Toll BM P1K PD
Sugarloaf Mountain P900 ESS / PD
Stevenson Peak P1K ESS
Harper Peak P1K ESS

Continued...

I was up early this morning, around 4:30a, in order to get an early start to allow me to hike through some private property under cover of darkness. Toll BM and Sugarloaf are two P1Ks in the far southern reaches of the Sierra, north of SR58 near Tehachapi. The closest access via Sand Canyon goes through some private residential areas that I had spent some time exploring the prior afternoon. I formulated a plan to park at the corner of Sand Canyon Rd and Quail Mtn Rd, hiking up the latter towards Toll BM, traversing the ridgeline to Sugarloaf, and returning back down to the car via Sand Canyon Rd. By startingat 5a, I was easily able to hike past all the homes along the road, into the Pine Ridge Estates which as far as I could tell after hiking through, had only one resident despite the more impressive facade. I suspect the entrance gate had been built just prior to one of those housing busts that regularly plague Kern County.

I followed the road through Pine Mtn Estates where it eventually tops out on the main ridge connecting Toll BM to Sugarloaf some miles to the east. There is a residence in the woods not far off the road here, the last one sees of civilization (aside from a small communications installation and the road itself) on the way to the summit. Having reached the ridgeline I had only done half of the 2,000ft of elevation gain, the steepest portion coming in the last 40 minutes to the summit. The eastern sky took on the subdued colors of the new day, providing a view of Sugarloaf to the east in profile. It looked very far away at this point and it seemed I would be in for a long day. This proved somewhat of an illusion however as the distance between the two is something like 3 miles as opposed to the 5 mile distance between the two main peaks the previous day.

The sun rose when I was about 15 minutes from the summit. The good road had ended, but an older, little-used one went nearly to the highpoint with only a very modest amount of bushwhacking. It was after 7a when I reached the top where I found an old survey tower that had fallen over - I stood it back up to take the summit photo, but the legs were unsteady and the wood much decayed so I doubt it will stay up on its own for long. The benchmark appears to be missing but I found one of the nearby reference marks inscribed with TOLL. The views were lacking due to trees that inhabit the summit area. I managed to find an opening to the west for a view in that direction, but otherwise it is not a very exciting summit.

I returned back down the primary road from Toll BM with a small detour to visit Pt. 6,258ft which has a good view to Sand Canyon. The topo map shows an old 4x4 road skirting the north side of the ridgeline towards Sugarloaf which I hoped to make use of. In order to avoid walking right by the occupied residence located between the main road and the older one, I took to some cross-country scrambling down a subsidiary ridgeline north of the home. This involved some short sections of heavy brush, but otherwise worked well due to a number of open sections that could be connected together on the downhill trek. I could see the residence located in the woods to my right as I descended, but I never saw anyone out and about and was far enough away to be of little concern. I found the start of the road I was looking for at a saddle northeast of the home. It was a bit hard to find because it has become overgrown, but was a key factor in making the traverse work. Though only useful for about half a mile, it was through the section of heaviest brush found on the route. This section was on the northwest side of Peak 5,808ft, which may be the Quail Mountain suggested by the name of the road I had taken earlier. I had originally hoped to scale this summit as well, but the only feasible route is up a dirt track from the southeast side, inaccessible from the ridgeline I was traversing. The brush was simply too thick and tangled to consider bushwhacking up and across it. But the old 4x4 track on the northwest side allowed me to reach the more open ridgeline found east of the saddle on that side of Peak 5,808ft. Where the road turns north to drop down off the ridgeline (it's not obvious where this happens due to the overgrowth), I continued along the ridgeline roughly following an old barbed-wire fence that runs the length of the ridgeline to Sugarloaf. Sometimes I would find easier going on one side or the other, but more generally the slopes were most open on the drier south-facing side. It took about an hour and a half to cover a mile and a half of this rugged cross-country. Alternatively, there is a ranch road found about 300ft down the north side of the ridge. The 4x4 track I had been following drops off the ridge to meet up with this better road. Originally this had been my plan to approach Sugarloaf, but upon finding the ridge itself not as bad as I had feared, I chose to use the ridge route instead. Others may find otherwise.

The last few hundred feet to the base of Sugarloaf were more open and quite pleasant. Though steep, the West Slopes of Sugarloaf were likewise open with light brush cover and I made swift progress upwards, reaching the summit by 9:30a. The summit and views were more open than on Toll BM, making for the better summit of the two. A register in a glass jar held eight pages of entries over the past ten years. There was some mention in the register of a stone structure at the summit, but this seems to have been largely dismantled as there were only a few modest piles of rocks found about the summit area. In addition to the other P1Ks that could be seen to the west, northwest and east, there is a fine view of Sand Canyon directly to the south. I could make out a whole network of roads that could be used for my return and before leaving the summit I studied these some to find the best route to avoid any homeowners that might not take kindly to my presence.

