Mar 28, 2018 — Black Butte Road, the dirt road off of Gold Butte Road, the main road into the national monument, was fine for my car. There are sections that may require higher clearance, but it only gets more rough about a mile from where I parked at the base of Bitter Ridge.
This exploratory route through Gold Butte National Monument includes the high point of Bitter Ridge, and the interesting Little Finland (aka Hobgoblin's Playground). I wasn't sure if my car could make it out to Little Finland, so I contrived a general route to try to make the day more interesting than bumping over rocks in my Subaru for hours. So, I decided to park at the base of Bitter Ridge, along Black Butte Road, and hike along the ridge, which included a couple of Class 3 downclimbs, until I could find a reasonable way down. After summitting the high point and looking southeast into the red rock absurdity, I got too excited and wanted to get off Bitter Ridge as soon as I could to go explore the washes and colorful rocks. The way down I took was probably not the best - it was very steep and sandy and just didn't feel particularly kind to the slope. Once I started down, though, I just kept going. From below, the ridge didn't seem to ease up much farther down, but maybe there's something more reasonable that I couldn't see? Anyway, once off Bitter Ridge, I found a beautiful bright red sandy wash nestled between lumps of red that I followed past a seeping rock and deeper into Gold Butte National Monument. My route is on the map attached, but it's sort of a choose your own adventure sort of deal. Just be careful of all the cryptobiotic soil that is pretty much everywhere and try to follow animal trails, of which there were many. Along the way, I also passed some brightly colored formations that reminded me of the famous The Wave, and even entered a section of slick narrows. Eventually, I made it past the very green Red Rock Springs Wash and to Little Finland, where there are an uncountable number of interesting flaky rock formations. I continued through the rocky area that surrounded Little Finland and found a pretty straightforward Class 3 route up into a region with many small natural arches everywhere before I found a Class 2 gully back down to the opposite side of Little Finland. From here, I continued up the Red Rock Springs Wash and took a side trip up a narrow slot canyon between two white domes before continuing through the white domes and finding another narrow slot that led me to flatter land northeast of the white domes area. A trail brought me back to the parking area.
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