My father and I had been planning a trip to explore Nevada's interior for awhile, so when my teaching ended for the summer at ASU, I headed up to Henderson, Nevada, to join my dad for a week-long trip to Nevada's nether reaches. I wanted to climb some peaks, naturally. My dad doesn't like to climb much, but he likes to camp and explore and loves the Nevada outback as much as I do. On the agenda for the trip were two peaks: this one and Wheeler Peak over in the Great Basin National Park. This would be stretched out over a week, allowing plenty of other days for exploring and driving to the ends of the earth, so it seemed. We left Henderson on August 6th and headed up US-95 toward Hawthorne. Hawthorne is the seat of Mineral County, which is about 300 miles northwest of Las Vegas (and about 150 miles southeast of Reno). Hawthorne is dominated by the United States Army Ammunition and Ordnance Depot, essentially a huge storage facility for all the bullets, grenades, missiles and other explosive stuff needed in a battle. One of my great-uncles (my mom's father's brother) was stationed here during World War II and the Korean War, and my dad was interested in checking out the area. We arrived in Hawthorne around 3 p.m., including a side trip off of US-95 in which we drove by Boundary Peak, Nevada's highest point. I had climbed it in 1995; it was nice to see the peak again after all these years. For the night we stayed in one of the cheap but clean hotels in town.

Mount Grant itself is a gigantic peak sitting due north of Hawthorne and dominating the northern skyline. It is also within the boundaries of the Ordnance Depot, so access is restricted. At the time, one could pick up a key from the people at the Depot in town for the locked gate. and drive up the road most of the way to the summit. This is what we did. They make you sign waivers and give you all sorts of warnings about this and that. I should mention that the Hawthorne Ordnance Depot is run by a civilian sub-contractee, so most people there looked like your regular Joes and Bettys. This is not a training center, so you don't see lots of activity. In all, the Depot is a pretty quiet place. We spent some time walking around the buildings and getting some photos of some of the big WW-II era guns they have propped up.

We hit the road the next day around 7 a.m. toward the town of Walker Lake, about 10 miles north of Hawthorne. Walker Lake, the lake, is a relatively large lake, a remnant of old Lake Lahontan, which covered much of Nevada during the last ice-age. In Walker Lake the town, we took Cottonwood Road up about a mile past some homes and into a canyon, coming to the aforementioned locked gate. Out came the key and we passed through it no problem. My dad was driving. The road up Cottonwood Canyon is moderately steep and in mostly excellent condition. The road actually heads west then south as it approaches Mount Grant from the north, steadily gaining elevation. As it does, it passes through lower elevation desert scrub, pinon and juniper, some poplar, passes through larger firs, then rises above all the trees into a low-scrub expanse. It is about 11 miles of driving to an obvious junction, during which the road gains from about 4,000 feet to almost 9,000 feet. The photo at left was taken just north of this junction.

From this junction, we turned left and headed up the road as it switchbacked up the broad west flanks of the peak. We passed some mining claims and a spring, and finally parked at a big flat bend in the road at an elevation of 10,369 feet. It was now about 8 a.m. We decided to hike the rest, although the road goes all the way to just below the summit rocks.

The hike went well as we followed the road as it meandered up the slope. This was my dad's first time ever at elevation this high, but he felt mostly well and did fine. It took us about 45 minutes to hike to the end of the road. Here, the summit sits just 200 feet higher up a very rocky slope. My dad opted not to climb it, so I went in by myself. I found a foot path somehow hewn out of the talus, and it led to a saddle just north of the highpoint and south of another knob. The map shows an elevation of 11,239, but this is for the northern knob, whereas the highest point is almost 50 feet higher. However, from the saddle, the highpoint was hemmed in by imposing cliffs so I backtracked about halfway. From here, I just made my own way up the loose talus. It wasn't unnecessarily steep, but the rocks were very loose, and I had to ensure at each step that I had a solid footing or hand-hold, so it took a bit longer than I intended. But in short order I topped out at the summit, and signed in the register. The views were beautiful, with all of Walker Lake in view, and the spider-web network of roads, bunkers and warehouses of the Ordnance Depot down below.

I stayed at the top about 10 minutes then headed down, carefully, of course, back to my dad who had watched me scale the rocks from below. We hiked back down, following a drainage down part way to cut some distance (I should emphasize we followed a well-worn drainage, and did not cut our own way through the scrubby vegetation). We were back to the truck at about 10:30 and back to the Ordnance Depot to return the key around 11:30.

The rest of the day was spent driving to Battle Mountain on Interstate-80. We went through the town of Gabbs up to US-50, then stopped at the "Shoe Tree", an enormous Cedar (?) along US-50 near the junction of NV-722 in which people have tossed shoes into it over the years. A very peculiar sight! We took NV-722 to Austin, which is much prettier than taking US-50. Turns out my dad knows a big shot in the Lander County Sheriff's Office and wanted to see if he was in. After an hour or so in Austin, we made the long drive to Battle Mountain, where we stayed the night. Nothing special in Battle Mountain, just a place to crash and eat. Battle Mountain is the anus of Nevada, easily. One of the ugliest towns on the planet.

Updates:

The events of September 11, 2001, prompted the Hawthorne Ordnance Depot to restrict access to Mount Grant completely - i.e. no one gets to go up there via the road we followed. Over the years there has been no change to this policy. They do not store anything up there, and there are no communications towers up there (at least there weren't in 2001). It's probably just a hassle the Depot people don't want to deal with. However, hikers have made it to the summit by following cross-country routes from the south. There does not seem to be a blanket restriction against approaches this way, although it is long with significant gain, and probably is only attempted a handful of times per year. There does not appear to be any technical issues this way. Obviously, my Dad and I were lucky in our timing.