Eagle Mountains Highpoint

Eagle Mountains Highpoint 3806′
Desert Peak Section
Total Time: 3:00
Distance: 3.6 miles
Elevation Gain: 1800′
Crux: Class 3
Trailhead: Highway 127, no services

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Continued….

I left Tecopa Hot Springs before sunrise with two marquee desert summits planned that day- a morning ascent of Eagle Mountains Highpoint followed by Pyramid Peak in the afternoon. They were probably the two summits I was most looking forward to on the trip. Although Eagle Mountains Highpoint is one of the smaller summits on the Desert Peak Section list, it is one of the few in the area with decent scrambling. Although the sun was up by the time I reached the dirt roads to the west side of the peak, it would stay hidden all morning until reaching the summit ridgeline.

I set off across the barren desert, and was immediately stopped by the Amargosa River. This was completely unexpected.

Although designated a ‘Wild and Scenic River,’ it’s actually completely dry the majority of the time. Despite reading a number of trip reports, I hadn’t found a single one that mentioned a water crossing. Yet here I was, face to face with not just a wash with some slow moving water, but a solid, murky river of unknown depth. I tossed in a large rock to gauge the depth; a futile exercise since it immediately disappeared into the sandy water. The puddles next to the river were frozen solid and my car had read 35 degrees when I started out. But if I wanted to climb the mountain, I knew what I had to do. Taking off my shoes, I cringed as I slowly stepped into the frigid river. The only upside was the sandy bottom with minimal rocks to stub my toes, although they were quickly numb from the icy water. The water came nearly to my knees at the center of the wash, and hurried to get my socks back on and moving again once back on dry land. The unexpected river ford woke me up better than the morning cup of coffee, and I hiked quickly across the desert to try and warm back up.

The route cuts steeply up a central drainage on the western slopes before following the summit ridgeline, skirting a series of dry waterfalls on slopes and ledges to the left. I found the use trail to bypass the falls easily enough as it switched up steep scree slopes.

Once above the first fall, I made little effort to stick with the use trail, finding it to be mostly loose rock with much more solid footing in the water course. Where the slopes seemed to end at some cliff bands, a cairn marked a traverse into the main drainage to the right, and I followed the slopes up the ridgeline running directly north off the summit.

I had thought the scrambling started at the ridgeline, but found the use trail continued just off the ridgeline proper, mostly staying below the crest of the ridgeline to the west. I followed as it traversed around a subsidiary northwestern ridgeline to the actual start of the scrambling, beginning up a series of class 3 steps to bring me back up to the ridgeline.

The scrambling was actually quite good, solid third class on surprisingly solid rock for this part of the desert. About 200′ of third class took me directly to the summit, taking a bit over 1.5 hours to reach the top. It wasn’t great timing considering the length of the route, but I burned a good amount of time on the river crossing. I signed into the summit register, a relatively popular peak given the easy access and fun summit route, although the older register still dating back to the 1980s. The views were best to the west with the snow covered summits of Death Valley. To the northwest was Pyramid Peak, looking to have just enough snow to make things interesting that afternoon.

It was a bit too cold and windy to linger long, and I headed back down the way I came, needing to face-in downclimb some of the steeper bits of class 3. It was cruiser once back on the use trail getting back to the steep slopes above the dry falls.

I again utilized the more solid rock in the drainage over the loose scree on the use trail, getting back down to the desert floor quickly. I had now been mentally prepared for the river recrossing, and found a spot slightly further upstream that had a bit more solid footing on the river banks. I toweled my feet off on the far side and hopped in the car, heading north to Pyramid Peak.