The South Face of Sugarloaf is fairly steep but easily managed with only modest vegetation and good footing for most of it, making for a quick descent. It took only fifteen minutes to reach the old dirt road that skirts the base of the peak on the south side. I followed this and other roads back out through a private RV park called the Quail Mountain Resort. By this time I was no longer sure where the Quail Mountain was that various place names referred to - there was certainly no officially named Quail Mountain anywhere about. I walked by an unmanned security post near the closed gate. I had found the gate open when I was exploring the area the day before, but had to find a way to circumvent it today. It was 10:15a by the time I was outside and hiking Sand Canyon Rd, once more on public roadways. It would take but another fifteen minutes to hike down the road to my van. Along the way I was treated to an eclectic mix of rural artwork, redneck threats, and the rustically bizarre (why would someone have a full-sized Texaco sign in their yard?). I was happy to be done with my two days in Sand Canyon and I suspect the residents might have felt like-wise. I was beginning to worry that if I had stayed around the area for another day or two my van might have aroused more suspicion than I cared to attract. Now I just had to figure out what to do with the rest of the day...

There were two P1Ks further north that I had been saving for more of a moonlight opportunity. They were both fully on private property without any ambiguity about them. Getting to them would require some driving, back west on SR58 for about 20 miles to Caliente, then the winding roads north and northwest to reach them. Without a better alternative, I decided to take my chances by daylight. David Naylor had been doing similarly on Diablo Range peaks where I dared show myself only at night. So I figured I'd blame him for being a poor inspiration if I ended up in the hoosegow.

It took almost an hour and a half to make my way to the small town of Twin Oaks along Caliente Creek Rd. I had been up this way once before when I climbed Eagle Peak, a delisted HPS summit. That venture had been at night. Today I got to see this beautiful ranching country in all its springtime splendor. Its one of the few places where you can regularly expect to see cattle on the roadway, not as an accident, but as part of their pasturelands along Caliente Creek. The hills were a verdant green, lush with fresh growth and grasses the cows could get drunk on. Though not abundant, wildflowers dotted the hillsides and could be seen close up in miniature almost anywhere one looked. My starting point for Stevenson Peak was just northeast of town but it was impossible to find a secluded place to park that would be out of the way. I drove back and forth several times before deciding to take a chance at an old gate along the road roughly halfway between two properties, one an equestrian center and the other a collection of ranch building + home. Another home was just north of the roadway up the hill a short ways and could easily observe me for the first 100 yards or so until I was across the dry Caliente Creek.

I took my chances and hopped the fence when the coast was clear. Motorcycles and cars had been plying the road regularly over the last fifteen minutes, but I somehow caught a lull in traffic and had nobody drive by while I crossed the field, the dry creekbed, through another fence and finally onto the dirt road on the south side of the creek. The only chance I had of being seen was from the gentleman on the hill above my car who I saw outside unloading his vehicle. He didn't seem to notice me, or if he did, he didn't spend any time staring me down as he might have done. After a minute along the creek, the road turns away from the creek and visibility from the road and I was able to rest easier - all of this was in less than ten minutes from the start.

Stevenson Peak is visible immediately as the road turns southeast. There were some cattle about the road initially, but I gave them a wide berth, leaving the road briefly to give them as much room as I could manage. I found the cross-country almost as easy as the road itself, with wide-open grassy slopes under a scattered blanket of oaks not yet leafed out with the spring. After examining the route on the GPS, I decided to forgo the road altogether in this lower stretch, both as a way to make the route straighter and to reduce the chances of running into a rancher. I followed these slopes up to Pt. 3,498ft, growing steeper before reaching the ridgeline northwest of the point. I followed a cow path to the southeast for about a quarter mile to a saddle at a property boundary where I met up with the road I had intended to follow initially. More cows were milling about here, moving away from me just enough to allow me to hop the gate located where they'd been standing.

Once on the other side, I again left the road to head directly up the slopes leading to Stevenson's NW Ridge. I had studied the slopes on my traverse to the saddle and had decided they looked open enough above to give it a go, though brush was definitely more prevalent now and could still prove a serious impediment. The slopes were steep but had been grazed by cows, leaving good footing and convenient paths through the brush. The last hundred feet was a modestly brushy scramble through the denser forest understory before clambering up and over some loose, lichen-covered rock to reach the ridgeline. Here the trees gave way to chaparral as I traversed the sunnier south side of the ridge, the brush proving to be as unobstructive as I might have hoped.

