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Apr 08, 2022 — Miller Mountain is a pretty easy to overlook peak, appearing to be just a wide and boring hump. This might be the case, sure, but it's got some cool highlights via the route I used. I believe another route exists via the south using a poor road, but Dennis Poulin seems to have established this option and others have noted it's probably the most reasonable and pleasant. Leave NV-6 and head north here (38.01586, -118.24313). This road is suitable by Crossover vehicles and leads to where I parked pretty directly and without much concern. Note that I used a different map base rather than my typical Google Maps terrain imagery. This is because a few of the maps I tested actually have incorrect imagery, resulting in my GPS line appearing to place me incorrectly by about 500 feet. So, if you're using any sort of GPS to navigate, just keep this imagery distortion in mind.
I headed east into the major drainage and followed this for about half the hike. It's overall very nice walking, starting with some cool cliffs lining the drainage's faces and eventually introducing some lightly-colored volcanic features. There was some volcanic slickrock, a small spring, and even a short slot canyon. There are a couple of quick Class 2 scramble sections within the drainage, but overall the obstacles are minimal. You could likely follow this drainage all the way to a saddle on the south side of Miller Mountain, but I chose to leave it before that point and start ascend on Miller's southwestern ridge. This allowed me to get some views of the White Mountains as well as start ascending a little earlier and more directly to the summit.
The ground along the ridge is mostly free of brush and rock, and I found myself really enjoying this hike. Since nothing was particularly steep or required much thought, I was able to just enjoy being on a remote mountain in western Nevada. There were two short sections of Class 2 along the slope, less than a hundred feet each of trivial talus. While the views from Miller Mountain's summit were somewhat obscured by trees, Boundary Peak's snow-covered summit poked out to the southwest, and the large humpy form of Piper Peak was visible to the south.
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