Railroad Peak (4142') by South Ridge (NV)

pics by Harlan W.S. & Luba L.
Dec 25, 2010

I first went up Railroad Peak Jan 22, 2005, by the blue loop shown on the 24k topo map below. This time we tried the south ridge (red trace below), which proved to be quite a bit more challenging. The S ridge is very serrated for much of the way; you often can’t see the roughness until you are right on top of the individual spires, or in front of deep gashes. We never had to use “assistance,” but we had 100’ of 8mm rope, 70’ of 4200 lb-test webbing, and 50’ of 2600 lb-test webbing “in case.”

24k map with gps traces (red for S ridge). See map near page bottom for access info.	Google Earth synthetic view from E.	Google Earth synthetic view from SW.
Google Earth synthetic view from N.	Glyph. I doubt this is Amerind, but I wonder who made it, high up the entrance valley.	Heading up the 1^st talus valley. The rock was remarkably stable.
Black Mt to NW.	The visible ridge is just the 3950’ shoulder S of the true summit.	Come to the light Luba, come to the light!
Staying on the ridge was not easy; and often the downclimb was blocked by cliffs.	Right before the hairiest spot was this window.
Props to Bill for checking this out. You can’t see the freaky exposure to his L- a gash that dropped down another 50-100’.	It looked super freaky, but the rock was good, and the holds plentiful. What I thought was loose rock, was actually pretty good. Still, because of exposure I’d call it class 4, and none of us wanted to come back this way.	Luba asked me to wait as I popped over the edge (above where Bill is in previous picture). I started to make a face, and she firmly said “no.” In retrospect some of the holds were a bit “thin” – like the crack my L fingers are in.
The ridge was ever full of rough stuff and surprises.	For a few spells, I thought I could walk along the very knife edge, then would be faced with blocks about 20’ high, often separated by 10-20’.	After admitting defeat on the edge, I climbed back down to catch up with the other folk.
		Another view S at the yucky serrated-knife edge.
Finally we climb out of the gully we saw long before, to almost easy ground.		Now the top is in view! It still wasn’t totally benign travel.
Charleston Peak in distance.	Henderson in distance.	Black Mt in Back.
The top! We forgot to sign into the register book!	Now we head down over 2+ terrain.
	Now we’re looking W, at the hairiest spot on the ridge. You can see the “window” that Luba photographed, and the nasty exposure beneath the L side of the photograph of Bill and Ed on the gendarme.	Access—as far as I can tell from the Clark County assessor records, this is all public land. At one point there is a “No Trespassing” sign on a faint road N of the public gravel road. Someone put 2 birms across the road, probably to keep yahoos from dumping garbage out there. However, there are no cautionary signs at the birms, and they have been broken down by 4x4 traffic.