Hike Fire Range Traverse (The Ring of Fires) Lake Mead National Recreation Area, NV

Nov 21, 2021 — A few years ago I hiked Fire Benchmark via a much shorter machination, one that was pretty exploratory, but I never felt like that route was complete. For one, I skipped the southern portion of the range, but also the more remote peaks to the west. However, after gaining knowledge of the area after that hike, and some route-finding info from Paula Raimondi in the East and West Longwell Ridges area, I was feeling confident about attempting a much larger day. This isn't the sort of hike I wanted to do alone though due to its extremely rugged nature. It just so happened that my friend Luke was in town and he is always up for the most epic and masochistic mountain days possible. There were a few blind spots in our route, but we were feeling antsy to just go for it, and we knew there were a few bail points along the way should we run out of daylight or need to get out of there for some reason. What ensued was an incredibly fun day in the desert that bagged pretty much everything of significance in the Fire Range (a sub-range of the Muddy Mountains). I called the route Class 4 even though there really were no true Class 4 sections. However, the Class 3 and 3+ was abundant and significant and there was some light exposure at times. Luke lovingly dubbed the loop we created the "Ring of Fires".

Luke and I got our regular too-late of a start, but we were both fine with that. We decided to go for our planned loop going clockwise since most of the more serious and unknown stuff was on the first half. The only beta we had for accessing the first peak, The Raven, from this direction was from a pretty useless sentence in a guidebook, so we decided to go our own way. We started through the desert and headed up a minor drainage that is difficult to describe, but hopefully the attached map will provide clarity. The drainage had some fun Class 3 blocky ledges to get over small cliffs and as the terrain steepened, we left the drainage and ascended a Class 2/3 slope to the northeastern ridge of The Raven. While you can likely reach this ridge from other directions, we were content with our choice so far, nothing exceeding Class 3+ scrambling, and no exposure. Once on the ridge, we were instantly thrilled to find cliff band after cliff band of solid, sticky limestone with very fun moves. We pulled multiple Class 3/3+ fun stuff with basically no fear of the rock breaking.This would be a theme for the majority of the day, but we didn't know that yet and it was a great starting boost to our confidence. Separating the cliff bands was easy slope walking. We somehow made incredibly fast work of the ridge and were on The Raven's summit in about 40 minutes.

Our blood pumping with delight and mutual psych for all the peaks to come, we headed down The Raven in order to reach our next peak, East Longwell Ridge. Both Longwell Ridge high points are lower than the rest of the main Fire range. This meant we'd be descending to get those two peaks, and then re-ascend to regain the main Fires group. We thought it would be the most efficient way to bag all the peaks, and it really did work out nicely. After all, they weren't that much lower and we were in the headspace for making this a big day. It seems more common to bag these two peaks independently from the rest of the Fires via a dirt road that separates them if driving in from the south.

Descending the south ridge from The Raven went very well, lots of Class 2/2+ on small outcrops, but otherwise sometimes loose rock on the walkable sections. We hugged the rim of a major cliff on our left and left the rim as soon as we located a Class 2/3 viable down. The rim gets easier the lower it gets, but we didn't want to continue descending the wrong way. A steep slope brought us to the saddle of The Raven and East Longwell Ridge. Here we scoped a significant Class 2/3 ramp that led up the majority of the north face of the peak. Past this ramp were more cliff bands, routes ranging from Class 2 to Class 4, but you can avoid all Class 4 if you choose. It's almost like a maze, get up one cliff band, scout along a big sloped ledge for the next weakness in the subsequent cliff band, repeat. Soon we were on Longwell Ridge East, but didn't linger. We backtracked to its saddle with The Raven and were moving yet again to the base of West Longwell Ridge.

West Longwell Ridge has a major cliff band around its summit, but its northern ridge is quite easy. We could have hiked all the way to the ridge and ascended from there, but instead we followed Paula's route to gain the summit. This required a Class 2 ascent along the northeast ridge and then Class 3 fun up a cliff band. From the summit we did take the north ridge to continue along the ridge crest. Next up is The Phoenix. From West Longwell Ridge it looks pretty intimidating, and we thought we might have to figure out another route to reach it, but we'd soon learn otherwise. There's a hump below this peak that might be tempting to side-hill around, but that looked pretty scary from above, and aside from a short Class 3 section to get down from the hump's north side, it went easily.

