Hike Little Maria Mountains High Point Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area BLM, CA

Jan 28, 2023 — Drastically different visually from its neighboring Big Maria Mountains, the Little Maria Mountains include a chaotic limestone wonderland and are much less easily accessed. Despite lots of slow driving after hiking Palen Mountain earlier today, we had plenty of time to add this excellent summit to the itinerary. Tyler and I were both looking forward to checking out the Little Maria Mountains High Point after seeing its colorful southern face and learning of a particularly cryptic route-finding excursion that Bob Burd pieced together and shared years ago. We really enjoyed the route and thought this was a very unique desert peak.

To reach the trailhead, leave pavement here (33.81745, -114.74829) and follow Arlington Mine Road as it heads west, keeping left at this fork (33.81622, -114.85743) and otherwise just following the excellent dirt road until this junction (33.82853, -114.93378). Keep right here on the still good road, but turn right shortly after here (33.83161, -114.93821) onto a spur road. While not bad to drive on, the road leading out to the trailhead is narrow enough that we got tons of pinstripes on our cars, both of us are pretty much immune to the sounds of our vehicles shrieking from catclaw and palo verde swipes at this point in our peakbagging careers. This road is good for a Crossover vehicle all the way to where we parked.

We hiked north along an eroded mining road for a couple of miles, climbing in and out of a couple of major portions of washout. As we approached the peak, both of us were delighted by the extremely bright limestone rock face and impossible-looking terrain above. What a wild-looking mountain. The mining road ended and we continued north through the desert, up and over a small hill and then down into the major wash draining from above. We ascended toward a tall dryfall, leaving the wash before reaching the dryfall to ascend a Class 2 slope to its left in order to wrap around it. Now we were just below the impressive limestone face that looked so intimidating from below. Thrilled we had sunscreen and sunglasses to protect from the head-on sunlight reflecting off the wall, we commented more than once through our abundant sweat that the route was extremely cool.

We followed an animal trail that took us along a widely sloped ledge-like feature at the base of the limestone cliff and above the watercourse housing the dryfall. This ledge ascended gradually at first, then dropped abruptly into the watercourse (Class 2). From here we used an unusual limestone chute providing fun Class 2/3 scrambling for a hundred feet or so. Still at the base of the sheer limestone cliff, we ascended adjacent to a steep slope where dirt met limestone and made significant vertical progress as we traversed east, our goal being to reach the south ridge of the peak. Eventually the limestone was met with a cliff, so we traversed right across a short Class 2 slab and were then looking up at a brown, cliffy-looking slope. The fun wasn't over, but this was more of a typical, loose desert scramble. Zig-zagging up this slope met us with Class 2 and plenty of Class 2+ on loose rock. Tyler and I separated as best we could since there was plenty of rockfall hazard potential. There is one significant cliff that I chose to wrap around on the right, while Tyler pulled some Class 3+ moves on loose boulders that didn't interest me at all.

Now at the south ridge of the Little Maria Mountains High Point, we started north along the crest, but only for a short time. The crest became jagged so we kept to the right, traversing beneath copious rock outcroppings, gaining and losing small amounts of elevation. When we rounded a corner and reached the base of a large monolith-looking structure, we could see a bright-white clump of rock above that marked the false summit. Our notes read that staying high here would result in dangerous terrain, so we made a descending traverse toward a significant chute, losing a couple hundred vertical. This traverse didn't exceed Class 2/2+, though it's steep and loose. We hugged the base of the cliff and made it into the chute, starting up with some fun scrambling. Boulder-hopping on Class 2 brought us up and out of this chute, and then another chute followed, taking us up to just below the bright false summit. We traversed west below the false summit until we located a Class 3 limestone headwall ascent option, the only real weakness in the cliff we could see. A final bit of Class 2 took us to the south ridge crest, where we had a nice view of the ridgeline leading over to the Little Maria Mountains High Point.

The views down into the limestone wonderland we had come up were pretty surreal, only enhancing as we headed along the Class 2 crest. Along the way there were some small outcroppings, but all can be kept Class 2 by sticking to the right and wrapping around them. From the summit we took in the views of yet another remote mountain with few visitors.