Hike Peaks 2867, 2310, 1664 from Burro Wash Lake Mead National Recreation Area, NV

Feb 10, 2022 — This exploratory loop was bittersweet, in a way being my last big outing to a large area I'd never seen before in one of my favorite places, the Black Canyon Wilderness of Lake Mead NRA. Filling this gap removed a lot of the sense of mystery I had around the Black Canyon. Now it seems like it's just a matter of seeing a bunch of the nooks and crannies that are still on my radar. What a years-long journey. I didn't know what to call this hike because there aren't any named features nearby at all. No named peaks, canyons, springs, washes, or even old mines. It's a remote part of Lake Mead, that's for sure.

On a topo map, Peak 2867 stands out as a fortified colossus, forming a sort of island just off the Black Canyon's rim. In person the colorful cliffs and bulk of this peak is something to gawk at. It's a tempting objective. I first grew excited about it when viewing it from the peaks on the north side of Burro Wash, and planned to go for it via a loop from the peaks on the canyon rim to its west, which didn't work out due to time. The ever-calculating route planner in me also noted that Peaks 2310 and 1664 are located even farther out, but seemed like they could be grouped well with Peak 2867. All of these peaks can likely be more easily accessed by boat from Willow Beach, but maybe not even because of complex terrain near the Colorado River.

TL;DR: If you have a burly vehicle you can make it to our starting point. If you don't, good luck formulating a route to get to this area.

Although this has been an adventure high on my priority list, I knew it would be a hell of an undertaking to get out here. The only road is the very bad Burro Wash Road, which takes you from the rim down to the river, but I definitely couldn't get my Crossover down. I saw that local peakbagging legend Bob Cable beat me to Peak 2867 recently, which sparked a conversation about planning an outing for the other two. It turned out that Bob would be able to facilitate a day to attempt this coveted hike, taking us in his street-legal ATV all the way down Burro Wash Road. An excellent new hiking companion and all around good-natured guy, Bob's psych for exploring the desert and getting out to see everything was delightful. Since Bob already got Peak 2867, he would take the wash leading south from Burro Wash Cove and head along the ridge to Peak 2310. My plan was to run off and go tag Peak 2867, hopefully meeting him on the ridgeline to Peak 2310. This plan worked out splendidly, and we ended up spending half the hike together.

My first goal here to get reach a potential weakness on the north side of the Peak 2867's east ridge in order to get over the sheer cliffs that surrounded it on most sides. Topo maps made it clear that there was a route down from its west face, but wanted to attempt an ascent from the east in order to make a more complete loop. From where we parked, I started up a minor drainage with water and pretty canyon walls on the east side of Peak 2867. There was one Class 3 chockstone within the canyon and some light bushwhacking through tamarisk, and soon I found myself exiting to the south when it was clear the weakness in question seemed viable. Class 2 boulder-hopping brought me up to a potentially cliff-out notch higher up. Fortunately, the notch got me safely to Peak 2867's east ridge, still Class 2. I was thrilled with my luck. I started up the ridge crest, pulling a few fun Class 2+ moves on relatively solid rock. To my left was a gully that I could drop down to that seemed like it could take me to the summit if the ridgeline got too gnarly, but that never ended up happening. The ridgeline continued at Class 2 with some very minor route-finding around rock outcrops. About halfway up though, the ridge got more steep and there was a short Class 2+ down climb to get into a dip in the crest. Past here was a short, fun Class 3 section and then I was on steep Class 2 until the terrain mellowed out and became easy hiking to the summit.

Peak 2867 had underwhelming views because it's more of a mesa, but I was really happy with the ascent route I had chosen. I continued to its west side on tame terrain and was confronted by a cliff on its west face, just above the saddle. A quick detour took me south around the cliff on loose Class 2, and I found myself in the south-draining gully on the peak's southwest side beneath its formidable cliffs and amongst massive boulders. I can't imagine anyone has been here before. I felt very isolated. I followed this drainge for a while until it merged with a larger wash.

I now had to get up to the ridgeline leading to Peak 2310. To do this, I ascended a few hundred feet up and over a minor ridge and back into a wash to its south. This was the wash Bob had ascended. A gorgeous pinnacle from an unranked peak appeared above, the first landmark along the ridgeline. The drainage led to a saddle on its west side. Now on the ridge, I headed generally southeast. There were some major rock outcrops that could easily cliff me out along the crest, so I stuck to the right (southwest) to avoid potential hazards. With a bit of side-hilling on sometimes loose terrain, I more-or-less stuck along the ridgeline until reaching the base of a sub-peak of Peak 2310. This is also where I met back up with Bob. We side-hilled around the somewhat complex terrain, staying low around this sub-peak to avoid getting cliffed out, then wrapped back to the ridge crest at the base of Peak 2310. This summit went at a measly Class 2, despite how serious it looked from afar. The views toward the Colorado River were spectacular, as was the view of Peak 2867, where I had just come from. Also of note was an impressive and likely unclimbed butte just to the east. Not today, thank you.

Intially we wanted to backtrack along the ridge crest and take the high road over to our next objective, Peak 1664. However, the ridgeline looked lumpy and went a bit out of the way, so we studied a topo map and determined it would be more direct and likely not actually add much vertical if we descended directly north into a drainage system and reascend to Peak 1664. On paper this certainly sounded like a good idea, but in practice the terrain was loose and there ended up being a ton of obstacles. In hindsight, it likely would have been more efficient (if less aventurous and exploratory) if we had stuck along the ridge. I included this "estimate" on my attached map in purple. Note that this estimate is not an actual track,  but just what appeared reasonable in hindsight since it didn't appear to be harder than Class 2, but who knows.

We instead descended north, wrapping around the east side of the sub-peak to Peak 2310's east that we had avoided earlier. A steep Class 2+ slope led down through an improbable weakness in a cliff and down to tame terrain. We felt happy about our decision until we got a to a significantly steeper slope that led to a drainage, and ultimately a dryfall. Already deep into this route choice, we descended the steep slope (Class 2+) and entered the drainage. A short section of pretty slot led to a 30+ foot dyfall, which I marked on my attached map. We worked around this on the left (north), descending via a steep Class 2 slope down into the drainage below. Past here were more short dryfall obstacles, nothing that couldn't be avoided or easily down-climbed. There was then a small spring and of course, where there's water in the Black Canyon, there's a nice cluster of tamarisk that requires bushwhacking. This was taking much more time than we thought it would, but I'd like to think it was more interesting than if we had just stuck to the ridge above (purple line).

We started north up the drainage that would lead us to Peak 1664. There were a couple of short, fun scrambles (Class 3) within this drainage, and we soon found ourselves on the ridgeline to the west of our third and final peak. Class 2 led along the crest, followed by a short side-hill on the left to avoid a rock rib, and then we made our way to the summit. There were more excellent views of the Colorado River from here. We even noted a native palm tree in a sub-canyon to the northeast and I briefly longed to go check it out.

After backtracking off Peak 1664's west ridge, we descended into a minor drainage and then re-ascended a couple hundred feet to a minor saddle to the north. From here it was all downhill through a drainage. Initially there was a little bit of catclaw, but the drainage led to a series of short Class 2/3 downclimbs and interesting rock. There was even a short slot toward the end of the drainage, which I marked on my map. Some may not like the final drop in the slot, but getting around it shouldn't be too much work. Past here we took a major wash down toward Burro Wash Cove and took the road back to the ATV.