Where: Red Rock Canyon, Nevada
When: Spring 2005 or so
Partners: Donnie B
One morning, Donnie B led me up the fabulous, locally-named Mescalito Canyon on an ascent of Yoga Peak, a high, obscure sandstone peak that he had made the first ascent of a few years earlier. Not really a peak by the typical standards, the incredible viewpoint becomes a classic when approached from the canyons to the east. They are fun and unbelievably scenic, lush with vegetations and waterfalls, good scrambling, and often, a nice breeze on a warm day.
Once on the summit of Yoga Peak, we admired the fine views of neighboring peaks, such as Bridge Mountain, Juniper Peak, Gunsight Notch Peak, Rainbow Wall and Rainbow Mountain, Magic Mountain and Ramp Peak, and signed the register, which only had a couple of sign-in's at the time, and we pondered what to do next. With hardly a word spoken, we decided to drop directly down the east ridge of the peak and explore a new way out via Fern Canyon.
Our route down worked like a charm. Downclimbing a chimney then walking steep slabs, we soon dropped north into upper Fern Canyon. A bit of interesting scrambling and downclimbing brought us to steep slickrock at the base of upper Fern Canyon's giant head. Below that, more fantastic scenery, then we were back on familiar terrain in lower Fern Canyon, that which we'd both used before on ascents of Mescalito.
A Mescalito Canyon-Fern Canyon loop via Yoga Peak makes a fine day out for those strong hikers and scramblers in good condition. A good eye for route-finding helps a bunch too!
Red Rock's Yoga Peak
