EISPIRATEN

I had a 4-day weekend, so I went to goof off in the desert. Wanted to climb some obscure-yet-high peak to look at stuff, and to avoid humans. The Providence Mountains are remote and high, and I've haven't been there yet. There's a low pass that splits the range into two halves, so I decided to summit the highest point in the lower (Southern) half: the Providence Benchmark. I'd start near the saddle between the two halves of the range. That should be obscure-enough.

I kinda just wanted to wander around, so I didn't look for any beta. Once I settled on the peak I realized that it actually is an official DPS point. Rats. At least I'd be approaching from a weird direction.

Drove up on Friday, took the dirt road from the Essex rd/Black Canyon rd junction west ~ 7miles to Foshay Spring, and camped there. There's a pipeline road and a parallel powerline road; these overlap in the middle, but are separate at the start and further out. Near pavement, the pipeline road is better. Further out, the powerline road climbs up, while the pipeline road stays at the bottom. I stayed at the bottom.

Foshay Spring is not-quite at the pass, but close-enough. The "spring" is the headwaters of a distinct drainage, but there isn't a drop of water anywhere. There's black tubing to pipe the water from (I guess) to spring to I-have-no-idea-where. The spring itself looks like this:



I started walking in the morning from 4100ft. From the start the high peaks at the North half of the range (Edgar, Fountain) are clearly visible, and look quite rugged. The South half is more cagey: you can see just some easy slopes.

I just walked South aiming to connect the ridgelines to eventually end up at the peak. The going is easy. There's no trash, few plants, but a ton of poop. Lots of what looks like horse poop:



And lots of cow-pie-looking stuff:



Strange. I summited a minor ridge, to get a view of the next ridgeline. Looks much higher and much more rugged. Is that where I'm going?



Don't know. Keep climbing.



At one point I saw some fresh-looking tracks near some fresh-looking poop. I followed the tracks, and soon found the perpetrators! Click:





Two donkeys! They bolted as soon as they saw me, so not the best photos. This still doesn't explain the cow pies, but supposedly there're cows on the other half of these mountains, so maybe they're here too. The slopes in this area are easy.

At point 6043 I was at a local high point, at the edge of a plateau. Good views all around. Mitchell and Fountain and Edgar (in that order, I think)



Kelso dunes:



And I could finally see my destination:



That's far-away and looks like a different experience entirely from what I've been doing up to this point. So far, this was all easy class-1 travel. But once I got on this ridge, it was all class-2-and-up. Not hard, but lots and lots of bumps, walking over rocks and boulders and such. The rate of progress took a nosedive. Also the final climb to the peak, and the bump before that look alarming.

Getting closer:



Approaching the alarming-looking penultimate bump:



I'm not touching the cliffs on the left, but the ones on the right looked like they could potentially have a gap. And they did:



That got me around the penultimate bump, and down to the saddle at ~5700ft. On to the final climb to 6614ft. I just went straight along the ridge. Some of the chutes looked a bit too risky for my tastes, and I looked around until I found a class-3 option. There always was one. At one point I started leaving cairns for me to find on the way back. Some of these are still there; I apologize

Getting closer...



At some point the main steep section is done, and we're on to easier class-2 ground. The peak:





Made it up in 3:20. The register goes back to 1986. This was rarely-visited back in the day, but now the peak-baggers visit semi-regularly. The preferred route is from the East. I guess it's shorter than what I did.

Cool views from up here! There's a neat pinnacle to the West that I didn't go visit:



And you can see the North half of the range



And my ridgeline



And endless desert to the East



And I have this photo of this ledge for some reason. Why did I take this photo?



The upper areas have less cow poop, but more deer/sheep poop. I didn't see any sheep, but found these:



The big guy is a shed, but the smaller one has a chunk of skull attached, so something happened to him.

On the drive out I realized you can clearly see the whole range, including my route from I-40. I didn't take a photo, but here's a realistic caltopo render:



I started at the saddle in the center, and went left. Where was I going after this? Next trip report coming.

Thanks for the report. That's pretty cool you saw some donkeys. I bet they don't see many visitors out there.

Whooohooo!!! Benchmark.
You took some beautiful pics.

That looks great! That pinnacle to the west has an unofficial peakbagger name: "Decaying Molar Peak".

Your ridge looked pretty scary. Wild donkeys are cool. The route from the west doesn't look easy either.

So many great desert peaks around there and south of there. Have you ever considered doing Mopah Point?

I don't know if the routes from the East or West are any easier, but they're definitely shorter. Mopah looks pretty cool. I'll keep that in mind for when I'm out that way. Have you climbed that one?

dima wrote: ↑I don't know if the routes from the East or West are any easier, but they're definitely shorter. Mopah looks pretty cool. I'll keep that in mind for when I'm out that way. Have you climbed that one?

I haven't but it's on my list. It's an impressive tower. Don't want to do it solo. There is supposed some serious exposure in one or two places. Might be useful to have a short rope.

Cecelia and I did Mopah with some friends. It's a very nice class 3/4 scramble. Not much 4 if you're good at routefinding. We didn't use a rope on anything but there's some modest exposure. Helmet and gloves recommended.

Sweet! I thought you guys did that, but I couldn't find it using tapatalk search. Good to know a rope was not needed.