There are many peak bagging games to be played with the appropriate lists to be finished. They vary from our own DPS, HPS and SPS lists, through the Colorado l4ers, the state high points, etc all the way to the continent high points and the 8000 meter peaks. Most of the lists I have no chance to finish let alone to be one of the first to complete them. So I made up my own game.
After finishing the DPS list, I started climbing other mountains in the deserts of the southwest. After finding many beautiful areas in Nevada, I decided to do all of the named and other major peaks over 11000 feet in that state. If a peak did not have a name on either the USGS topographic maps or the USFS maps, it was considered a major peak only if it was at least one mile distant from or had at least a 500 foot saddle between all others already considered. There turned out to be 58 peaks meeting these standards. They are shown on the accompanying list. The locations of the unnamed peaks are given relative to some existing named landmark.
Over the last decade I have slowly added these peaks to my list. While doing this I noted that many of the peaks had no registers and some even had no summit cairns. This led me to believe that no one else was playing this particular game and that I could be the first to complete this list. (Gordon MacLeod was obviously too busy doing other things and Doug Mantle was doing much more significant things). Last September I think that I became the first person to do this - sort of. It turns out that Snowflake Peak in the Ruby Mountains seems to be beyond my ability, so I had to settle for doing only 57 of them. Even when you make your own rules, sometimes you just can't win.
So I have submitted this list to you desert peak baggers as a new game to play. Many of these peaks are fine mountains and some are only crud heaps, but most all of them are surrounded by beautiful country. The ones that are significant enough to be considered for DPS exploratories leading to list addition are Moriah, King, Currant and Troy. Many of the peaks in the Rubies are good second and third class climbs. All of the others are no greater than second class. For those of you who are fed up with the crowds in the Sierra, these mountains can be explored summer and fall and many would make good spring snow climbs.
The following paragraphs contain short route descriptions and/or comments about all the peaks not on the DPS list. The order is roughly from south to north and from west to east.
Griffith is nothing more than a local high point a short distance off the south loop of the Charleston Peak trail. Trail Peak, an insignificant neighbor to Boundary, is easily reached from Trail Canyon Saddle. Mount Grant is a huge mountain surrounded by the Hawthorne Naval Reservation. It can be done from the west starting at the end of the road in Lapon Canyon. We did not see any "No Trespassing" signs but we probably were.