Now at the base of The Phoenix, we realized the ridge that popped out the most looked doable, and in fact, quite fun. We started up and were greeted by an excessive amount of very fun Class 3 scrambling. You can make it a little harder if you would like, but the route-finding is easy and the movement is a blast. We got to its summit and dubbed the peak The Phoenix. Why? The range high point is Fire Benchmark and its neighboring peak farther west was The Raven. It felt like a logical etymological leap. We're not even sure this peak is taller than its unnamed neighbor to the east, but we kind of didn't care. The scramble was fun and the unranked/unnamed bump needed a name. We continued north along the ridgeline, still unsure if the route would go from here. Turning back now would be a pretty unfortunate task, and we thought we might have to as we neared a significant drop-off. We got lucky. Very lucky. A somewhat exposed Class 3 scramble led safely down the precipice and back to the ridge crest. Overjoyed, we carried on.

More Class 2 and otherwise relatively easy ridge walking led to the base of Fire Benchmark. This was yet another spectacular Class 3 ascent, mimicking the one earlier up The Phoenix. This one can also be kept Class 3, maybe 3+, with options to make it more difficult if you're feeling some burlier scrambling. Now on Fire Benchmark, we became aware that the rest of the route would be a no-brainer, since I'd been on its majority in the past, and the remaining questionable section beneath Bighorn Peak was put to rest by Adam Walker, who assured us there was a way, but more on that later.

The north ridge coming down from Fire Benchmark was Class 2 for the first few hundred feet, but then the ridge crest became Class 4 and spicy. To bypass this, I dropped off the ridge to the right and descended easier terrain that hugged the base of the ridge's cliffs. Safely below, a short Class 3 move off a cliff band led to easy desert hiking below. We continued north to Peak 3740, all easy terrain complete with an animal trail until the southeastern ridge of the peak. More fun Class 2/3 led along the crest and up to the peak. Very fun.

We backtracked a short bit from Peak 3740's summit and located a weakness in its significantly cliffy eastern face. A short section of steep and loose Class 2/3 led us down the peak's east face and onto loose Class 2, progressively becoming pleasant again the farther we got. Easy hiking brought us up to Peak 3399, an unranked little guy along the way. As we made our way up we noticed that just south of its summit was an unnamed arch, which we were surprised to find was quite large and very cool.  We continued east along the ridge and dropped down on a short Class 2/3 section to reach Peak 3399's saddle with Bighorn Peak. We started up the peak's easy west ridge, making it about 200 feet before we were faced with the substantial cliff that would block us from keeping to the ridge crest. This was the last questionable portion of our day. On my previous hike, I descended Bighorn Peak via its scary south ridge, but Adam confirmed there was a way to wrap around the north side of the ridge and keep to the slopes below. I was unaware of this alternative at the time, and was excited to try it. While Adam had kept very low and used an awful-looking gully, we decided to hug the base of the cliff and follow an significant bighorn sheep trail. Aside from a short section of light exposure on a Class 2 ledge, this went splendidly. We stayed as close to the cliff as we could dropping occasionally when the terrain became a little scary. You'll see a bit of squiggling around here on the attached map. On that map it also looks like we could have just hopped up to the ridgeline since the ascent route to Bighorn Peak is so close, but no, there's a 30-foot cliff blocking access. Instead we just kept hugging the cliff and eventually found a short Class 3 scramble bringing us to the rim above.

After a quick jaunt to Bighorn Peak and back, we continued along the ridge crest to North Fire Peak, Class 2. This section has some slightly off map imagery on the attached map, but it shouldn't affect your route-finding at all - the ridgeline is straightforward. The views of Valley of Fire State Park were amazing from here, but we kept moving because daylight was dwindling. We passed over North Fire Peak - East Peak and continued southeast along the most obvious ridge possible. The terrain around here was a bit hard to read since all the ridges sort of blended together as big desert lumps. Easy hiking led all the way to the base of Peak 3363, with one section jsut before that required wrapping to the right (west) around an obstacle, but bighorned sheep already forged a nice trail.

Class 2 led to Peak 3363's summit, and then we jsut kept going south along the pleasant ridgeline. The final descent to Northshore Road, which we could now see below, started out as pleasant Class 2/3 along the ridge crest. However, about halfway down the slope the ridge sort of just drops off. To avoid this, keep an eye open on the right to locate a Class 3 weakness in the ridgeline to get to mellower terrain below. I highly recommend making sure you're doing this section before dark. We were very happy we didn't have to navigate the cliff in the dark, since we likely wouldn't have thought to leave the ridge crest and would have been pretty f***ed. I marked this spot on the attached map since it could be a significant obstacle to think about. Once on the more mellow slope, the somewhat loose terrain led down into a major drainage below. A social trail brought us out of the drainage and up to Northshore Road. We followed the road 1.5+ miles back to our cars. What. A. Day.