Hike Mount Inyo, Keynot Peak, New York Butte (Inyo Traverse) Inyo Mountains BLM, CA

Apr 30, 2022 — The Inyo Mountains are only a few thousand feet lower than the adjacent Sierra and offer a ton of elevation gain and remote hiking, but aren't often visited. The Sierra prevents moisture from reaching the Inyos, plus the range doesn't have a granitic wonderland or extensive trail system, so the attraction to these mountains falls to sick peakbaggers like Tyler and myself who are interested in bigger, higher-elevation desert days. Our goal was to link up the peaks we cared about hiking in the Inyos and form a traverse: Mount Inyo, Keynot Peak, Voon Meng Leow Peak, and New York Butte. Generally, Mount Inyo and Keynot Peak are done as an out-and-back  starting from Union Wash. We would use this route as our ascent (with a change that I'll mention later). New York Butte is accessed usually one of two ways. The first route requires a long drive on the reportedly bad Swansea-Cerro Gordo OHV Route, which starts from the Cerro Gordo ghost town site to the south and subsequently requires only a short hike to reach the summit. The other option for New York Butte is to start within Long John Canyon and ascend via the peak's west ridge. This ridge would be our descent later (more on this descent later).

We parked our ending car for the shuttle at the New York Butte Trailhead within Long John Canyon. Burly vehicles could make it about a mile further, but we were content with stopping here (36.63595, -118.0005). To reach this spot navigate here (36.62714, -118.01524) and head east along a road suitable to crossover vehicles. The last quarter mile to reach where we parked gets significantly rougher. After dropping the first car off, we headed to the trailhead at the Mount Inyo/Keynot Peak Trailhead within Union Wash, where we would begin our traverse. To get here, navigate here (36.69476, -118.05318) and head east on a decent dirt road and follow it up the steep alluvial fan for a bit under two miles. Then turn left here (36.70479, -118.02887). Without 4WD these coordinates are probably where you'll park, adding about a half mile and 600 vertical gain to the hike. If you do have 4WD, continue along this reasonable road to where it gets washed out, which is where we started our hike.

After more caffeine than probably anyone should consume, we started along the remainder of the bad dirt road and reached the base of the extremely steep western slope of the Inyos, which mercilessly ascends to the main ridge crest far above. The standard route for hiking to Mount Inyo and Keynot Peak leads into the major drainage on the left and follows it until a route appears on the right. Switchbacks then lead up horribly steep, loose terrain and up to a spur ridge to the south. Other hikers reported taking the spur ridge directly instead of following the drainage. We decided to try that option. Although very steep, the ridge wasn't obscenely loose and when we looked down at where the standard route joined our ridge we were extremely happy we came the way we did. I added a rough estimate of the standard route to my attached map for reference. A pretty obvious social trail continues along this spur ridge for thousands of unrelenting feet until getting to about 9100'. Here, the route enters a minor drainage, passes an old bed spring known as the Bed Spring campsite, and continues within the bottom of this drainage for a bit via a much less grueling portion of the ascent. We lost the dwindling social trail after a while and just ascended to the ridgeline above, no serious obstacles impeding us.

Now along the main ridge crest of the Inyo Mountains, about half of the elevation gain was done for the day, roughly 5000 feet in under 3 miles. We headed north to Mount Inyo, which required a short dip before starting the ascent. Overall the route was straightforward, a persistent obstacle being the rocky ridge crest that starts about a half mile from the summit. It comes and goes, but I recommend staying just left (west) of the ridge crest most of the time to avoid expending effort by boulder-hopping on Class 2/3 stuff or summitting unnecessary tiny non-peaks. There were a few minor dips in the ridge, light tree-dodging, and Class 2 sections. The summit of Mount Inyo had a couple of Class 2/2+ moves.

We backtracked from Mount Inyo and continued to Keynot Peak. The route was straightforward and had some nice character, Keynot's ridge more narrow and open than Mount Inyo's forested and wide ridge. The last quarter mile was a bit tedious though. The crest leading to the summit is riddled with loose cliffs, so a social trail points to the left (east), dropping down slightly before making a steep ascent on loose dirt, Class 2 in order to avoid the cliffs. If there were snow this could definitely be pretty treacherous, but we timed our hike just right; there were enough snow patches for restocking water, but not enough to make this section scary.

