Granite Peaks West

Barstow BLM

San Bernardino National Forest

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I managed to drive up with less beating on my car than the day before when I was only seeing if I could. The road has plenty of wide spots and I took one just before an intersection. I'm going down the road at the intersection and expect it to be worse. With a higher car, I could probably get a mile closer. With 4WD, I could get two miles closer. To further slow down my start, I had to make some pancake mix before I could turn it into breakfast. It's no use fretting about such things. I get moving along. The side road is narrower, but generally not so rough except for a couple nasty dips.

The road is not so bad here and has plenty of parking on the weed covered side. Round Mountain on the right has a few little mines that weren't noticeable in comparison to the huge mass of tailings on the left.

Somewhere out there is another road that I also considered for my approach, but could not determine if it really still exists while this one looked like I might be able to drive it.

There is a camp site where another road heads off through a gate in the cattle range fence. It is just before the road turns and drops to Arrastre Creek and gets particularly rough. I picked a gully just past the end of the road to start climbing, so keep on going past some more mines to that end.

Arrastre Creek flows through here when it flows. It looks like sometimes it really flows.

Just a little bit of north slope makes for much different vegetation. There could be more water, too, as the area with all the tailings above is labeled Terrace Springs.

The pencil cholla in the area have a furry look to half their ends. Are they supposed to get like this? It looks like some infection that has changed the growth of the thorns.

The canyon narrows a bit before the road ends.

It is concerning that the canyon changes character as the road comes to an end. It seems to be a harder rock and everything is steeper. Many of the gullies do not look attractive for a climb. I'm a little concerned but I picked the one I did for some better spaced contours. I think. I pass right by it because that one doesn't even come down to the valley floor before emptying itself. I can see it from the side, but not from below. The next one twists so much it might be a good one. I'm so close to a dam marked on the map that I go ahead and continue up the canyon to see what that means. Just as I'm thinking there might actually be water here, there is.

This will be the tributary canyon to climb to the ridge.

It's just a little concrete dam in the canyon. The reservoir has been silted in for a long time. Mining or flood control built it? Probably mining.

So I head back and up the little tributary with the twisting canyon. It seems to have an animal trail up it. That's promising that it might go somewhere without getting too difficult. It goes around the short waterfalls. It doesn't go around the tall waterfall. There's no way around the tall waterfall. Well, maybe the right hand side for the ridge. That seems to have trail. Except the ridge, hard won, is a jagged collection of big rocks that makes the waterfall look like an easy climb. I have just wasted a whole lot of time and I don't have it to waste. I head down off the ridge slowly, then more easily back along the trail skirting the little waterfalls.

That looks a little bit too much like something I have no business on by myself. How many more are there? I've barely started.

Those first ridges looked doable all the way up. A lot of the early gullies did too although most had some kind of waterfall spot. It wasn't as likely to be a dead end as here in these rocks. It's a mile all the way back out to those. I don't have enough time to get the peak if I do that. I really didn't have the time to pick so wrong on how to achieve the ridge above here. So now what? I decide I will check out Horsethief Flat as some sort of salvage for the day. There was a road leading that way in what can only be described as the hard way, but I have plenty of time for that sort of thing now.

Actually, there might be something not so far back that is perfectly simple to go up.

The obviously illegal road jumps down from the side shortly before the road ends and follows a short gully for a little way before turning to climb directly up a steep hill. I look up at it and wonder about my footing. Some fool come up to it in a truck recently and didn't stop trying until all four wheels dug themselves in. That isn't even where it's steepest. The rocks stick out where it is steepest. People must have come down this only. Maybe the rocks hit the underside and help slow them down when they most need it. From that perspective, it takes a sharp turn at the very bottom to get into the gully and avoid a boulder. I wonder how the boulder doesn't have some wrecked and abandoned vehicle plastered across it or at least a little bruising from such that got hauled away. I skip the spot where it drops faster than it changes position. (That is, the section less than 45° from normal.) The footing is more solid on the ridge beside. Then up along the ridge past some more vicious rocks under milder steeps. It climbs to a bump at the side of Horsethief Flat, twice as far as needed to get to the flat. Like I said, the hard way.

Horsethief Flat below. The road coming down to it on the other side is legal. For more sensible hiking to it from where I was, one would go back one more drainage and go up that very nice slope on the right.

From the top, I can see how poor the climb is out of the harder rock sections of the canyon, but also that there are other routes and the main ridge line looks super easy. In fact, there's a couple candidates going up from the flat. I could at least explore one going up and another nearer the camp site at the mouth of the canyon coming down. First, down into the flat.

That ridge line over there certainly looks easy enough once one gets up to it.

And that's the way up. I like the nearer one best.

The canyon above the dam. There might have been a way past the dam, I didn't look carefully. The fill behind it is rather choked with vegetation and also presents an obstacle.

