Stewart Point 5266′
Desert Peak Section
Total Time: 4:00
Distance: 7.2 miles
Elevation Gain: 3400′
Crux: Class 2
Trailhead: Highway 178, no services
It was a short drive a bit further up Route 178 to the start of the climb for Stewart Point, the highest mountain in the Resting Springs Range, CA P2K and second DPS summit for the day. I could find no obvious dirt roads to pull off on to, so I simply parked my car on the shoulder at the pass and set off cross country to the north. The route finding on Stewart Point would be a bit trickier than Pahrump Point that morning, and since I still had a sliver of hope that I would have time for the Eagle Mountains Highpoint that afternoon, I used my downloaded GPS track a decent amount on the ascent. Leaving the car, I aimed for a shallow notch in the ridgeline, going up an over and into a broad wash.
I followed this very briefly before continuing north, following a drainage up and over another notch and dropping again into a different wash and drainage. This wash trended north-south, and I followed this and a series of cairns to a point where the drainage turns sharply to the west and narrowed considerably- not quite a slot canyon but certainly somewhere you would not want to get caught in a rainstorm.
There was actually a series of dry waterfalls in the tighter canyon, most of them easily scrambled past, although several of the larger ones with cairned use trails bypassing them on ledges to one side or the other.
The last dry fall was probably the largest of them all, a good 20′ drop with no obvious way around. But a cairned use trail headed up the slopes to the left, cutting off a sharp bend in the water course before dropping back down. Once above the series of dry falls, I only followed the drainage for roughly another 100 yards before heading up a loose scree slope, the summit now directly above.
I tried to find pockets of solid rock where I could, but the lower reaches were piles of loose volcanic rock, and any chance I had of tagging Eagle Mountains Highpoint before sunset was quickly vanishing. There was a rib of more solid rock about 1/3 of the way up, and I was able to scramble and utilize more solid footing. This continued almost all the way to the summit, taking about 2 hours from the start. Not bad, but not fast enough to have time for Eagle Mountains later. Knowing this, I took a long break at the top, enjoying views of the Nopah Range and Pahrump Point from earlier that day to the south, Mount Charleston to the east and Death Valley to the west.
After a quick snack, I dropped down the ridgeline, this time using the scree to boot ski down as best as I could, although still not loose enough to have much consistent progress. Dropping into the washes, I quickly lost the sun and the temperatures dropped quickly.
I had been planning to car camp, but it looked as if the overnight low would be in the 20s, and I was quickly not looking forward to spending the evening hanging out in my cold car. As I followed my track over the notches and back to the highway, I used what little reception I had to look up rooms at nearby Tecopa Hot Springs. Turns out, there were plenty of cheap midweek cabins available. It would be a nice pick me up for falling short on snagging three DPS summits that day. I reached the car at about 4:30 PM, the summit taking about 4 hours in total and giving me just enough daylight to get to Tecopa Hot Springs. I checked into my very rustic cabin and soaked in the hot springs before heading to bed early for another round of DPS peakbagging the next day.
