peak book

 Lone Mountain - 1019M 165M Prominence 36.23808, - 115.31507 February 26, 2025 1H 5M C2C, 43M Moving, 196M Ascent, 2.67KM On our last night in Red Rocks I convinced the boys to hike up one last peak with me. Admittedly I bribed them with beers, but it was a great spot to stop and watch the sun set over Red Rocks canyon and our trip. Lone Mountain stood out to me the very first time I started looking at the topographical maps of the Las Vegas surroundings. I noticed it because of the way it rises out of the flat desert suburbs of Western Vegas, and sticks out like a sore thumb. We drove 10 minutes North on the 215 from where we had been staying, and turned off to a parking lot on the North end of the regional park. We started hiking, not entirely sure of the trail system, but soon enough found a trail up onto the ridge. The ridge took us south over incredibly sharp rock, Until eventually leading us to the summit. There were multiple other groups at the summit also watching the last ...

 Calico Hills South - 1317M 43M Prominence 36.14660, -115.42464 February 22, 2025 After a few days of climbing in the desert, Tyler, Gabe Scott and I decided that we would change up the pace a bit and go for an extended hike. After looking and looking for a suitable adventure, I set my sights on a traverse of the entire Calico Hills and beyond. The day before we had been talking to a local man at one of the crags we were climbing at, and he suggested this traverse (among many other adventures). I took some time to look into it and found a GPX route on Fastest Known Time.com. I was quite unsure of how long and involved this traverse would be, as it is hard to gauge such criteria off of FKT, so we decided to just give it a shot and see how far we could make it. At 9:45 AM we parked the Car at Calico Basin and got going. We made our way over to the start of the ridge, trying to adhere to the route as best as possible. After half an hour we had made it to the first summit of Calico Hil...

 Turtlehead Peak - 1927M 184M Prominence 36.180092 -115.446018 February 21, 2025 2H 31M C2C, 2H 8M Moving, 560M Ascent, 6.4KM Turtlehead peak was a bit of an impulse bag. Its huge cliffed off south side looked quite inspiring from the crags we had been climbing at the day before. After a short bit of research, I found out that it is an easily accessible peak in the Red Rocks park loop. Gabe and I dedicated one morning to get up to the summit and back before an afternoon of cragging at Sandstone Quarry. The trail started directly at the Sandstone Quarry trailhead. It passed through some flatter terrain with broad gravel flood paths which were easily mistaken for trails. Once we made it past the flatter terrain, the trail began to follow up a sort of gulley between a ridge and the mountain itself. The trail was marked but slightly hard to follow at times. Luckily the desert terrain lends well to off piste hiking. After toping out the gulley, the north face begins to open up. It is br...

Gallagher Hill - 387M  187M Prominence 49.888108 -124.511033 February 9, 2025  I had no desire to be stuck inside with a broken truck for another weekend. This is when I thought to myself I would take a shot at my 4 bump challenge that I came up with last week. The Idea was that I would bike around my local town of Powell River to approach, and then hike up and bag the 4 closest summits to town in a loop, before ending back up where I started. I had no idea how long this would all take, but these somewhat lousy bumps in the local geography don't enthuse you to get up too early. At 8:17 I got on my bike and began to bike North towards The first hill of the day. I biked for just over half an hour in the bitter cold up past Cranberry lake and up past the water reservoir before leaving my bike at the trailhead for "Tower Trails". I could not bike any further due to the snow that is lingering on from weeks ago. The trail is a little steep at first, but eventually mellows out a...