November 2, 2025.
I am very unseriously working on the Sierra Club Desert Peaks Section list, which includes scrambles across the desert southwest. If I happen to be in the area and something looks do-able for the time and energy I have, then I’ll give it a go. One of my peakbagger pals on Instagram recommended this as one of her favorites, so I looked it up. It was a short detour from Death Valley National Park and it looked like about a half-day effort, so I convinced Aaron to join me.
When we arrived at the GPS pin for the remote parking area, we were shocked to see about 10 cars parked there. What are the chances?! There’s no trail, no major town nearby, no signs, no reason for this many people to converge at this exact moment. Except…the Sierra Club. I saw several people getting their bags ready to go. Aaron and I looked at each other with the same idea: we’ve got to start hiking NOW!
There is almost nothing worse in the mountains than getting stuck behind a motley crew of 12 hikers. With an organized group, you can assume there are several novices in the mix. People who have less spatial awareness and who are good at kicking down rocks and gumming up the works (how do I know, that was me once!). We raced out of there.
Fortunately, the route begins by crossing a remarkably compact surface with just a slight incline. We got to the base of the mountain quickly. With over 2000′ of prominence, Eagle Mountain rises boldly from the vast desert floor. I’d read that the route is not intuitive and can be hard to find, so I downloaded a GPS track ahead of time. Between the cairns on the ground and the track on my phone, we were able to stay on route most of the time. It sure was tricky! The mountain is a steep jumble of rocks, studded with cactus and interrupted with deceptive gullies and cliffs. It was like negotiating a vertical labyrinth.
We scrambled over the steep, loose and sharp rocks to the base of the summit pinnacle. I’d also read about bringing gloves for this climb online, and I’m really glad we did. Our hands would have been shredded at this point otherwise. As much as I love the mystery of adventuring, for these more technical routes I like to do my homework!
Below the summit block, we dropped our backpacks and assessed the route. I expected a few minutes of class 3 scrambling to the top. This is what I had described to Aaron and what he’d agreed to. However, we found it was a little longer and a little airier than expected. Between the two of us talking each other through the hard parts and the disappointing false summits, we figured out the crux of the route and found ourselves both standing at the top before too long.
The summit victory was brief. Knowing there were twelve people coming up the mountain behind us, we took a few pictures then immediately began downclimbing. I HATE downclimbing, so this felt harder to me than going up. I guess that’s one benefit of going in a pair: Aaron struggled more on the way up and I struggled more on the way down. But with both our superpowers together, we made it happen.
As we took the last step down to the landing where our backpacks sat, the first Sierra Club hiker arrived. What timing! I cannot imagine the stress of getting that big of a group up and down that section without any major freakouts or missteps. But, it wasn’t my problem, so we got right out of there!
Slowly, we worked our way back down the mountain. We were careful to choose our steps due to the steep, loose rocks. This is where it’s really easy to make mistakes. We knew that group was going to take a while to finish the summit climb so I wasn’t worried about them catching up to us on the way down.
By the time we made it back to the van, we were more than ready for lunch! We drove into Pahrump and had an incredible meal at one of the Mexican restaurants. Happy to add this one to my list and I hope to find another fun, challenging scramble soon.
