Where:  Nevada north of Las Vegas

Who:  Matthew Hengst, Rod Kieffer, Anne Kircher, Laurent Hoffman, Phil Bates

Pictures:  Matt's Flickr

GPS Track:  Track
We spent the night west of Alamo at our trail head for East Pahranagat after the previous day stroll up two relatively minor range high points. Today it was time to head south and climb the peaks that had originally brought us out this way called Cathedral and a rather striking unnamed neighboring bump.

Where:  Alamo, Nevada

Who:  Matthew Hengst, Rod Kieffer, Anne Kircher, Laurent Hoffman, Phil Bates, Ron Campbell

Pictures:  Matt's Flickr

GPS Track:  (Hyko)  (E Pahranagat)

This particular trip came about when Rod Kieffer approached me to a Sierra Club M restricted trip during desert season.  At this point I've pretty much done all of the 3rd+ class peaks on the Desert Peak Section list so I went off looking for interesting options.

And so was born the Hyko, East Pahranagat, Cathedral, and Unnamed Bump Trip or as Ron Campbell refered to it the Nevada Speed Bump Trip.

Granted they were a bit beyond our usual stomping grounds with the Hyko trailhead being about 390 miles from Orange County.  Yet Rod and I found ourselves with a respectable 4 participants willing to make the long haul Friday night.

Where:  Mojave National Preserve, CA

Who:  Matthew Hengst, Anne Kircher, Jeff Atijera

Pictures:  Matt's Flickr

GPS Track:  Matt's Track

Though the Sierra is still largely accessible I've been itching to get out to the desert for a while now and have been working on a number off list trip ideas.  

Castle Peaks is an interesting set of bumps out in eastern Mojave that anyone climbing in the area has probably noticed from a distance more than once.  While looking for interesting non DPS-list peaks to do I came across an extremely extensive writeup done by cp0915 over on SummitPost http://www.summitpost.org/castle-peaks-mojave/487688

3rd, 4th and 5th class bumps in the middle of nowhere best described as “impressive crud heap”?  Sold!

Pictures:  Flickr

GPS Track:  Track

After spending all day Saturday exploring nearby Castle Peaks we needed something shorter for Sunday since we had to get Anne back to Orange County in time to catch a flight back to the Bay Area.  So I scaled back some larger ideas I had and went scrounging around for something suitably short, obscure, and at least somewhat interesting to round out the weekend.

Teutonia pretty much defines obscure, has an interesting name, and supposedly had some fun 3rd+ class scrambling.  That'll work!

This weekend was originally planned as a quick three day Sierra climb to grab Brewer, North Guard, and South Guard over Sphinx Col until during the Steve Eckert proposed that we do a quick Shasta trip as a warm-up for the planned July climb of Mt Olympus.

Shasta is one of the 15 14,000+ ft peaks in California and therefore a very popular climb for the altitude hungry crowd.  I’d been invited to go before but always via the popular southern route called Avalanche Gulch and I was somewhat reluctant to burn two whole days getting to / from Shasta that could be better spent mucking about in the Sierra as far from any crowds as possible.

Steve however proposed coming in from the east and climbing the Hotlum-Wintun Ridge which I'd never heard of which always has appeal.  As an added bonus we’d only take 3 days if I could fly in to San Francisco and drive the rest of the way with him.

And it is one hell of a mountain from a distance.