Granite pass boulders
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 12:01 am
A few years ago Taco, Danny and I did a glorious bike ride through the Mojave. After watching the sun set from the Kelso dunes, we started a cold and never-ending climb up to Granite pass, followed by a FRIGID night in a ditch, off the side of the road. Much later I found out that we could have instead taken a short dirt road W of the pass to some really nice camping surrounded by impressive boulders. Wouldn't have solved the temperature issue, but would still have been nicer. This Sat night Sondra and I came back there, to see what we missed out on.
We arrived an hour or two before sunset. This is dispersed camping with no pavement or signage or facilities, but even so, every site was taken. One site contained a short school bus, which was sitting on blocks, and clearly wasn't going anywhere. Makes sense. This place is great!
We claimed a medium-obvious site. It wasn't as great as the spots right among the boulders, but we still had a few smaller boulders and a fire ring. At sunset we walked towards what USGS calls "Dorner's camp". This turned out to be a building used by UC Riverside as a base for their researchers. The area around the building is owned by UCR, and fenced off from the public as a research site.
In the morning we went up to the rocks to do some scrambling. The boulders are even better when you're up close
Sondra lost her hat at one point, and I climbed around to grab it
And among the various spiky plants we found a few large cocoons with lots of catepillars on and in them:
Some of the crags look perfect for technical climbing:
Taco says they're on UCR property and officially off-limits to climbers. The property maps tell me that the UCR property is a bit further west, and at least THESE crags are legal. So maybe it's fine.
In any case, this place is great. Recommended!
We arrived an hour or two before sunset. This is dispersed camping with no pavement or signage or facilities, but even so, every site was taken. One site contained a short school bus, which was sitting on blocks, and clearly wasn't going anywhere. Makes sense. This place is great!
We claimed a medium-obvious site. It wasn't as great as the spots right among the boulders, but we still had a few smaller boulders and a fire ring. At sunset we walked towards what USGS calls "Dorner's camp". This turned out to be a building used by UC Riverside as a base for their researchers. The area around the building is owned by UCR, and fenced off from the public as a research site.
In the morning we went up to the rocks to do some scrambling. The boulders are even better when you're up close
Sondra lost her hat at one point, and I climbed around to grab it
And among the various spiky plants we found a few large cocoons with lots of catepillars on and in them:
Some of the crags look perfect for technical climbing:
Taco says they're on UCR property and officially off-limits to climbers. The property maps tell me that the UCR property is a bit further west, and at least THESE crags are legal. So maybe it's fine.
In any case, this place is great. Recommended!
