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Mar 26, 2020 — Seen while driving into Death Valley National Park along Jubilee Pass Road, Salsberry Peak and Sheephead Mountain are colorful peaks, enticing from all angles. Ibex Peak not so much, but it has its redeeming qualities. As you can see from my map, this loop involves a long desert slog, and most would likely prefer to do these three peaks as out-and-backs. In my never-ending mission to make hikes into loops, I'd say this one ended up pretty good overall, and with a little jogging through the mostly flat desert, the slog goes by quickly.
Austin and I set out from Salsberry Pass, heading along the ridge up to Salsberry Peak first. The ridge undulates a little bit, and maybe we would have saved a little bit of time had we stayed to the south of the ridge, but we were happy with the additional warmup vertical gain. Plus, the ridgeline views were pretty. About 2/3 along the ridge, we encountered a Class 2 section on bright yellow rock, leading to a large blob along the ridgeline. We dropped a couple hundred feet off this blob on a pretty steep slope. Along the next section of ridgeline, we bumped into a couple of loose Class 2+ moves on the crappy colorful rock, and a light Class 3 down climb on sturdy volcanic-looking rock. A steep incline with some loose rock led to a false summit of Salsberry Peak, the start of the final summit ridge. Some crumbly rock brought us to the summit, where we silently observed quite how far hiking through the open desert Ibex Peak would be. We returned to the false summit and found a route down the loose and unpleasant head of a major drainage (Class 2+) running south from the summit. The drainage involved some Class 2 boulder hopping and become more pleasant the farther down we went, eventually opening up into the desert.
We jogged generally southeast, taking washes when possible, but mostly just trying to stay on flat ground. Fortunately, the desert was mostly dirt and we got down to Jubilee Pass Road pretty quickly. We crossed Jubilee Pass Road and located a dirt road continuing southeast. Just after this dirt road bent to the right, we continued southeast away from that road to follow a very deteriorated road past a "No Motor Vehicles" sign. This old road paralleled a major wash on its right, and we followed the road until we decided to drop into the major wash. Ibex Peak wasn't impressive from down here, moreso just a really large lump rising out of the desert floor. We located a slope (there are a few that would work just fine) and followed it to the summit, passing over a false peak along the summit ridge. The views made up for the otherwise forgettable mountain.
We headed north off Ibex Peak, traversed the desert, and headed up a major drainage coming south off Sheephead Mountain. The hills to the south of the peak were a little annoying to navigate, but after a bunch of small ups-and-downs, we made it to the colorful base of Sheephead Mountain. Class 2 boulders and scree led to the summit. I was impressed at the colors on the northern slopes of Sheephead Mountain.
We headed along a fairly well-established social trail leading west off Sheephead Mountain, following the ridge until we reached a bright yellow section along the ridge. The social trail seemed to disappear here, so we dropped off to the south and jogged through the desert back to the car.
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