| Spectre, Granite #2 | Nov 4-5, 1989 | Bill T
Russell Karen Leonard |
We met at the spot 3-1/2 mi south of hwy 62 that is identified in the peak guide. The "granite slab" at this spot is about 10 ft square and hard to see in the dark. The road forks here. One fork for 4wdr only goes into and up the wash. The other fork, which is ok for cars, stays on the hard ground and goes another 1/2 mi to a good camping spot. The access road was quite sandy for the first 100' from the highway but this soft area could be bypassed. There were two other sandy stretches on the access road that might give trouble to some small cars.
Bill Tryon, David Werner, Pat Russell and I had a good hike to Spectre via the route shown in the peak guide. It took us 3-1/4 hours to reach the summit. The 7-1/2' topo for this peak, Cadiz Valley SW, shows the highest contour line on Spectre as 1300m. This is wrong. Spectre is the high point of the Coxcomb Mths and is about 80' (25m) higher than the nearby benchmark "Aqua" with elev 1346.5m. Therefore Spectre is about 1370m which means that the top six or seven contour lines are missing from the map. I shall tell the USGS of this unusual error.
After Spectre, we went over to nearby "Dyadic" (see note 4.9 of the Peak List) which David and I climbed by a hard 3rd class route. We camped 1/2 mi from the hwy where we were joined for a pleasant evening by Karen Leonard and Dale Van Dalsem.
On Sunday, we climbed Granite #2. We drove to Palen Pass Road where we were joined by Bill Faulkner. Using Dale's and Bill's 4wdrs we went east on the road; it had some sandy spots that might have stopped passenger cars. We went to the junction at 769539 shown on the 7-1/2' topo, Palen Pass but not on the old 15' topo. From here we went north on the faint track and parked at its end at 770559. On the 15' map this track goes from the turn at the east edge of Sec 16 to about the NE corner of sec 19. It is probably a better route than the one shown in the peak guide.
We climbed Granite via the ridge that borders the main gulch on the west and goes over Pt 996. We descended the main gulley. Both routes are fine; we enjoyed the contrast. Our round trip time was 7-1/4 hours including 1/2 hour for lunch.
It was a good outing with fine weather and splendid
people.| STEWART & PAHRUMP | January 20-21, 1990 | Hartunian/Kline |
The Wednesday evening news showed the pass between Baker and Las Vegas closed down from a snow storm. When people called on Thursday, I was tempted to cancel. But desert mountains are often dry when other areas are wet, so with fingers crossed that wind and rain would stay away, 10 of us drove to Shoshone on Friday evening. It turned out to be one of the finest weekends ever!
We had experienced fo1ks like George Toby, Graham Breakwell, Vic Henney and Sue Wyman showing off their climbing and hot tub skills to Ron Grau and Evelyn Chadwell, while Bob Beach, Dick Farrar and Patty Kline raced for who could undress quickest at Tecopa.
We had scouted both climbs over Thanksgiving so route finding was not supposed to be a problem (Surprise!). Patty was recouping from the flu and saved her energies for Pahrump while 9 of us climbed Stewart on Saturday following Randy Bernard's peak guide.
A comfortable start can be made by eating breakfast the the Miner's Cafe in Tecopa where prices are low and service is fast - a much better choice than the restaurant in Shoshone.