I get so into trying out these routes to the ridge top in service to some future attempt at the peak that I even neglect to check out what the structure marked on the map at the south end of the flat might be. Getting through the growth in the creek itself takes a bit of crawling. There's a lot of it, but a lot is tree. There's a really nice animal trail up the steep edge to the ridge I chose this time and more of it wherever it gets a little bit steep or narrowing. Most the time, there's plenty of room to roam wherever. This is how the hike was planned. A path free walk in the park with a very distinct upward tilt.

This park does have a few cactus gardens where one must walk carefully due to the lack of paths.

Looking back to Horsethief Flat. The extra climb I did is the little mound at the bottom and right of the ridge. The mine with all the tailings is on the extreme right of the next bump. The central peak in back is Silver Peak.

A very long path free walk in the park with a rather distinct upward tilt. There are quite a lot of feet to gain. I started around 4378 feet and the peak goal is 7527 feet. Horsethief Flat is around 5000 feet, so there were still 2500 feet to go from there. I finally arrive at the ridge I meant to be coming up at a small flat with tiny peaks in it. It's a bit of a theme up here. It is only 400 feet and half a mile, give or take, to the west peak. Surely I can get that.

Just a little bit further to get the peak after all. Sort of. Maybe it's the one behind that.

The other side of the ridge. More ridges and desert flats.

I go for it. I even very nearly get there without kicking a cactus. Instead, I sit less than twenty feet below the top yanking at a broken off thorn from a cactus that took me a moment to locate even after I experienced the pain it could dispense. Then I head to the top, which takes a little bit of climbing care for the very last bit.

Hum. Granite. On the west one of Granite Peaks. How novel. Just that much to go.

The rocky outcrop makes a good place to take in the views above the short vegetation. I'm tempted to try for the "flat" mile between here and the high point in the east. I hang out a while. The rocks have been baking in the sun all day and are very comfortable for a bit of lounging. I make it just a little bit too long so that there isn't enough time even for a really fast trip over. I'm not worried about most of it, but I'll want some light for a couple spots along the ridge. I'd really like to be down to the road before dark. I'm still determined to take that second route down, so there is room for surprises.

Mount San Gorgonio should be up here somewhere, but this snowy mountain has trees so that's not it.

Granite Peaks, looking from west to east. The high point, by 30 feet, is the far eastern one about a mile away.

The view back down the ridge. Not much of it to see. Past where it is, there is that great mass of tailings at Terrace Springs and then the tiny bump of Round Mountain near the car. Old Woman is on the bump to the other side of the ridge, out in the flats.

Having suitably discouraged myself from making a run for the final peak, I head back down, this time missing the cactus. This first spot for my worry turns out to be nothing. An easy trek down a grassy slope. This was once a fuel break. I noticed the very old cuts on some juniper with the misfortune to grow too close to the top of the ridge first, then there's the triangle of a marker. It would be reasonable to put fuel breaks on easier ridges, but that doesn't always seem to be the case. If a bulldozer came up here, it would certainly become easier. It doesn't really look like one has.

A marker for the old fuel break.

This ridge coming up from a road off the road to Rattlesnake Springs that starts near Old Woman Springs Ranch was my first thought for a route.

I detour slightly on one spot where the ridge splits to check out another route. I had thought I'd come up past Old Woman Springs Ranch and beside Arrastre Creek except that I would probably have to walk everything from the ranch on. If I had, I'd have made the same ridge at this spot. It is marked with a cairn. There are a few along the way. They all have an old and settled look to them, but then well stacked cairns can get that quickly. I don't go far. I need all the sunlight I have to help direct me down the ridge that gets me to the car.

My route is this way, past the pinon and Joshua trees, generally toward Old Woman.

There are some great trees along here.

I'm not sure where the cairn builders choose for their climb up to the gentler portion of the ridge. I pick one aiming to get down to the road just after it crosses the creek. I remember that one looked nice enough as did most past it. It's the ones in the middle that are nasty. I don't want to have the slightest chance of hitting one of those. It gets very steep, but the soft, crumbled rocks tend to move to cradle my feet. Yeah, I'll call it that. It slides, but it stops, too. It's a little too dark to see what I have chosen and compare it to those lines around me. I just commit and go and try not to kick another cactus.

That ridge above really is quite gentle.

One cairn builder appears to have gone this way. Steeper with more cactus.

One last look to Horsethief Flat. The road I followed up is clearly visible on the ridge in the middle. Another line below it to the left that looks like a road is actually a stripe of light rock. The reasonable way up with the large wash to the right and climb the hill.

I'm down to the flat and zooming as I relax a little and then stop one step short of a tall pencil cholla. There was just enough light to see it. Five minutes later and I might have been in a world of pain. So close, but far enough. There is an empty trough for cattle to my left and beyond it a little spur I had wondered about. Now I know where it goes. I am back to the road and it is pretty near dark. It'll be plenty easy to get to the car now. The turning around and driving out isn't so bad either. I hear the Hundred Peaks Section is in need of alternative routes up these peaks. I hope they appreciate my efforts and expect they can get the rest of the way to the east peak. I'm a little suspicious they might already know the whole route since someone has left a cairn or two. Maybe the previous generation did.




©2019,2020 Valerie Norton
Written 22 Jan 2020