I provide a free route map, but you can also download a hike/drive GPX to assist you and to help support my site. Before sharing my GPX tracks with others, please remember my site is a free resource and I'm charging nominal fees to offset my substantial costs.
GPX track added to your cart.
Dec 12, 2016 — Bridge Mountain is the gorgeous lightly-colored dome seen from below on the east along the Red Rock Canyon scenic drive. It's likely one of the more popular scramble routes in the area. However, the standard route approaches Bridge Mountain from the west, not through Pine Creek Canyon (the route described here). The main issue with using the standard route is the bad approach road. If you have a burly vehicle, you can make it to the trailhead from Rocky Gap Road (off the Red Rock scenic drive), or you could come from Lovell Road (which is horrible). If you want to follow that standard route, you can check out my Bridge Mountain standard route trip report. That trip report likely describes the final summit ascent a bit better than this older trip report does.
The route described here adds on miles of fun and gorgeous boulder-hopping through Pine Creek Canyon and Fern Canyon in order to get from the Red Rock Canyon Scenic Drive to the ridge leading to Bridge Mountain, where it meets up with the standard Bridge Mountain route. It's a longer outing to Bridge Mountain, but I'd say a favorite of mine in Red Rock Canyon. Additionally, accessing the trailhead is trivial, requiring you only drive the Red Rock scenic drive and park at the Pine Creek Trailhead, whereas the standard route requires a long road walk or a burly enough vehicle.
From the Pine Creek Trailhead, we followed the Pine Creek Trail leading to the mouth of the canyon. Unfortunately there are a ton of social trails that lead all over the place, making the primary route unclear. The brush got too bad on the northern bank, but eventually we found a reasonable string of trails that allowed us to drop into north fork of Pine Creek Canyon, also known as Fern Canyon. The scenery here is really nice, with narrower sections of canyon, flowing water, and green mosses and ferns. There's a ton of Class 2/3 boulder-hopping, and harder moves can usually be avoided via wrap-arounds. This is the same approach used for accessing Bridge Point, which we did a few years later.
We reached an impassable waterfall, but a vegetated gully on its right led higher up. After navigating on a slickrock slope just right of the drainage for a short time, we then dropped back in for some more obstacles. We continued west through Fern Canyon, more boulder-hopping and talus cave scrambling along the way, eventually making it to the slickrock slabs marking the head of the drainage. We left Fern Canyon and worked generally northeast, following Class 2/3 slabs with great views and occasional light exposure. A couple of more difficult Class 3 moves break up the steep sandstone slab walk. A large boulder forming a crack to squeeze through takes the route off the first main slab to wrap around a serious cliff face. Some ups and downs around various obstacles led to a wide ledge and more Class 2/3 slab. The terrain here is tricky and navigating well is critical. Over the years, many cairns have been placed to assist in route-finding, but this isn't a great first-timer route in Red Rock Canyon NCA.
Our goal was to reach the east-west ridge marking the standard route for Bridge Mountain. Bridge Mountain was in view, but the face in front of us dropped sharply. Fortunately, an unlikely rock rib leads up into a chute, where a Class 3 slab safely leads to higher ground. It was an easy uphill walk to the ridge from here. Once on the standard route ridge, we focused our attention east toward Bridge Mountain. Some fun Class 2 and 3 obstacles lead down to the saddle below. The route tended to stick to the right (south) side of the ridge, utilizing gullies/cracks to avoid cliffs on the north side. A gorgeous slickrock walk with excellent views in all directions then brought us to the base of the peak.
The sight of Bridge Mountain's impressive dome-like face never fails to amaze me. From the saddle, a on the left provides a nice crack with minimal exposure for enjoyable Class 3 scrambling for about a hundred feet. A cairn marks a significant ledge on the left, indicating the ideal point to leave the crack. Shortly after starting on this ledge, another, shorter crack emerges on the right, leading us to the base of the bridge for which Bridge Mountain is known.
While there might be alternative routes to gain higher ground from the arch, our choice was to pass through it and ascend a Class 3 ramp within the grotto housing the arch. Beyond this ramp, veering left provides a scenic viewpoint of a large tank, while heading right leads to the summit of Bridge Mountain. Just before the peak is the unique "hidden forest," a cluster of coniferous trees nestled together in a spacious tank. The route to reach the summit involves ascending a cool-looking rock rib on the right of the "forest," offering an immense view down into the canyons below.
Past the rock rib, a Class 2 ascent on a sandstone slope leads to a steep Class 2 ramp lasting about a hundred feet, forming an ascending traverse to the left up the summit dome. Reaching the summit from this point involves Class 2 terrain. After enjoying the views for a while, we retraced our steps using the same route back.
Please consider helping me out if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all site fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing these trip reports is unpaid. You can also hire me as a web developer. I really appreciate it!
If you find my site helpful, please help me replace my many broken cameras, fund my website fees (hosting, APIs, security), or just support my countless hours of work. I pay for all expenses myself, and all trip reports I post are unpaid and unsponsored, so any support is really appreciated!
If using PayPal, please select their option for "Sending to a friend" so they don't take out fees, thank you.
My site is free to use, but consider sending me a few bucks to help keep it running. Thanks in advance!