Mt. Charleston

We drove down to Las Vegas the night before, but had a bit of a tough time finding the campsite that we wanted. They had one campground completely closed, so we ended up having to go up the hill a little bit out of our way. It turned out fine though, just adding a few extra minutes to the drive in the morning. We awoke really early at first light. We had a short drive to the trailhead through all the developments right next to the trailhead. In fact, there was one development area that was right at the trailhead forcing us to park somewhere that we did not want to.

We got going on the trail with a route description to follow, but still managed to get off on the wrong trail and climbed uphill for a while. We got back on the right track, but Dad thought it was unfortunate that we threw in some extra work considering we had quite a bit of elevation to gain and many miles to do it in. After not too long, the trail got super steep with switchback after switchback. We were moving along quite well, though as the cool weather and quiet morning conditions helped to make the elevation gain enjoyable.

Dad was moving at a great pace and it seemed this peak would be a piece of cake. This was a really scenic area even being so close to Las Vegas. There were trees changing colors already as the bright yellows were starting to show up in the aspens. As the light hit the surrounding peaks, it felt as if we were in the mountains. The climbing sure felt like it, too. When we finally hit the ridge after about 3 hours of switchbacks, the peak still looked a long ways away horizontally but not too far vertically. We had a good traverse through the pine forest that gave way to the bristlecones.

Soon enough the bristlecones would die away so that we were just walking up a rocky trail above treeline. When we finally made it over to the last section of trail before reaching the summit, we were dismayed to see a helicopter landing on top. Well that slightly spoils the experience of getting up early and having the entire mountain to ourselves. We were surprised to not see any other people, but now we were seeing a helicopter. We made the final push to the summit and had accomplished another goal.

Dad had knocked out another peak with prominence and I had made it to the top of a peak that I had wanted to climb for some time. It was just after noon when we made it on top of Mt. Charleston. That put us at about 5 hours for eight miles of climbing with 4300 feet of elevation gain, most of that being done in the first 4 miles. This would give us plenty of time to get back down and relax for the evening. I am not sure if anyone else made the summit on this day, because most people that we saw hiking up on  the way down either looked like they were trying to kill themselves with a large load of gear or looked as if they were unprepared for what would be a long hike.

Preparation really does go a long way. We took our time coming down and were at the trailhead by 4 pm. We did a quick run over to the restaurant to have a beer and then back down to the campground for the night. It was an enjoyable hike that could be called Class 1 as never once was there exposure or any difficult sections of trail. Still it took a bit of effort to come out on top. We were happy to expend that effort for the trip was definitely worth it.