Moapa Peak

19-Oct-85

By: Fred Camphausen

Three of us climbed Moapa Peak on Saturday. Steve and Debbie Smith drove separately so they could check out other desert roadheads on Sunday, and I spent just the one day in the area.

We met at Glendale where there is a pretty good cafe, bar, and mini-mart. This is the closest known civilization to the exit for Moapa, which is Exit 100, Carp & Elgin, about 55 miles east of Las Vegas on I-15. The graded dirt road going north of + the exit is taken for about a mile until a less traveled road forks to the right. This road goes f or miles in the general direction of the mountain, and eventually passes behind a long reef of rock to where it makes sense to stop and park.

The hike involves a scramble over a limestone band of rock, with ducks visible, a traverse to the right, and a short knife-edge ridge to the summit. Spoken in one sentence, but the ascent took a few hours. The register can was full of water and the book needed drying out. A few people had last been there in May.

We enjoyed a beautiful warm day, and the hike back took as much time as the ascent, owing to a new route down which didn't help us much, and which proved once again that you can't predict what you can't see if you're on a limestone mountain.