Lawson Cove

Regardless of where you parked on the dirt track, you'll continue down the track to the south. The track gets better defined as it climbs into the forest. Cliffs appear on the east side of the canyon.

It's a lovely green forest even though there is no surface water, with pinyons, junipers, white firs and ponderosas. Keep pushing up the canyon even after the road fades, until you can see the south wall. At this point, you should turn west up the slope.

The slope is fairly steep and it's often loose. Pick your way through the trees and around deadfall. There are a few cliff bands, like the one in the photo. Try to avoid drifting north, where the mountain-mahogany is more aggressive and the cliff bands are more prevalent.

You crest quite abruptly at a flattish summit ridge, bounded by cliffs on the west.

Turn south (left) and stroll over rolling ridges to the high point visible to the southwest. The map calls this bump Peak 8918 or Ranch Benchmark. It's easy walking through open forest.

At the summit, you encounter the final set of west-facing cliffs, which loom over Pine Valley. There are fine views out to the Indian Peak Range, Mountain Home Range and Snake Range. There are almost no signs of civilization; SR-21 is a tiny stripe in the desert, and you may be able to make out structures at the Forest Service's Desert Experimental Range along the road.

The forest on top is mostly bristlecones, with a few mountain-mahogany trees here and there. Some of the bristlecones are gorgeous, particularly the ones along the ridge to the north of the summit.

The return leg of the loop follows the bottom of the drainage to the northeast of the summit. There is some deadfall, but it's mostly easy walking.

You drop into a wonderful zone where white firs, ponderosas, bristlecones and pinyons mix together in a green but open forest. The deadfall and brush increases as you head down, but it's not very hard to find routes through the brush. The best routes are usually in or beside the wash.

The walls of the valley close in and form a gorge. There are rock spires on both sides. One side drainage has some very interesting minerals — I found a thumb-size transparent quartz crystal in the sand, although most of the quartz is in the form of jasper.

The gorge gets pretty and shady as it approaches a climax. There are a couple of very minor scrambles to climb down fallen boulders and small pour-offs. The valley opens out again, and after a while you reach the Lawson Cove track again. Turn north (left) to get back to your vehicle.

The main Lawson Cove road continues west past the turn-off for Lawson Cove Canyon, turning north to climb a ridge. You can drive out to the north toward Crystal Peak but the road is quite marginal and overgrown. You will want high clearance and you shouldn't care too much about your paint job. It's very slow going — it's actually faster to go east back out to the Wah Wah Valley road and north, even though that's many miles longer, because the road higher up is in such bad condition.