This is the view we woke too at 5:30am on Saturday July 26th...
... an immense monolithic rock peak, with a slope averaging 45 degrees (eastern slope) that would lead us to the summit. It should be a great day.
The Hike to King Lear Peak - 8934'
It started for Steve and I at 1pm on Friday, the 25th. The" plan", and yes, we still make plans for all our peak hikes even though they usually become severely modified during the execution, was to travel out to the Jackson's, a very small range in terms of Nevada standards, drive to the end of the indicated "road" (I will come back to this shortly), hike for about 2-3 hours, camp overnight somewhere between 7000' and 8000', rise early on Saturday and summit. Again, this is not a high peak but just like all Nevada peaks, you are going to work just as hard for this 8900 foot peak as you would for any fourteen thousand footer.
As far as plans go, in Nevada, first of all, getting to some of the ranges and peaks can be quite tricky and a challenge in navigation (route finding) in and of itself. Getting to the Jackson's and King Lear (not the high point but the most majestic and the second highest) would be no different. Would we be able to obtain the "end of the road" as indicated on Google Earth or our other topo-maps. As I mentioned earlier, "roads"... you see on 3 different topo maps, we saw a maze of roads and as is the status quo for Nevada, some of them are there, but not navigable, some are not there any more and some are there and navigable but not where they are supposed to be. The latter was our reality. Finally after about a 3.5 hour drive from Reno, we found "our" road, heading west. This road was off a northern spur. about 3 miles north from where this spur took off from Bottle Creek Road (yes at times some of these dirt roads have names). We were expecting it to be per our GPS, only 2 miles north but it matters not, we found it. Now the slow going began. The road, as you see below, would take us about 4 miles into the range and about 1.75 miles ATCF (As the Crow Flies) from King Lear Peak.
Another aspect of our plan was to come out on Friday evening and hike, as I mentioned earlier, a couple hours but there was a method to this madness. It is July, projected temperatures at 4000' were expected to be in the 100's at midday. This is an eastern facing slope so trying to start the hike at say 6a from 5500' would put us hiking the face of King Lear in direct sunlight. high heat and approaching the summit at mid day: not my choice of combinations. So, we departed our parking spot at 5:10pm and headed up. So far so good!
At 7:30pm, we got to a great spot for bunking down; just above a rocky nob at 7300' on a natural flat area that would be perfect for sleep. We dropped our packs, found a couple of prime sleeping spots, put down our sleeping pads, threw down our sleeping bags on top of the pads and were ready for the night. After some food and drink, we hit the sack. It was 8pm: not much else to do. A side note here...I woke about 10pm and what a treat. No moon and stars like you could not believe. I got out my binoculars and stargazed for about 1 hour. It was incredible...indescribable.
We woke Saturday morning and you have already seen the view that greeted us. We lightened up our packs, choked down some protein drinks and breakfast bars and headed up. After about 1 hour of hiking, we found ourselves at about 8100' and decided to hydrate and take a break as for the past hour we had been hiking a slope of extreme steepness; my estimation is a 45% or greater grade and it was hard work even in the early morning hours; the temp was about 65f. In stopping and looking back, here is a photo of what we saw from our "1st Break" and where our truck and camp were located in relation to our present position:
Our next leg up was the base of the monolithic rock that was King Lear Peak - top arrow in photo below:
To this point, we could clearly see our route up to the base. Once at the base, then we would have to decide, left or right. To the right we could clearly see a sloping route which we named the "spiral staircase" as it wound around the peak. But this direction looked to be a box canyon at the top and we were not prepared to climb class rated rock walls.
After a liter of water and some more energy food, we continued upward and at 8:20am we got to the base of the peak. We approached the base from the right side of the above image in the green areas above the lower arrow and in doing so, we could clearly see a route and a saddle to the left. Again, we did about 50 minutes of hiking up this steep terrain to this point so this was a great place for a break and an assessment of our next move.
The decision was made to hydrate and get a snack, then leave the packs and take the "left" path to the summit (not our named spiral staircase to the right). At this point, looking at the GPS, we were only 450 feet away from the peak (ATCF) with only about 400 feet of elevation remaining. We would take the GPS, gloves and our walking stick, and venture up. After about 15 minutes of still steep, but not as steep as the face, walking, we crested and were standing upon the saddle. Here is our view to the west into the Black Rock Desert:
From here, we simply had 200 feet of distance remaining and about 200 feet of elevation over the terrain you see below with Steve in the picture:
At 8:50am, we were on the summit! Incredible! We took some photos but our traditional team photo on top was not possible as our camera battery malfunctioned and we could not take a timed exposure. Oh well...below is a great shot of Steve and a "selfie" of me! Good enough.
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| Steve on top of King Lear Peak |
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| Martin on top of King Lear Peak |
Once back to the packs, it was uneventful, only 3000 feet of vertical to descend in about 2 miles. We hiked back down to our camp at 7300 feet, picked up our cashed equipment and supplies, and were back to the truck by noon. We were 4.5 hours of hiking up (per plan) and 3 hours of hiking down (per plan). It was a real fun adventure. Peak number 34 for Steve and myself. Looking forward as always to our next peak. Stay tuned.....
More Photos
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| Looking East from the Summit (The Jackson's High point upper left mountain area) |
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| Intense vertical rock walls all around (looking southeast toward Star Peak (#1) |
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| The western edge of the Jackson's and King Lear Peak from the "roads end"
Below is the route as captured on Google Earth. 4.75 miles round trip, 3400 feet of vertical elevation. 4.5 hours up and 3 hours down.
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