The summit of Keynot Peak was our last chance at a turn-around point, but we were both feeling great and decided to press on for the traverse. We knew the route down from Keynot Peak to its saddle (known as Hidden Pass) with Voon Meng Leow Peak was going to be a bit unpleasant. Initially the slope is nice, but soon we were confronted with an increasingly rocky ridge crest. We stuck to the crest for as long as we could, pulling a few Class 2/2+ moves here and there, but nothing was exposed or particularly dangerous. We finally reached a rock outcropping along the crest that forced us off to the right (west). Here we were surprised to find occasional cairns that took us down a loose scree slope. A rock outcropping protruded inconveniently and forced us to descend farther to get around it, but a social trail helped us side-hill back to the tame main ridge below the cliffy nonsense and down to Forgotten Pass. Perhaps a dozen times we exclaimed with glee that we had chosen to descend rather than ascend Keynot Peak's south ridge. Perhaps more.

A straightforward social trail continued pretty steeply up to Voon Meng Leow Peak. The ridgeline continued southeast from this summit, but at this point all the most difficult ascending was over for the day. Our next peak was Peak 10192, a minor unranked bump along the way. As we descended from Voon Meng Leow Peak, we kept to the right of a few small bumps and obstacles, nothing too annoying overall. Once we reached the saddle of Voon Meng Leow Peak and Peak 10192, the terrain along the ridge became very brushy, but keeping east revealed a poorly-marked social trail and much more friendly terrain for when we lost the social trail. We ascended to Peak 10192 (Class 2) and then continued down its south ridge. We stumbled on the trail again, but we kept managing to lose it and decided to just find our own way along some Class 2 talus and lightly brushy terrain until we were confronted with a wall of brush. Rather than attempt to get through the nonsense, we took a second to locate the trail, which proceeded to pleasantly bring us through the mess. Happy to be on a trail, we stuck to it as it made its way up the northern slope of New York Butte. I highly recommend trying to stay on the trail. Its switchbacks carve through the brushy slope and is somehow in excellent shape. The trail passes right by New York Butte, so when we reached the peak's west slope we left the trail and did some light route-finding around boulders to locate the Class 2 summit block. New York Butte has some excellent views, especially to the east where its dramatic cliffy face frames Saline Valley below.

Now for the descent from New York Butte, an endeavor we thought would be straightforward and turned out not to be so. There is no marked route or trail, but the terrain begins pretty nicely as it slowly descends along the sweeping west slopes of New York Butte. The slope narrows into a ridge and continues to steepen. There is some Class 2 boulder-hopping, but it's short-lived for the most part. However, the terrain isn't as nice as the ascent to Mount Inyo was (which basically had a trail), embedded rocks and light brush slowing us down. Plus, the grade was steep enough that we had to go slowly to avoid wrecking our knees. At about 7500', we realized the standard route recommends heading down a horrible slope, where not a single rock is attached to anything. Tyler and I agreed that it's not a route anyone should be doing. I marked this standard "route" on my attached map. While the ridge we took is not great, it's certainly better than the alternative. The ridge continued to descend, but we dropped to the north into a lightly brushy drainage instead. This drainage led to an old mining road within Long John Canyon, and this road ultimately got us back to the car. We were very surprised at how bad the "standard" New York Butte route was and said as much to each other many times over.

Tyler and I talked about it and agreed the most fun way to do this traverse would be to start where we did, but set up a shuttle along the Swansea-Cerro Gordo OHV Route in order to skip the steep, long descent from New York Butte. Obviously this would require a ridiculously long shuttle set up that we would have loathed to deal with, so ultimately I'd say our route was the way to go. You also might be tempted to do the traverse in reverse if you leave a car at the end of the Swansea-Cerro Gordo OHV Route, cutting off about 4000 vertical gain and removing the steep New York Butte route, but ascending the south ridge of Keynot Peak would be a horrible undertaking and would probably make you regret taking this shortcut. What a great day out in the Inyos, and an uncommonly big day this early in the year for me.