Hike Mopah Point and Umpah Peak Turtle Mountains Wilderness Area BLM, CA

Nov 11, 2020 — Mopah Point and Umpah Peak are two of the more interesting-looking peaks in the Turtle Mountains and are the primary goals of anyone who knows about this area. The little peaklets surrounding them are lesser-summited, and would increase the day's fun, so Chris Kerth and I set out to get them all. It made for a nice loop of the area. Chris and I have been talking for a long time and I was happy to finally get to go on a hike with this prolific CA peakbagger. Great day out, friend! The road leading to our starting point was somewhat rocky, but 2WD could make it driving slowly. We parked before a burly wash and walked along the road to a metal boundary fence. From here, we followed the deteriorated road past the boundary until we entered a wash, Peak 2673 visible ahead and the first on our to-do list. From its base, we headed up on Class 2 which led to a Class 2+ section to get over the broken cliff band. The wide summit of this minor peak gave us lovely morning views toward Mopah/Umpah.

We continued to the opposite side of Peak 2673, locating a Class 2 weakness in the cliff band on its southwestern side. Not locating this weakness would mean having to do some backtracking, so we were thrilled there was an option through the cliffs. We dropped down the loose slope and headed through the desert to the base of Mopah Point. The cliffs are sheer-looking and I can't image there's another non-technical route up Mopah Point aside from the standard route we'd be taking. We worked our way up the steep Class 2 southeastern slope. Many options would work, all leading to a significant, wide gully. Once in this gully, I recommend staying to the right side, where there are fewer obstacles and a cairned route.  We followed this gully on Class 2 stuff to its head and wrapped to the right at the base of the cliffs, continuing along a wide ledge with great views of the desert below. We came across the first Class 3 set of moves, sustained but not difficult or too exposed. This led to a Class 2 slope, and finally to a significant Class 3 crack. The crack was fun, and we found ourselves stemming up to its top, where a tight notch led to some giggling from my stuck backpack. Just past the notch is a nice flat area where we dropped our gear and inspected the crux of the day. Previous trip reports painted this section as having very bad exposure and hard moves. Chris and I thought it was a perfectly reasonable Class 4 section, and while a fall wouldn't be fun, it would only mean about a 15-foot drop. The moves were facilitated by a couple of big, solid hand holds and an important right foot. Once above the crux, we wrapped around on a somewhat exposed Class 2 unlikely ledge and continued on easy scrambling to the summit of Mopah Point.

We backtracked, but once back in the significant gully we used on our ascent, we trended south. Our next peak was Mopah Peaks West (a minor summit to the west of Mopah Point), but we decided the best course of action would be to fully descend from Mopah and wrap around its base rather than attempt to route-find through the lower cliffs. This meant losing singificant gain that we'd have to get back on the ascent. We headed up to toward Mopah Peaks West and noted a potentially serious cliff band. Forutnately, a nice break in the cliff offered some easy Class 3. I don't think there's any other spot that would have gotten us up with as little difficulty. Mopah Peaks West wasn't particularly amazing, but we did get to stare up at Mopah Point from a unique angle. We dropped down the same way we came up and continued south-ish toward Umpah Peak, our next objective.

I really enjoyed Umpah Peak. It's not necessarily cryptic, but attaining its summit does take significantly more work than you'd think. The route requires wrapping around the peak in a spiral, starting on the north side and ending on the south. We started by traversing on somewhat loose slopes, a bit below the nutty-looking cliffs fortifying the peak. Our side-hilling brought us to the standard route, a rocky Class 2 slope that would lead us up a good distance of vertical gain. With a short Class 3 move, we got over one of the more minor cliffs at a spot that felt friendly and headed up this standard slope to a ridge above. We hopped over to the other side of the ridge and into the sunlight and made an ascending traverse on Umpah Peak's southeast side. We encountered a bit of Class 2/3 on fairly solid rock, but it was all quite steep and a little unnerving. We could see the final set of cliff bands that protected Umpah Peak, requiring us to wrap around farther to its south side. Here, the cliff band was broken up a bit and provided some step-stone-like Class 2/3, with a single Class 3 move in a minor notch to gain the summit.

On the way down from Umpah Peak, we got back into the Class 2 slope, thinking it might lead all the way down to the base. However, a dryfall below would seem to prevent this. Instead, we hopped over a rock rib and descended a different slope. I recommend just paying attention as you descend to scope out a reasonable route. There are likely more than a couple of ways down. We were able to keep the descent Class 2. Our final objective ahead was Peak 2553. After a significant walk through the desert, some fun Class 2 led to the summit ridge of Peak 2553. We were happy and surprised to find some fun Class 3 on interesting slabs of rock along the ridgeline, some of which looked like they were ready to slide off at any minute, but of course they didn't. After summitting, we started back down along the ridge and found a nice descent route off the ridge. This led down Class 2 loose stuff down and eventually into the major wash that would bring us back to the car. This wash felt long.