Peak Fun

[bluerail]

I love that picture. Sam Fink is a nice little peak Jim, youre right you need to give it a visit.

Very cool trip Jim, you must have had a blast!

[Hikin_Jim]

yeah, it was a pretty nice trip. I was very pleasantly surprised how nice Palm View Peak was. It seems like 7000' is the dividing line in the San Jacs. Start getting above 7000', and things start greening up.

Some of the more desert like peaks were pretty cool too.

Oh, and I've been talking to a certain mutual friend of ours about another form of insanity. Recognize these? (not in the San Jacs)


HJ

[zippetydude]

Cool trip HJ and nice job. Antsell sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll ever do it. Is it possible to get to the top without bushwhacking and with no real exposure?

BTW, since you seem to have explored the area just a little bit (!) I wonder if you know if there's a name for a feature looking off to the west from Black Mountain Truck Trail. It's a huge round rock, down probably at around 4000' elevation, a few miles out. I've seen if from the freeway as well, so it's pretty obvious. I tried to find a way to it from the Twin Pines area on the way to Idyllwild, but both sides of the road seem to always be private property, blocking my path to go explore. Anyway, you know anything about it?

z

[bluerail]

Sure do Jim, soon , very soon.

[Hikin_Jim]

Hi, Zip,

Cool trip HJ and nice job. Antsell sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll ever do it. Is it possible to get to the top without bushwhacking and with no real exposure?

Antsell Rock is pretty airy up top. There's not a whole lot of room to wander around on the very summit.


The exposure looking off pretty much any side is fairly significant.


The rock is quite fractured and loose once you get into the upper, red rock zone, which makes for "interesting" scrambling. It's not bad, but if you're not comfortable with exposure, I don't know. It might not be a good idea.


The only non-technical route that I know about is this west facing chute (see below) on the NW flanks of the peak. I'm looking down here. The gully is steep, loose, and full of scrub oaks. I had a water bladder fastened to the outside of my pack. I punctured the water bladder and lost a lot of my water forcing my way through the brush here.


There are three routes that get you to the base of the rock itself; I've used two. Once you get to the rock itself, I believe that the above pictured chute and the below pictured crack must be climbed in order to gain the summit.


The crack is very solid, very grippy, but it is multiple times a man's height (60 ft?), so there's some exposure. Then you have to go up, over a chock stone, cross a rib, and then traverse some ledges horizontally to enter the chute. The chock stones aren't bad; much easier to down climb than the chock stone on the approach to Cornell from the east for example.

Here's the ledge that must be traversed to go from the rib to the chute:


If I were trying to avoid exposure and brush, maybe Antsell wouldn't be my first pick.

BTW, since you seem to have explored the area just a little bit (!) I wonder if you know if there's a name for a feature looking off to the west from Black Mountain Truck Trail. It's a huge round rock, down probably at around 4000' elevation, a few miles out. I've seen if from the freeway as well, so it's pretty obvious. I tried to find a way to it from the Twin Pines area on the way to Idyllwild, but both sides of the road seem to always be private property, blocking my path to go explore. Anyway, you know anything about it?

Sheesh, give me something hard why don't you? lol.

There are a couple of truly massive boulders out west and north of the area that you're talking about that I believe could be seen from Interstate 10. They're impressively large. Take a look at this satellite photo. You'll need to zoom in to level one or level two to really see them. These are on the ridge leading to Cabazon peak. They'd be skylined from the freeway and therefore visible. The upper one is actually around 5,000 feet but is the most classically boulder shaped. The lower one is perhaps more visible but is more of a composite boulder. Could it be one of those? These suckers are HUGE.

HJ

[Hikin_Jim]

Sure do Jim, soon , very soon.

It was the weirdest thing. I mean call me psychic, but I just had this uncanny sense that, remote as it is, someone had been there before. I'm not sure what made me feel that way, but I sometimes pick up on subtle stuff.



HJ

[Ellen]