Southern Nevada Spring 2022

Last Thanksgiving, I left some chips on the table. (Hey, it's Nevada!) We ran out of time to do full justice to a really wonderful hike in the southwestern part of Gold Butte National Monument. (To be fully truthful, the hike is in the adjacent part of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, but accessed through Gold Butte). I decided that I'd collaborate with my friend Deborah, who came on that first attempt, and put a trip on the WMC schedule that would go the full distance, and add more fun hikes in the same area.

On Thursday March 17th, Hong and I drove down to St George and met up with Jim at the Costco gas pumps. Jim and Deborah then did the right thing and checked traffic on their cell phone apps, while I blithely drove with Hong into a 1-hour traffic jam between exit 118 and exit 112 on I-15 west of Mesquite. Urk. We finally hooked up and drove past the Bundy Ranch and Pyramid Bob's pyramid into Gold Butte.

We camped at the Connoly Wash corral, close to the end of the good part of the Cottonwood Wash road. I was ecstatic to get such a nice spot, so close to the hikes.

On Friday, we got an early start on the hike that ran out of time over Thanksgiving. We breezed up the burro trail to the saddle into Indian Hills Wash, then took our time heading downstream into the upper narrows. The ground was literally carpeted with flowers — it seemed to alternate between Coulter's lupine and a tiny yellow composite flower. The Mojave yuccas were in bloom, with spectacular cream and purplish inflorescences. The birds were also wonderful; Deborah and Jim pointed out the antics of the phainopeplas, little black birds with crests and white stripes on their wings. They can sit on a branch, suddenly shoot up and grab a bug, then return, making a lightning-fast loop.

We made good time through the upper narrows, then after a break of a mile, we entered what I had previously considered the lower narrows. This is all incredible territory, but I was really curious to know what came after the pour-off where we stopped in November. I knew that there was an easy way around that pour-off, but would there be a showstopper pour-off around the next bend?

The answer is “no.” There is a third set of narrows, the true lower narrows. The obstacles in it are all class 3, just as in the other narrows, so the entirety of this amazing canyon can be done without ropes or serious exposure. The walls remain tall and spectacular down into the Lake Mead high stand, where huge piles of driftwood show up. In fact, we had to clamber over one long pile that filled the canyon from wall to wall, which was a bit disconcerting.

After a while, we came out onto the dried-up mudflats which are the bed of (the former) Lake Mead. We bashed our way through dead tamarisk in search of the Colorado River, but that quickly grew tiring. We stopped for lunch on a knob of rock overlooking the “lake.” It sure would be nice if a flood would wash all the debris out of the bottom of the canyon, but if the weather were to be that wet, then the lake might come up again and drown it.

Unlike in November, we did see a few boot prints this time, proving that the canyon is not completely undiscovered. It still felt cool to have it all to ourselves, though.

go to the Indian Hills Wash gallery

On Saturday, we did a completely exploratory loop. The hike started from our campsite and went 0.3 mi north on the road to a very faint jeep track on the east side that descends into New Spring Wash. I was a bit surprised to see a concrete tank with water at the spring; I had assumed that it would be dry.

We then followed the wash downstream through an increasingly deep gorge. There are a couple of class 4-ish obstacles that can be passed on the south side, but otherwise it's pretty straightforward. The gorge exits into a broad valley and becomes Million Hills Wash. Million Hills Wash in turn has a short gorge of its own with a fun double arch at the top.

We continued down into the wide lower valley of Million Hills Wash until we got a view of the bottom of the Connoly Canyon gorge, our return route. It's pretty outrageous and hard to miss; we had lunch and admired it, and also admired the view down to the Colorado River gorge. A flock of hawks or turkey buzzards that was circling in the distance began to approach us, and I wondered whether we were on the menu, but we left before we could find out.

Connoly Wash is dramatic. I was expecting good scenery here, and it delivered even more than I'd hoped. There are two sections of exceptionally deep gorge, where steeply dipping sedimentary beds produce big walls that the gorge punches through. The terrain is so gnarly that I had a bit of trouble navigating — just go left at the first big fork, and right at the second one.

Once out of the gorge, it's still a long way back to camp. I was pretty relieved when we hit the Cottonwood Wash road again. But I was happy to have another beautiful day in the desert.

go to the New Spring Wash / Connoly Wash gallery

For Sunday, we decided to go to the granite country at the top of Cottonwood Wash. I had planned a loop; we left my 4Runner at the top of the loop, so that we wouldn't have to walk the road at the end of the hike. Instead, we walked down the rough road, past the starting point for the Indian Hills Wash hike, then picked up the rocky canyon that would take us into the hills on the west side of the road.

“Rocky” turned out to be an understatement. The wash was a narrow gorge that twisted its way over pour-offs and through huge boulder piles. It was very pretty, but the route-finding was so tough that it took us well over an hour to go a mile up the canyon. The next section involved a steep series of consecutive pour-offs, so I decided to pass it by going up the slope on the south side of the wash. That route was better but it was still pretty slow. When we reached the top, we discovered that it didn't just drop into the upper basin, and we had to go up and down through more boulders before we could drop in.

We were now finally at the foot of the granite peaks that we'd been looking at all morning from a distance. To make the loop work, we needed to cross the ridge just north of the northernmost peak, so we battled our way up the slabs and through the cat-claw acacia. Every time I thought that we were in range, another boulder-choked gully opened up and we had to work around it or through it. Eventually I spotted a relatively clear area below a knob at our level, and we scrambled our way there. We took a break for lunch and considered our options.

It was already 1 PM, and we had covered maybe 2.5 miles. At that rate, we'd be back to camp well after dark. I decided that we should give up on the loop and hunt for the jeep road in the basin to the north, then follow that back to the main Cottonwood Wash road. Although the terrain to the north wasn't quite as rocky and rugged as what we'd just come through, it still had challenges. Each little drainage leading to the basin was choked with brush and boulders. We kept contouring to the north, looking for an easier way down, when Deborah finally ran across an old bulldozer track.

The hike down the jeep road was much less stressful than the slog through the lovely but difficult granite slabs. There were huge tracts of gorgeous desert goldenpoppies, and grand views down to the puddle that was now Lake Mead. The bad news was that we had to hike a mile and a half back up the road to the vehicle, but I was grateful that we'd avoided getting stuck among the boulders.

go to the Cottonwood Wash gallery