[John Morrow]

Nov 15: Great figure 8 loop of 4 fun scramble peaks of the Calico Basin area of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area outside of Vegas. First Kraft Mountain 4714': The leftmost gully on the south face when viewed from Sandstone Drive TH is 700 vertical feet of beautiful solid and sustained Class 3. West Ridge descent had lots of sandstone pinnacles to work through.

Starting out of Sandstone TH

Kraft S Face gully top right

800 feet of this makes this a very fun scramble.

sustained

Convoluted West Ridge; La Madre Wilderness NV

Then on to New Peak 4987': Up East Ridge, which provides fun limestone ridge scrambling if you stay on top of the ridge, down west ridge to Ash Canyon saddle.

New Peak East Ridge next

Class 2 east ridge

Then a finish in the Calico Tank Peaks which began with an interesting route find out of the Ash Canyon Divide. After New Peak, I worked my way up the NE Face of the Red Cap/Calico Tank ridge zigzagging ramps and ledges and a small tight gully. At the saddle it was convoluted routefinding around, through, over sandstone blocks to reach the summit of Calico Tank Peak 4880'.

View of ledge access next

Weird finish to Calico Tank Pk

Weaving the boulders

Surprisingly, the descent to the Tanks Trail was easy on a big diagonaling ramp all the way down to the trail. I was expecting complications. This put me right before the West Peak 4850' climb. After Calico Tank Peak, the route up the North side of this one was fun Class 3 up a diagonaling right blocky gully to a fine short low angle open book of desert varnish faces. Then work it to the top. An obvious deep dirty brushy gully worked for the descent right back to the trail. Would be easy on ascent.

Calico Tank Pk easy descent ramp

West Calico Class 3 finish

View toward campground

I returned to the TH by descending the Tanks trail and turning right in the unnamed draw back up to the Ash Canyon Divide. Then the Ash Canyon user trail down to the TH. The loose gully descent of this route had me wondering what a direct Ash Canyon descent would involve. Future perhaps?

Start the hike back

Descending Ash Canyon user trail

Trail right, canyon left

Fall color below Calicos

CalicoTraverse

Nov 16: 50 mile gusts predicted proved true so I was lucky just to get this simple scramble Class 2 to the smaller of the 2 White Rock Peaks, known as White Rock Springs Peak 6003'. Apparently the west one is 3 feet higherDid one Class 3 move coming from White Rock Spring Peak dropping into a notch that could be avoided by a low tread detour. A nice little easy Class 2 scramble otherwise. Aborted the traverse to White Rock Peak due to high winds of up to the 50 mph gusts! My tent poles were bent and tent laying sideways with broken guy lines when I got back to the campground.

White Rock Spring Peak

True summit left?

Yep, got to go there

White Rock Peak another day

Looking back at false summit

Thrust

Class 3 move between peaks

White Rock Peak behind

Other day's traverse

WhiteRockSpringPk

Nov 20: Same TH as the Calico Traverse, I opted to do the loop hike around Kraft Mountain on maintianed trail with a side spur up over a divide and into Brownstone Canyon, known for some rock art. Well, really special roct art that is.

Enter Gateway Canyon; La Madre Mountains Wilderness, NV

Upper Gateway, La Madre Wilderness NV

Gateway Canyon color; La Madre Wilderness NV

BS Picto 1

BS Picto 2

BS Picto 3

BS Picto 4

BS Picto 5

BS Picto 6

BS Picto 7

BS Pet 1

BS Pet 2; La Madre Wilderness NV

Brownstone Canyon; La Madre Wilderness NV

Back to Gateway

Gateway H2O!

Fun dryfalls

Middle Gateway; La Madre Wilderness NV

Lower Gateway texture, La Madre Wilderness, NV

Gateway dryfall downclimb

Parting Petroglyph

KraftMtnLoop

[Schenk]

Very cool! I have poked around Red Rock Canyon, and the Spring Mountains, just a bit, mostly approaches to climbs. If one keeps their eyes open the little dramas that play out among all the wild residents of the area can be quite amazing.

[silence]

Nice! Someplace I didn't know about ... thx for the TR and pix!