Black Mountain #4 and Chaparrosa

		  Black Mountain #4, Chaparrosa Peak
		   Private hike led by Mars Bonfire
			   28 October 2001

Barbara Guerin continues to close in on her list finish, though I kind
of wish she'd left this peak (Black Mountain #4) for later, and done
her other four remaining peaks first.  As it is, she'll be finishing up
on either Big Rabbit or one of the Big Three.  I suppose this could be
a strategy on her part, to reduce the number of people who come and
make it more exclusive?  Well, no matter, done is done: she's been up
Black Mountain #4 and there's no undoing it now!

It was, in any case, a wonderful hike, even if it wasn't her list
finish.  Besides Barbara and Mars, there were Edith Liu and Edith's
cousin Ursula from Germany, Dorothy Danziger, Brian and myself.  None
of us were in a hurry, looking forward instead to a leisurely saunter.
Even though I was kind of hoping we could fit in a second peak --
Byron the day before had suggested to Mars that we might be able to
fit in Chaparrosa.

All of us being a bit confused by the Spring Forward Fall Back clock
thing, we'd agreed to simply not bother, left our watches well enough
alone, and met in Yucca Valley at 8AM, some time zone or another.  We
headed out in three cars, first up Pioneertown Road, and then, hmmmm,
into a rat's nest of dirt roads of varying degrees of drivability, Mars
pausing once in awhile to ponder the lay of the land, eventually
converging on a clearing where on an earlier hike he and Byron had
parked.

He and Dorothy plotted over the maps, working out a good route, given
the landmarks and topography.  Dorothy and Edith had been here a few
weeks ago, or at least nearby, had taken an alternate approach
involving Antelope Creek, but had run out of time and had to turn back
before reaching the peak.  I'm hoping to pick up a little bit of
learning in the navigation area, so spent a lot of time hovering
behind them, listening in, as they matched the maps to the ridges and
drainages before us, worked out the steepness of slopes, depths of
saddles, and other similar considerations, before heading off to the
east towards a minor summit between us and the peak.  Mars pointed out
neighboring bumps and what distinguished them, to make it easier to
retrace our route to the car.  I fell in love with the whole area
immediately, and decided that when I eventually do my "I" provisional,
this should be the peak.

When Mars had done a similar route with Byron, there had been patches
of snow along the way which had encouraged them to take the south
facing slopes.  Mars was curious if a better route might be found,
either along the ridge or on the north facing slope.  One of the early
bumps looked a bit tall, so we sidehilled around it (on the south
side, however), but decided after having done so that we would have
been better off just going over it, and resolved to do so on our
return.

It was a relatively easy hike through spectacular terrain, open and rocky
and rough and rugged, with astonishing desert views.  Not to keep whining
about this, but really, Barbara should have saved this peak.  Geez...

The area has been mined, a lot, and we often ran across the remnants of
old roads and cairns of rock marking the corners of mining claims.
Some of the roads had relatively recent tire tracks on them, though it
wasn't clear they were made by cars or offroad vehicles.  Still, if
shorter hikes are better hikes (not at all clear to me!), it might be
worth a little exploring to see if one could drive even closer to the
mountain before commencing to hike.

Eventually only a wash separated us from the mountain -- we could hike
down and cross the wash and climb back up again, or we could attempt
to walk some distance to the north and follow a rough looking ridge.
One way meant more elevation loss and gain, the other more miles and
probably tougher going.  We didn't dither long, but instead headed
down.  I mean, if we're to be bothered by the occasional need to climb
uphill, we've chosen a really wrong hobby, huh?

Before you feel too sorry for Edith's poor cousin Ursula, here on a
visit from Germany and roped into climbing tough HPS peaks (her count
on HPS peaks is now at 10), er, save your sympathy?  Ursula puts all
of us to shame -- she's been up 1,600+ mountains, many over 18,000
feet.  But she enjoyed our peaks, even so -- they're so varied and
interesting.  On the other hand, you should have heard the yell she
let loose when she almost stepped on a tarantula!  Apparently she
hasn't encountered that many huge hairy spiders on her other climbs.
And this was one big tarantula.  We all spent several minutes
watching it, but it blended in so well with the background that we
weren't able to satisfactorily photograph it.

A more pleasant wildlife sighting was a deer on the side of Black, just
before we crossed the gully.  We watched it, it watched us, then it
headed up the slope along the route we were intending.  We speculated that
it was climbing the peak, too, and would sign the register ahead of us.

The peak itself was wonderful.  We found a couple of benchmarks with
arrows, presumably pointing to the benchmark.  But where they
pointed was the huge cairn that contained the can, and none of us felt
interested enough to disassemble the cairn to find the benchmark,
being willing instead to assume it was there.  The views were
incredible, and we spent quite awhile on the summit before
reorganizing and heading back.  Again, Dorothy and Mars spent a lot of
time on navigation and landmarks, and I stuck closely to them, getting
a feel for how they think about these things and also (this possibly
being my "I" provisional someday) learning specifically about this
route, and this mountain.

Topping the final bump, we spotted the cars just where we'd left them.
We weren't lost!  We weren't going to die!  Always reassuring!

Edith, Dorothy, and Ursula decided they wanted to head back since
it was already mid-afternoon.  Mars, Brian and I briefly pondered whether
we really wanted to do another peak.  Well, of course we did, how could
we resist?  Even after we realized Chaparrosa was a slightly longer hike
than we'd thought, and we'd probably end up coming out in the dark.  Or
maybe that was a feature instead of a bug?  I do know we didn't let
the approach of dusk hurry our steps -- we took a leisurely route
along the ridgeline, admiring the play of light on nearby Sawtooth
(tall enough to rate the list, far enough from Chaparrosa, but I'm not
sure I'd want to climb that rockpile!), speculating about the origins
of the rock (it sure looked volcanic), comparing the soil and vegetation
to that we'd just seen on Black.  

Well, you get the drift -- the company was good, the setting was
spectacular, the mood was mellow.  We did eventually make it to the
summit, where we enjoyed the sunset (not quite as dramatic as the one
we'd seen last weekend from Oakzanita, but still very special -- at one
point we looked south to San Jacinto and the entire mountain was a
subtle dusty shade of pink-lavender...), and then headed back.  

The moon was already reasonably high, and close to full, so with Mars
(and his good night vision) to lead the way, we went back slowly via
trail and road, entirely by moonlight, not using our headlamps at all.
I thought last weekend that there could be little more enjoyable than
hiking in the dark with a headlamp.  I was wrong.  Hiking in the
moonlight, without a headlamp, is even better, though it probably
wouldn't work well except in relatively open terrain.

Near the parking area, we did turn on our lights -- we were about to
go briefly cross-country, and who wants to walk into a cholla?  And we
had one scary moment and about jumped out of our skins -- as we
passed the ranger's residence, someone hit us with a bright light and
demanded that we come down there immediately.  The voice of authority!
Not to worry, though -- we weren't shot nor even arrested.  It took
mere moments for him to sort out we weren't poachers, but instead
hikers ("hard core" was how he described us, having realized what we'd
just done and having checked out our gear).  He showed us a trail that
would take us the last few yards to our cars, shook our hands, and
bade us a friendly good night, suggesting gently that the next time we
did something like that, we might want to make arrangements in
advance...