-espionage squads appeared to "interdict" our "mission".
We took the standard route up Bendire Canyon, a lovely ramble through glorious, contorted Great Basin geology. Luckily, we were well-supplied with 4WD trucks, so we had no serious problem driving everyone to the waterfall at roads end. The climb proceeded without incident except for some tedious detours around some monster willow clumps which totally choke off the floor of the Bendire Canyon in several places. We found one error in the "Road and Peak Guide: (p. 1.13) which should be corrected; the Guide reads, "Either turn left at about 7320' at a duck to scramble up a side canyon to the summit.. ." We had no trouble finding this megaduck at the indicated elevation in Bendire Canyon, but the indicated side canyon looked to be a ghastly tangle of brush. We took instead the gentle, direct ridge immediately north of the mouth of the side canyon, which led with a minimum of problems to the summit region of the peak. We all think the ridge instead of the canyon should be specified in the revised edition of the Guide.
| Dubois, Montgomery and Boundary July 7,1990 | Ron Bartell John McCully |
These were the last peaks that Ron needed until his double DPS list finisher over Memorial day. We started at the Middle creek trailhead described in the Peaks guide at 5 AM, arriving uneventfully at the top of Dubois five hours later. On a previous climb Ron had noticed register entries by backpackers running the length of the White mountains, and had inferred that the saddle between Dubois and Montgomery would be Class II. This proved to be the case, easy routes existing around all of the ridge pinnacles.
The remains of an aquamarine colored airplane were scattered down the eastern slope from the saddle.
We got to Montgomery at 2 PM, Boundary at 3 PM and the Trail Creek roadhead for these two peaks (also described in the Peaks Guide) by 5:30, 12 1/2 hours after we started. The original plan called for Wendy Ruess, Jay Holshuh, Sue Leverton and Bill Faulkner to also do Dubois from Middle Creek and then return to their cars. Wendy would then drive over to the Trail Creek trailhead to pick Ron and I up, and after droping Ron off at his car (about 6 miles away) we would get home at a semi-reasonable hour. I had forgotten the often learned lesson of always leaving a car at the exit trailhead. We were expecting Wendy to show up around 7 PM and by 8 PM we were unsuccessfully trying to talk some car campers into driving us to Ron's car. We wound up walking along the road by moonlight, getting to Ron's car about 9:30. Fearing the worst we drove the half hour up the Middle Creek road. There were no cars at the Middle Creek trailhead, so we at least knew that everybody was off the mountain. At 10:30 PM we got back to where Ron's