That night, most of us took advantage of not having to rough it and stayed at one of the hotel casinos in Mesquite - room and meal rates are sure reasonable. Next day, the climb of virgin Peak vent fine and everyone was down by mid-afternoon. Bob Greenawalt joined the group - having done list peak McCullough on Saturday - and everyone made the summit of Virgin following the standard DPS approach from the road on the southeast side.
The approach and climb of Mormon Peak from the west makes a great trip and excellent desert peak climb. A good candidate for the peak list, the only drawback may be the difficulty of reaching the roadhead. The way we were trying to drive in is easy 4-WD but definitely requires 4-WD while going up a wash for several miles. There may be another and better route in from the north. Campy and I plan on pre-checking the roads into the area next spring and will reschedule another attempt of Mormon Peak for next fall, probably coupled with Moapa and Virgin over a 3 day weekend.
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PLEASANT/WAUCOBA
--NOV 2,3 1991 Scot Jamison & Larry Tidball |
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This trip was originally scheduled as Waucoba/Nelson for this weekend. The ranger in Bishop claimed to have seen lots of snow on Waucoba on the Tuesday before his hike, so I canceled Waucoba and changed the meeting place to the Lone Pine Visitor's Center at 7am Saturday. Eight people showed up, so the plan was to do Pleasant and Nelson Saturday, camp at Saline Hot Springs, and possibly get over to Porter on Sunday. We headed up the Cerro Gordo road from Keeler, and Keith Martin's Cherokee decided it wasn't into the climb. It stopped about 1/2 mile from the mine, and its battery went from passive to obnoxious. We waited nearly 45 minutes for it to stop hissing and boiling before we finally disconnected and abandoned it to go climb Pleasant, which truly was aptly named. The caretaker in Cerro Gordo was very cordial, showed us his museum while we signed his waiver, and told us where to park. We took the road to the saddle, then followed the ridge to Pleasant. The snow-covered Sierra was right there! Olancha was so huge-looking that it finally justified itself to me as an Emblem Peak for the SPS. We could also see Mt Humphreys and beyond. The snow level on November 2 was about 9,000'.
We got back to Keith's car, and it had not healed itself, so we left it and phoned a tow-truck from Keeler. "Nada" was the answer I got when I asked a pretty Keeler resident what she did there--and she had been doing that for over six years!
It was past 2pm, so we bailed on Nelson, and Larry took the group to Saline Hot Springs. Paula Peterson and I dropped Keith off in Lone Pine after helping arrange for his tow truck, and he caught a bus for LA. We arrived at the springs around 6pm, making a big hit with all the various naked groups gathered around each pool. We were using Paula's "Big Max" spotlight in an attempt to find our group. Funny how those 4WD vehicles all look the same at night! A group waving their arms and yelling for us to kill the light turned out to be ours, so we alighted. Perfect timing, as happy hour was just being served when we pulled up. The hot springs were