Spectre Point, Granite Mountain #2

4-Nov-89

By: Bill T. Russell

We met at the spot 3-1/2 mi south of hwy 62 that is identified in the peak guide. The "granite slab" at this spot is about 10 ft square and hard to see in the dark. The road forks here. One fork for 4wdr only goes into and up the wash. The other fork, which is ok for cars, stays on the hard ground and goes another 1/2 mi to a good camping spot. The access road was quite sandy for the first 100' from the highway but this soft area could be bypassed. There were two other sandy stretches on the access road that might give trouble to some small cars.

Bill Tryon, David Werner, Pat Russell and I had a good hike to Spectre via the route shown in the peak guide. It took us 3-1/4 hours to reach the summit. The 7-1/2' topo for this peak Cadiz Valley SW, shows the highest contour line on Spectre as 1300m. This is wrong. Spectre is the high point of the Coxcomb Mtns and is about 80' (25m) higher than the nearby benchmark "Aqua" with elev 1346.5m. Therefore Spectre is about 1370m which means that the top six or seven contour lines are missing from the map. I shall tell the USGS of this unusual error.

After Spectre, we went over to nearby "Dyadic" (see note 4.9 of the Peak List) which David and I climbed by a hard 3rd class route. We camped 1/2 mi from the hwy where we were joined for a pleasant evening by Karen Leonard and Dale Van Dalsem.

On Sunday, we climbed Granite #2. We drove to Palen Pass Road where we were joined by Bill Faulkner. Using Dale's and Bill's 4wdrs we went east on the road; it had some sandy spots that might have stopped passenger cars. We went to the junction at 769539 shown on the 7-1/2' topo, Palen Pass but not on the old 15' topo. From here we went north on the faint track and parked at its end at 770559. On the 15' map this track goes from the turn at the east edge of Sec 16 to about the NE corner of Sec 19. It is probably a better route than the one shown in the peak guide.

We climbed Granite via the ridge that borders the main gulch on the west and goes over Pt 996. We descended the main gully. Both routes are fine; we enjoyed the contrast. Our round trip time was 7-1/4hours including 1/2 hour for lunch.