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Jan 12, 2021 — This series of peaks are located in Nevada more-or-less north of the Hoover Dam, just before entering Arizona. They are the hills you see when driving east on I-11. Even though you hear helicopters and traffic for most of this hike, there are still some great views of the lake and some fun scrambling. From the Lakeview Overlook parking lot, I headed first to Promontory Point, east. I started along an old dirt road that leads to the the Historic Rairoad Trail. You can either follow this for a while, or take a more interesting Class 2/3 route through the hills (both routes noted in the map attached). The harder route has one section of maximum easy Class 3, and escapes the views of the highway for a little bit. Either way, you'll end up at a minor saddle to the southwest of Promontory Point. From the saddle, I started toward Lake Mead and wrapped around along the steep, loose Class 2 side-hilly slope. The views were delightful from here, the slope just steep enough to feel a little exposed, but the slope isn't severe enough to be notably dangerous. I recommend staying pretty close to the cliff face higher on the slope to avoid most of the most loose rock on steeper terrain below. I side-hilled a bit and found myself back on stable ground, where I followed the hilly terrain to Promontory Point.
Back at Lakeview Overlook, I headed west toward Rough Benchmark. There was a social trail leading up about haflway, when the terrain became a bit more steep. I popped up on the eastern sub-ridge of Rough Benchmark. I stayed left of the ridge crest to avoid crap rock and made my way toward the summit. There was some fun Class 2+ route-finding that required wrapping around a couple of big rock outcrops just before the mellow summit. I continued west along the ridgeline, Pluto next on the agenda. There were some fun Class 2/3 moves along the craggy ridgeline from Rough Benchmark, but it was short-lived. The descent ridge leading down from Rough Benchmark is the crux of the route. I'll call it Class 3 mostly because the moves are on pretty loose rock, so moving slowly is a must. You can likely keep to the left of the ridge to keep the route more mellow, but there's no one correct option. The route continued Class 2 to Pluto and Uranus. I recommend keeping to the right of Uranus' east rocky ridge, where a social trail leads on steep, but not very aggressive terrain.
I headed back down to the saddle between Pluto and Uranus and dropped to the north within a rocky drainage. This led me to the Historic Railroad Trail. It's a popular and basically paved trail that led east back to the trailhead. However, the trailhead is above so I needed to ascend a Class 2 slope (with lots of garbage scattered about) to the left of the trail, otherwise pass underneath the trailhead and ascend on the opposite side on the official trail.
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