It was 1:30p by the time I reached the summit, having taken little more than an hour and a half. I found only a few stacked rocks at the summit, but otherwise nothing of interest save the views. These were actually quite fine - I could see both summits I had climbed earlier, Toll BM and Sugarloaf, to the south and southeast. There was also a good view in that direction of Peak 5,565ft - the last P1K in the area that I would miss on this trip, giving me a reason to come back to the area once again (though probably as a night hike). Around me to the west, north and east spread miles of hilly cowboy country, all looking rather dapper draped in green. I took a steeper route down the north side on the return, allowing me to use the upper section of road I had forgone from the saddle earlier. This proved a very speedy descent, getting me back to the road and the saddle where the cows still lay in wait for me in less than 40 minutes. It would take only 30 minutes more to get back to the car thanks to easy jogging down the grass slopes. Once again I was lucky to reach the car without a vehicle driving by. I wasted no time getting inside and taking off. I was happy not to find a note tucked under my wiper blade as well.

I spent half an hour driving counterclockwise around the loop of country roads, eventually ending up on Walker Basin Rd and the Rankin Cemetery. This plot of land dates to 1888 when the cemetery was built by the Rankin family, a local landowner. There are a dozen plots across at least three generations of Rankins represented in the cemetery along with a host of other neighbors. On one side of the cemetery away from the road is a ranch residence. Their mailboxes are just outside the cemetery gates. On the other side of the road, across from the cemetery, is a gate to a road leading to the summit of Harper Peak, my last objective of the day. Using the photographing of the cemetery as a convenient excuse to stop here, I made sure the coast was clear before putting my camera away, jogging across the road and slipping through the pair of gates. Interestingly, there is not a single No Trespassing sign of any kind anywhere on the gate or along the fenceline that I could see, so it's possible I wasn't actually trespassing. The gates themselves weren't locked, merely closed. The road I was to take was not heavily used. Grass grew obligingly on the roadway, indicating only light use. There were some cows to the south a short ways, but none elsewhere on the route this afternoon.

I followed the road for some four miles, climbing more than 2,000ft. Higher up the road shows signs of more traffic, probably via another route from the east. The summit comes into view about a mile after starting out, still a good distance off to the east. There is a large rectangular white square visible on the west shoulder of the peak, its purpose unclear but possibly some sort of radio reflector. The road does not go all the way to the summit, but skirts under the north side of the top. The chaparral at the top is very dense and very difficult to bull one's way through. Luckily, where the road begins to traverse off the NW Ridge and across the north side, there is an old use trail of sorts that can be used for the final quarter mile to the summit after crossing a fence. I'm not sure if this was made by cows or previous visitors, but it was very key in getting me to the summit in less than ten minutes. I might have spent an hour or more forcing my way through the thickets otherwise.

Unlike Stevenson, I found a benchmark and the remnants of a survey tower. After nearly giving up, I stumbled upon a forgotten Sierra Club register left by R.S. Fink back in 1969. There ere only four entries since then, the last in 1983, nearly 30yrs ago. I squeezed my name in the last line on the second page and carefully replaced it as I found it, perhaps for another 30 year hiatus. The views were similar to those on Stevenson, though ten miles displaced to the northwest. I finally realized that the high peak to the north was Piute Mtn, which at over 8,000ft effectively blocks out views further north into the Sierra. Breckenridge does likewise to the northwest, towering to 7,500ft on the far side of Walker Basin (Harper Peak by comparison is under 6,000ft). With the aid of some jogging, I was back down to the road in 50 minutes. Having time to study the dirt road I was descending, I spotted all sorts of animal tracks in the dust, including those of a not-so-large bear that happened to ramble down the route within the past few days.

It was almost 6p by the time I finished. A shower, another stop at Starbucks in Tehachapi and then a drive east into the Mojave desert had me wandering around the massive wind tubine farm found southwest of Mojave. I was searching for the PCT trailhead I expected to find somewhere along Cottonwood Creek, but I found no sign of the PCT or any trailhead. I ended up at the end of a dirt road where a gate marked No Trespassing barred further access. It was dark and I wasn't sure exactly where I was and whether there was a ranch home on the other side of the gate somewhere (it was clearly a well-used road), but I knew I was close to where I wanted to be. I found a flat space to park the van overnight, figuring I'd work out the details in the morning. I had some more P1Ks and a delisted HPS summit in mind for the next two days starting from around here. Now to figure out just where "here" is...

Continued...

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