Manganese Peak

Well, this seems to happen quite frequently when Dad and I get together to go for a hike. We plan something that sounds like a good idea and then we get to the road to the trailhead only to find out that unless one of us wants to trash their vehicle, we are not getting to the trailhead. Our plan was to go hike Muddy Peak in the Muddy Mountains. Now one might expect that the road out to Muddy Peak in the Muddy Mountains might be muddy, but in fact it was rather rocky.

 Just like what happened to us on our way to Kanab Creek, we ran into an issue of the road going right into a drainage and not coming out well. So we had to make alternative plans. We looked through Dad's guide book and settled on the Jimbilnan Wilderness named after Jim, Bill, and Nancy who had helped to draft legislation getting it passed in Congress. Despite the lame story behind the name, we found the Jimbilnan Wilderness to be very wildernessy. It was isolated and desolate. We made it almost to the spot we wanted to start hiking before the road got bad and we parked.

Right past this spot, the road turned better, but that was okay because we needed to walk by that point. We walked for some time on the road trying to decide what to do. The book had a very short hike that we could not tell exactly where the author was wanting us to go.

So we picked the highest thing around and went that direction. This took us up and down, but mostly up on the surrounding peaks. This place was so amazingly desolate that we did not see signs of others having hiked up there. Occasionally in a few places we thought we could make out the signs of a trail, but after a few minutes it would diminish and we would continue to pick our way up. The going was pretty easy and we only had to walk a few feet one direction or a few feet in the other direction to make it to a place where we could continue going up. Before long, we were on the ridge and heading for the top.

 When we got to the top, we learned where we were. There was a summit register with the name Manganese Peak and an elevation of 3042 feet. We learned that not many people climb this peak with only a handful each year. We had gained about a thousand feet getting up there. I felt good with that as a hike and the view was pretty good. We could see a lot of Lake Mead from up on top. We could see the spot where the Virgin River was coming into the lake and also far in the distance the spot where the Colorado joined it.

 We ate some lunch and then picked our way down choosing a different path that was a little more straightforward to get back to the road. We were not done, though, as Jacqueline had let me out for the entire day, so I had to make it worth my while. We did another hike. This one was along the road on the way back out to Boulder City where my dad and Laura were staying. There was a clump of red rocks called the Bowl of Fire. This one had a trail that went across the desert and a few dirt roads also. Eventually we made it to the Bowl of Fire where we spent some time wandering around the red rocks. We tried to find the correct hike to do, but I think it was really meant as a wandering hike. So I feel like we completed that as we wandered around long enough to turn around knowing that we saw what the Bowl of Fire was made of. This ended up being a pretty darn good day as Dad and I both had been staying in good shape during our time in the mild winter desert sun.