Mt Emma

[GoalHiking]

I visited this and Old Mt Emma yesterday. Because the stats are moderate, I rucked it. It's steep and loose; the first didn't bother me so much but the second required a good bit of caution on the downhills.

I took the signed trail off Mt Emma Road. After topping out at Mt Emma, there's a steep/loose Jeep road between the peaks and I mostly walked off to the side of it to get better footing. There's a false summit just before Old Mt Emma & it involves a steep V-shaped dip in the road. Both registers need at least new notebooks. I'm sure there are benchmarks somewhere but I didn't spend much time looking for them. I didn't see any other hikers, but I saw a hunter and some dirt bikers.

On the way back I kept going straight instead of taking a sharp right turn, as a result I needed to walk along the road for a bit. Watching a mini truck come careening right at me was not the type of excitement I was seeking, so I'd suggest doing this as an out-and-back if you can.

More pics and details here: https://goalhiking.org/g/mt-emma

P.S. I posted the Emma trip to some Meetup groups and all the signups flaked as usual. While I didn't need company on this trip, for some things I do want it for mutual safety. If anyone's interested in doing desert peaks but doesn't feel comfortable doing them alone, please get in touch. On Nov 1 2025 I might hike Corkscrew Peak in Death Valley. On the same day or next I'd be interested in road biking from the trailhead to Furnace Creek: 25 miles and all downhill or flat. I contacted a tour company and they could shuttle three people back up for $50 each, or we could do our own shuttle. I'd also like to do Rim to River in a day. And as many desert peaks as I can. Feel free to contact me if interested.

[RH]

Careful out Mt Emma area. In 2019, me and my two buddies were threatened by a meth head when we got back to our car at the trailhead.

[RH]

Careful out Mt Emma area. In 2019, me and my two buddies were threatened by a meth head when we got back to our car at the trailhead.

In the afternoon of January 2019, we hiked to Mt Emma, Peak 5098, and Old Mt Emma. From the ridge we kept seeing a white car pulled over at a weird location on Mt Emma Road. Didn't think too much of it as we continued our hike including seeing some deer on Old Mt Emma. Then we hiked back to my car just as the sun was setting. We loaded our packs into the trunk and one of my buddies was taking one last picture towards Mt Emma with the sun setting just as that white car suddenly came driving by heading towards AFH. He took his photo and got in the car. Then we see the white car do a u-turn and pull up next to me. We assume someone wanted to know something about the hike so I rolled down my window. Then we see he has curtains blocking views from the read window and the rear side windows. He was a white dude who was not friendly and started asking what we were doing there. So we told him we had just done a hike. He asked why we were taking pictures of him. Which we chuckled because he just happened to drive by while we took one photo of the trailhead. We told him that we weren't taking photos of him and offered to show him the picture so he could see he's not in it. Then he started saying wild stuff including calling us the n-word repeatedly (we were three white dudes by the way) and then he finally said he could kill us. I said what's that and pointed east then I peeled out heading west towards AFH. In the rearview we see him do a u-turn and start chasing us. I blew through the stop sign to head north on AFH. We were going 75mph and he was still gaining on us. I think we got up to 85mph and then got to the 14 heading south where we lost him. We assume he was doing meth in his car out there for hours. We wonder if he was about to pull a gun on us. We have never been back to Mt Emma area since then.

[GoalHiking]

There were a lot of spent shell casings on Old Mt Emma (but none I saw on Mt Emma). That's bad from the pollution standpoint, but even worse the top is rounded so they couldn't really see where they were firing. OTOH, while people wrote on the other side of one of the summit signs and there were several beer cans/bottles around, there wasn't any graffiti that I saw. Others might want to visit the area as part of a large group, avoid nighttime, etc. But, still safer than downtown Lancaster.

[tekewin]

I hiked Emma -> Old Emma -> road back to truck in 2024. Solo.

There was a lot of trash on the Old Emma summit.

While walking back along the road, a black Nissan truck took interest and pulled over at a turnout a few hundred feet in front of me. I kept walking toward it. After waiting about 30 seconds, it pulled back on the road and left. It was either a good Samaritan who saw I was not in distress, or a serial killer who decided I was either not a lone female, or not an easy target, or too poor to rob. I'll never know which.

[HikeUp]

January 2009 I hiked Mt. Emma & Old Mt. Emma & road back to car. Didn't see a single person or other car the whole day if I recall correctly. Don't recall any shells. Only sign of other humans was the dirt bike scars/trails left all over the dang place. Plus this most magnificent cairn on Old Emma...

IMG_2896.jpg

IMG_2897.jpg