Drive past Twenty-Nine Palms and keep driving. Then drive some more. Turn off the road and follow an aqueduct that is fed from the Colorado River until the road runs out. You have not arrived at a tiny mountain range called the Iron Mountains. The high point of this range is obscured from the trailhead by open desert and small peaks in the front of the range.
Wes and I arrived late in the morning in cool weather and made our long, boring trek across the desert expanse. After three miles of this, we found a rib that seemed to lead up to the peak. It turned out this was a false summit in front of a series of false summits. The hike wasn’t difficult by our standards, but just when we thought we had run out of false summits, there was the real summit in the distance—still a quarter mile away! This was one of the few trips I was actually surprised when I realized we still had so far to go. Wes was beside himself with irritation.
The hike wasn’t difficult by our standards, but just when we thought we had run out of false summits, there was the real summit in the distance—still a quarter mile away!
We finally reached the summit, greeted by the all-too-familiar views of the desert expanse. This never gets old. I hope I can still do this into my 80s.
Elevation Profile
