Granite Mountains #2

30-Mar-91

By: Evelyn Chadwell

I am sad to see the desert season coming to an end for the summer. Ron Grau and I have taken in the views from the tops of 18 or so desert peaks this season. In some cases our routes were somewhat creative even though we set out to do the standard route

Granite #2, our most eventful trip was no exception to this rule On the drive to Palen Pass we stopped to visit some rock cabin ruins, apparently an abandoned mining camp. I took my camera out of the back of the truck to take a few pictures. Later down the road I discovered that I had not shut the tailgate securely and it had fallen open The only thing we lost at this point was one of my water bottles, which I sorely missed later We continued to follow what we thought was the road but ended up in the bottom of a gully and couldn't go any further. Since we thought we were in the right place we parked the truck, climbed up out of the wash and took compass bearings so we could find the truck later.

Once out of the wash and anxious to get to the peak, we took a quick look at the map and started out on our relatively short hike. However, near the top of the ridge Ron turned to me with the usual bad news. We were off route!. We were southeast of the 3805 point on the map. The hike up along the ridge to the peak was uneventful but long after arriving on the peak, Ron requested his reward, chocolate chip cookies

Taking the standard route down, somewhere along the way Ron lost our map We used the compass readings taken earlier to locate our truck We finally found if after searching several parallel gullies. On the drive out we stopped at a spot with a panoramic view and enjoyed a private tailgate party as we watched the sunset

We decided to drive home that evening to avoid the holiday traffic. Stopping at Bob's Big Boy in Indio for dinner was a big mistake. On finishing our meal we discovered that someone had broken into the locked camper shell and taken our day packs, sleeping bags, and many other items. We were just inside the restaurant and had neglected to turn on the car alarm. We learned a valuable lesson.

P.S. We ended our desert season by doing Tucki Mtn from Mosaic Cyn with Sue Wyman and Vic Henney on May 18. It was a spectacular route that took us about twelve hours.