Mount Wilson 5 days apart; 35 degrees of separation.

Peak Elevation 7070’, in Red Rock Canyon NCA of Nevada, near Las Vegas.

pics by Harlan W.S
Nov 29 & Dec 04, 2011

I visited Wilson for my 8^th and 9^th times, accompanying two sets of friends who’d never been there before. Both times we went up by the Hidden Bowl route, and down the traditional “easy” First Creek route. First I went with Cory G and Janice B; 5 days later I went with Dagmar (who exactly 1 year before, had helped me greatly on a trip to Rabbit Peak).

When I first went with Cory and Janice, it was an unseasonable warm day; we had near 65F on the peak, and I used up a lot of my water in the hot sun. In between the trips to Wilson, a storm moved through and dumped snow on Red Rock. I kept checking the snow in the canyons (I live close by), and by Dec 03 told Dagmar we were good to go. That day was mercifully windless… because it was 30F when we reached the top. The canyons were filled with ice, which made the trip interesting!

One doesn’t normally do this hike at this time of year – the days are too short, so you can’t make a lot of route-finding errors. Here is a raw GPS trace.

We took the red route, up Hidden Bowl, then down the “easy” way in First Creek.	This Google Earth synthetic is viewed from the SW. As in some photos, you can see LaMadre at L, and Calico to R. in back.	View of the route from the W (Google Earth synthetic)
Nov 29… after some knee issues, we got going about 7:30AM.		Up the “chimney”!
	Now we hit the ramps just below the turn-off for Hidden Bowl. Over the years, two cairned routes to Hidden Bowl have emerged—one decidedly creepier. I spent some time running back and forth on the ledges to find the safest route…	…before I tricked Janice and Cory into following!
	After the traverse back east, we cut NW and skirted the deep canyon that drains the bowl.	Then we traversed the W side, to enter the bottom of the bowl.
There followed lots of steep climbing on slabs.		Finally, we fit the top of the bowl, and have relatively easier travel NNW along the ridge.
	We get our 1^st view of Wilson’s true summit.	Calico Hills in back.
	Rainbow, LaMadre in back.
Spring Mt Ranch below.	Rainbow.	The peak used for the “back” approach (blue line on map).
We headed down 1^st Creek.		Water, Water everywhere!
		Don’t know how this got out of order! Summit shot. Click it and wait for the entire file to load.
		A slightly creepy traverse.
		Back down the tunnel!
	We got out of the canyon about 25 minutes before dark, and actually got back to the car just at dark!	So 5 days later, Dagmar and I started about an hour earlier, and caught the rose glow on Wilson.
	Up the chimney again!	Dagmar leaves 1^st Creek to start the hidden Bowl route
Some sheep on the other side of the bowl route.		I tried a slight variation on the route we took earlier in the week.
	First viewpoint of the true summit	Lady D! We reached the summit in about 3h 45m, not bad for all the junk we carried.
	I was in a T-shirt most of the day, but took the shirt off to dry and covered up for the time on the summit.	Any N-facing nook had snow.
		When we got down the the W end of 1^st Creek, the water had lots of ice.
		Back out with plenty of time! We were back at the cars early in the afternoon, yet the canyon was already in deep shadows..