Sean picked me up at 4am on Sunday and we were on our way to Mojave National Preserve. I was so excited because I love hiking in the desert.
We arrived at the Ranger Station and I was pleasantly surprised by Jeff who showed up for my birthday hike. He made us some hot chocolate and then we were on our way.
I chose to do the Barber peak the traditional way but Sean had other plans for me and it turned out to be a bad-ass, cross-country, rock scrambling adventure up to the peak.
We started out on the Rings Loop trail. We found some cool Petroglyphs along the trail. After walking a short distance we went off trail.
Barber peak is a horse-shoe shaped mountain. We had to cross some gullies then hiked up a steep slope toward the South Ridge. This entire area is quite beautiful with so many options for rock scrambling.
There were lots of rock cliffs and cool caves along the way. We found a huge cave and took a break as we admired the scenery. After some more climbing we finally reached the ridge top. The rock formations were spectacular!
At the top of the ridge we found a huge rock formation that we had to climb over to get to the base of the peak.
For me this was one of the coolest rock scrambling to negotiate. Although it was a class 2 parts of it were Class 3 that were difficult.
After the excitement of reaching a flat part of the trail we found another cool little cave just below the summit.
Finally, we arrived at the Baker Peak! We found three benchmarks but no register.
Sean and Jeff sang Happy Birthday to me and I enjoyed my cupcakes.
After a soaking in the views we descended the steep ridge on the North side of the summit. Again more breath taking views. We re-joined the Hole in the Wall trail where we found more cool rock formations.
We never saw wildlife which was a bit disappointing but this hike made up for it and is now one of my top ten bad ass hikes.
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