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Jan 23, 2020 — After hiking Muggins Peak a couple of years ago, I returned to the Muggins Mountains to do Klothos Temple, Muggins' neighbor. This route ended up being a bit better, in my opinion. While Muggins Peak had a fun section toward the summit after lots of rough scree, Klothos Temple has a nice social trail through some intersting desert wilderness. Klothos Temple is the high point of a stretch of desert prominence called Long Mountain. A guy at the trailhead spent some time explaining to us that back in the day, Muggins was called something completely different, and Klothos was called Long. He was a little upset that people renamed the peaks, and seemed content with confusing us by referring to the peaks as their old names. Anyway, I digress.
Matt and I set out from the trailhead, heading north along the Muggins Peak Loop Trail (an official trail that wraps around Muggins Peak) through a short section of narrows. When the cliffs fell away, we headed northwest up a side wash, and then followed another major drainage north. We started encountering cairns, which led usually on the right side of the drainage to avoid extra rock-hopping. The route led through a short narrow section of canyon before spitting us out at the bottom of a Class 2 not particularly fun slope. We headed to the ridge above. At least two routes worked, but I included the better one (which was also cairned) on my attached map.
From the top of the slope, we headed east along the ridge, and then curved north, following a pretty well-defined social trail. The trail keeps close enough to the rim that the views east toward Muggins Peak are captivating. About halfway along the ridge, there was a single Class 2+ move, and then the route stuck generally to the west of the cliffs, ultimately avoiding crumbly cliffs and a jagged knife-edge. The last few hundred feet followed the base of the knife-edge, whose cliffy walls had Matt (a geologist) excited. Overall, I thought this made for a nice hike with a rarely-encountered trail in a somewhat remote area.
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