Off The Beaten Path
This peak guide is presented here for the convenience of our visitors.
Neither the Desert Peaks Sections or the Sierra Club guarantees the accuracy of this document. Use at Your Own Risk!
| No. 23 | Black Mountain (5,092') | Nevada |
This guide is based on a Sage article by Bob Michael.
Topo Map:
Sloan NE 7½
Coordinates: Lat 35 55 51 Lon 115 02 31
Trip Stats: unknown
DRIVING
From old US 91 Las Vegas Boulevard South, the extension of "The Strip".About 1/2 mile south of the intersection with Nev. 146, near a huge RV supplystore, a residential road with widely scattered houses cuts due east from 91.This road is just south of where 91 curves west towards Sloan from its due north-south orientation through town. When the last of the homes is past, the road takes a dramatic turn for the worse. It's mapped as 4WD on the topo; it is passable with patience via a 2WD high clearance truck, but is slow, rocky andtedious. With perseverance, one finally intersects the "antenna road"at a point where it leaves the bajada and begins the ascent towards the towers. Drive 4 mile on this road to a major wash; park here.
HIKING
Head straight upBlack's long, parabolic WNW ridge which leads right to the summit. The ridge steepens quite a bit below the summit but there are no real difficulties and itis a thoroughly delightful ramble.
NOTES
This peaks lies just southeast of Las Vegas. From the top, one looks east over the grim, forbidding brown and black lava cliffs of the eastern escarpment of the range,over Boulder City to Lake Mead and the canyon of the Colorado. To the north,there is a unique perspective of the Las Vegas megalopolis, looking almoststraight down the Strip. Even though this inland urban sea laps at the base ofthe bajada coming off Black, the peak has a wonderfully unspoiled feeling of desert wilderness. "After taking in the sight of over a million people, their constructions and excesses, one merely rotates one's gaze 180' to the south, and looks out over a landscape without one trace of the existence of the human race; not a track, not a mine dump or power line, not a scratch."