Fortification Hill

Lake Mead National Recreation Area


(map link)

The folks at Geocaching.com like to have "challenges" from time to time. Usually, they just assign points to types of caches and if you get enough points, you get a souvenir. (There's a place on your profile to find these. It's not something meaningful.) Sometimes they get a little more intricate, like the one they had running when covid hit, Wonders of the World. In this one, they assigned "wonders" to geocaches randomly. There were two levels. You needed to find one each of the "modern wonders" to get the first souvenir. Then it was on to the "ancient wonders". When covid hit, the deadline became indefinite and then two more levels were added: "natural wonders" and "solar system wonders". I got through the first three levels by ignoring it until I found I had one to find, then making an effort to find that one. It took over a year to get through the third level since I was doing so very little finding of geocaches. I checked where I was on the fourth and last level and found there were 2 to go and a deadline had quietly been added only a few days away. I settled in with the map and found a lot I could stop by and do in some why-am-I-stopping-here? place, then I found a pair that might actually be interesting. The first was at the top of Fortification Hill. It kindly described the route up, which is a trail. OpenStreetMap kindly verified that there's a trail there, right near the end of a 4x4 road that does happen to be the Kingman Wash. The trail itself is only 2 miles long, the road to it 2.7 miles. I could still do it. The road in to that actually recommends a 4x4, but is maintained and I had no problem getting the Scion (without the trailer attached) to the bathroom marking the intersection. I got everything out and set to chugging up the wash, the easy part except that the surface is all energy sucking sand and gravel. There were plenty of tire tracks going up the road, but the only recent tracks were a line of burros (or perhaps horses) making their way up.

00: red hills and dark mesa with vertical edges
Fortification Hill looms looking rather well fortified against any trail approach. The colorful Paint Pots are west (left) of it.

02: gravel pressed into a road
Chugging up the road in the bottom of the wash. It's a very gentle climb.

Travel is only allowed on designated routes, but the sign for the road if far enough along that it is out of sight from the intersection. After exactly a mile, I came to a pair of signs, one designating the local hunting area (no target shooting) and the other designating where it was illegal to have a loaded weapon (definitely no target shooting). Someone had unloaded their weapon in the quickest way possible at the sign. Of course.

03: lots of blue water
Looking back to find Lake Mead has become visible with a little climbing.

04: blue lake and white mountains
Not just Lake Mead, but snowy Mount Charleston and the Spring Mountains are visible.

06: round berries in varying pinks
No blooms, but there were a few desert mistletoe in otherwise bare catsclaw with lots of berries.

I thought I would have to pick out a faint track to find my trail, but there was actually an official sign indicating not just trail, but scenic trail. There are two routes marked on my map, but rocks along the trail strongly suggested I wanted to take the one following the ridge instead of the one up more wash. As this was true, I let them lead me on to the real work in getting up to the top of this "hill".

07: sign and hills and Fortification
A slapstick sign (AKA Carsonite post) to mark the bottom of the trail up Fortification Hill. The ridge trail is visible right over the top of the hill on the right.

08: trail along the backbone of hills
Looking back after climbing a few humps. The trail is visible going directly over the top of one of those humps.

The trail rolls a little, but it really doesn't have much extra elevation gain. A cluster of dark rocks broken from the top marks the start of it getting particularly steep in a fairly direct run to the bottom of the cliffs.

10: white, loose rocks to climb
One last slope to directly climb and wondering what happens at the cliffs.

11: more hills
A new view of colorful hills and peaks on the other side of the ridge.

When I got to the bottom of the cliffs, the trail stopped going up. It turned right although there was a little trail going left. That's the way the survey crew went, according to the reach written up for the benchmark, and there's probably been a few people having a go at it since then. They had a short vertical climb up some crumbling rock.

13: trail at the bottom of dark cliffs
Trail along the bottom of the cliffs.

I came to a spot with a lot of cairns marking the way up and a scramble of a trail trying to go down and around even more rock instead. It was also a vertical climb, but the rock didn't seem to be crumbling. There were a lot of big hand holds, so I went for it, but it was rather unexpected after seeing a sign at the bottom. It was just barely far enough to call class 3, continuous hands and feet. I didn't actually put my poles away for it.

14: dark rocks with lots of hand holds
Time to just climb, but at least there's lots of hand holds and platforms.

After one last bit of steep walking, I was on the top and on easy street once more as far as the trail was concerned. It heads off across the mesa top, dropping a little at first, then climbing to the peak.

15: sparse desert valley
Looking back over the edge after reaching the mesa top of Fortification Hill.

17: more very desert scenery
Looking out over the edge where the surveyors may have come up to see the wash I walked to get to the trail.

18: lots of yucca
The top is a little different biome than the bottom, where there were only two Mojave yucca standing lonely near the trail start.

19: light trail among dark rocks
The trail is easy to follow to the high point goal way out that way.

I found the walk along the top to be extremely pleasant.

21: sloping inward
The interior valley of this mesa looks like it might provide a much easier route.

24: droppy flag at the top of the hill
Arrived at the top of Fortification Hill where a flag flies and Lake Mead stretches out below.

I spent a while enjoying the top where quite a lot, but definitely not all, of Lake Mead stretched out below. It is distinctly white below the high water mark. Yes, I could see my car from there.

25: island, city, snow
An island in the lake that looks like it is always there, faint tall buildings of Las Vegas, and snow topped Spring Mountains.

27: Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam) and the I-11 bridge at maximum zoom and with a lot of color adjustment to account for all the air between.

28: Lake Mead
The Paint Pots and Lake Mead below. The road in is on the left, winding all the way from the interstate.

29: monument from dam building time
There's a benchmark dating back to when the dam was getting built.

Unfortunately, I wasn't yet to the geocache that was the goal of the whole operation. I had to scramble through the rocks and sparse growth another quarter of a mile to get that before heading back the way I'd come. I didn't put my poles away on the way down the cliff either, although I had been expecting I would.

32: trail down
Down the first scramble and the cliff, looking at the big scramble down loose rock. The trail makes small winds down to the cluster of dark rocks in the saddle on the left, edges around the peak there and heads off along the top of the ridge to the right.

I had thought that I would take the wash route down. The trail is rather obvious where it splits and it goes steeply down from there. There is a switchback, but it has been cut enough that it is hard to get across from one part to the other. Once in the wash, there was little trail to follow. Of course, following the wash gets you there. There were a few really big steps down to do that. Although there was no extra elevation, it was a less pleasant route.

33: rocky wash between low walls
Following the wash downward. It's a little more sheltered from wind, but not a great route.

No one had come up the road while I was on the mountain and the prints on top were still just me and the burros. There had been a lot of helicopter traffic, especially in morning and afternoon. It must be a regular canyon for sightseeing tours. There were a bunch of airplanes a bit higher, too.

34: lake and islands
It looks different in the afternoon light.

35: long crescents in the dirt
Just me and the burros of all sizes all day, and I can't actually be sure of the burros.

I tried following the burro trails instead of the road in a couple of the big turns. It was a little shorter, but not any better or easier or faster. I just had to chug down the road again, mostly. It was prettier than expected down in the wide wash. The best bit is still at the top.

*photo album*




©2022 Valerie Norton
Written 29 Mar 2022


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