Jurassic Peak track link
This hike was a response to where isn’t the wind likely to
be howling tomorrow. Yep, no in-depth
planning, but Susan did a little internet searching, map gazing, and an
acceptable weather forecast pulled it all together.
We went exploring.
And exploring it was. Our first
attempt to access the area was from the west side of Haiwee Ridge. In theory this is possible, but DWP has so
poorly marked their no trespassing zone, we couldn’t figure out where we
could/couldn’t go. Since then we got a
map from the BLM in Ridgecrest, and spoke with employees there who told us, we
had to stay out of the white parcels, but the yellow parcels were BLM land and
open to exploration. Now, we have a trip
for another day.
We ended up going further north and taking the Cactus Flat
road back south to Cactus Flat. After several false starts, which turned up a
couple more interesting looking places (the list just keeps getting longer) we
were off.
The original plan was to spend half a day climbing Jurassic
Peak and Scattered Bone Peak. Our
reference blog post indicated it was a great half day hike. For us, the quarter day spent finding the
right saddle, and parking two miles from that saddle due to a road wash out,
left us time to tackle Jurassic Peak.
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| Some of the two miles of bonus walking |
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| We've reached the saddle and are heading up |
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| Looking back at Scattered Bone Peak |
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| Looking SE at an unnamed peak |
You won’t find Jurassic Peak on any map as it is a high
point on north end Haiwee Ridge, and Scattered Bone Peak is the high point on
the south end. We started our approach on the east side, but that was straight up, so we worked our way around to the west side. There we found the class 2/3 scramble that was described. Next, we picked our way
carefully up the ridge and eventually got to within a hundred feet of the top
of Jurassic. Bob headed up alone to scout. His report was favorable so we went up
together. Staying on the west makes this
a class 2, until almost the top which is class 3. Bob was jubilant at the top, Susan was more like terrified.
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| Working our way up the wrong side of the ridge |
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| Scattered Bone Peak |
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| Bob on the summit |
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| Coming off the summit block |
There is a fabulous view, if slightly terrifying view, to
the west including Haiwee, Olancha Peak, and Round Mountain.
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