Hike Bridge Mountain via Pine Creek Canyon Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, NV

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Bridge Mountain is the gorgeous lightly-colored dome seen from below on the east along the Red Rock Canyon scenic drive. It's likely one of the more popular scramble routes in the area. However, the standard route approaches Bridge Mountain from the west, not through Pine Creek Canyon (the route described here). The main issue with using the standard route is the bad approach road. If you have a burly vehicle, you can make it to the trailhead from Rocky Gap Road (off the Red Rock scenic drive), or you could come from Lovell Road (which is horrible). If you want to follow that standard route, you can check out my Bridge Mountain standard route trip report. That trip report likely describes the final summit ascent a bit better than this older trip report does.

The route described here adds on miles of fun and gorgeous boulder-hopping through Pine Creek Canyon and Fern Canyon in order to get from the Red Rock Canyon Scenic Drive to the ridge leading to Bridge Mountain, where it meets up with the standard Bridge Mountain route. It's a longer outing to Bridge Mountain, but I'd say a favorite of mine in Red Rock Canyon. Additionally, accessing the trailhead is trivial, requiring you only drive the Red Rock scenic drive and park at the Pine Creek Trailhead, whereas the standard route requires a long road walk or a burly enough vehicle.

From the Pine Creek Trailhead, we followed the Pine Creek Trail leading to the mouth of the canyon. Unfortunately there are a ton of social trails that lead all over the place, making the primary route unclear. The brush got too bad on the northern bank, but eventually we found a reasonable string of trails that allowed us to drop into north fork of Pine Creek Canyon, also known as Fern Canyon. The scenery here is really nice, with narrower sections of canyon, flowing water, and green mosses and ferns. There's a ton of Class 2/3 boulder-hopping, and harder moves can usually be avoided via wrap-arounds. This is the same approach used for accessing Bridge Point, which we did a few years later.

We reached an impassable waterfall, but a vegetated gully on its right led higher up. After navigating on a slickrock slope just right of the drainage for a short time, we then dropped back in for some more obstacles. We continued west through Fern Canyon, more boulder-hopping and talus cave scrambling along the way, eventually making it to the slickrock slabs marking the head of the drainage. We left Fern Canyon and worked generally northeast, following Class 2/3 slabs with great views and occasional light exposure. A couple of more difficult Class 3 moves break up the steep sandstone slab walk. A large boulder forming a crack to squeeze through takes the route off the first main slab to wrap around a serious cliff face. Some ups and downs around various obstacles led to a wide ledge and more Class 2/3 slab. The terrain here is tricky and navigating well is critical. Over the years, many cairns have been placed to assist in route-finding, but this isn't a great first-timer route in Red Rock Canyon NCA.

Our goal was to reach the east-west ridge marking the standard route for Bridge Mountain. Bridge Mountain was in view, but the face in front of us dropped sharply. Fortunately, an unlikely rock rib leads up into a chute, where a Class 3 slab safely leads to higher ground. It was an easy uphill walk to the ridge from here. Once on the standard route ridge, we focused our attention east toward Bridge Mountain. Some fun Class 2 and 3 obstacles lead down to the saddle below. The route tended to stick to the right (south) side of the ridge, utilizing gullies/cracks to avoid cliffs on the north side. A gorgeous slickrock walk with excellent views in all directions then brought us to the base of the peak.

The sight of Bridge Mountain's impressive dome-like face never fails to amaze me. From the saddle, a on the left provides a nice crack with minimal exposure for enjoyable Class 3 scrambling for about a hundred feet. A cairn marks a significant ledge on the left, indicating the ideal point to leave the crack. Shortly after starting on this ledge, another, shorter crack emerges on the right, leading us to the base of the bridge for which Bridge Mountain is known.

While there might be alternative routes to gain higher ground from the arch, our choice was to pass through it and ascend a Class 3 ramp within the grotto housing the arch. Beyond this ramp, veering left provides a scenic viewpoint of a large tank, while heading right leads to the summit of Bridge Mountain. Just before the peak is the unique "hidden forest," a cluster of coniferous trees nestled together in a spacious tank. The route to reach the summit involves ascending a cool-looking rock rib on the right of the "forest," offering an immense view down into the canyons below.

Past the rock rib, a Class 2 ascent on a sandstone slope leads to a steep Class 2 ramp lasting about a hundred feet, forming an ascending traverse to the left up the summit dome. Reaching the summit from this point involves Class 2 terrain. After enjoying the views for a while, we retraced our steps using the same route back.

PEAKS ON HIKE
Elevation (ft) / Prominence (ft)

Peaks on hike

Elevation

Prominence

Bridge Mountain

6988 ft

689 rise

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Starting along the Pine Creek Trail. There are a mix of photos from 2016 with Shawn and 2023 with Amanda in this report to create a more cohesive report.

Entering Pine Creek Canyon. We took the north fork (right), aka Fern Canyon. Mescalito visible in the center.

Within Fern Canyon (north fork of Pine Creek).

Pretty narrows with Fern Creek Canyon.

Within the narrows.

Amanda beach-whaling on a large boulder obstacle.

Gorgeous flowing water within Fern Canyon.

Lots of fun boulder obstacles, many avoidable.

Continuing up more bouldery obstacles.

At the base of a waterfall with a Class 2 route on the right within the brush.

Looking back past the waterfall, ascent gully to avoid this waterfall is seen on the left.

Photo looking up Fern Canyon, shortly after the waterfall obstacle, a detour that led us out of the drainage for a moment. The head of the drainage is seen right of center, which is where we're headed. We followed the slickrock on the right and eventually dropped back into the drainage.

View back along the slickrock.

Back within the drainage. Lots more fun obstacles with Fern Canyon, like this rabbit hole crawl-through.

Years later, the same rabbit-hole is a much more difficult obstacle since the debris was washed away.

Ascending more fun sandstone obstacles.

Almost at the head of the drainage before getting to slickrock and sandstone cliffs.

Navigating Class 2/3 terrain to escape the drainage.

View back down into Fern Canyon's head as we ascend the slickrock above.

A tricky move.

More Class 3, cairns assisting our route-finding in this complex area.

View back at the Class 3 move from the previous photo.

Higher up, view back into Fern Canyon.

Squeeze through the rock seen here.

Some navigating up/down as we wrap around a serious cliff face.

A convenient ledge.

Class 2+/3 up this slickrock.

Another shot back as we hike along a steep, wide sandstone bench.

Bridge Mountain seen above.

It's counterintuitive, but the route leads left toward the serious-looking sheer face, since the cliffs basically just drop off on the right.

Approaching the final Class 3 obstacle before gaining the standard route to Bridge Mountain. The route leads up the rib left of center.

Amanda on the rock rib trying to strike a sexy pose while scrambling up to the Class 3 move.

Class 3 move on a sloped sandstone ledge. Bridge Mountain seen top center. Past here it's a little bit of ascent and we were on the main ridge and could take the standard route to Bridge Mountain.

On the ridge, view east toward Bridge Mountain.

Class 2/2+ stuff as we dropped down along the ridge to Bridge Mountain, then started up toward it.

The first Class 3 section, an extended crack/chimney.

The full Class 3 section, a nice crack/chimney toward the base of the peak. An important ledge up there leads out of the crack.

Looking down at Shawn coming up the Class 3 section just before the important ledge, the ridge visible above. The standard Bridge Mountain approach comes from the center of this photo.

The ledge leads to more slickrock scrambling just before the natural arch.

Bridge Mountain's bridge!

Looking back at the bridge.

An interesting bowl full of trees on the left ("Hidden Forest"), Bridge Mountain top left. Our route follows the wide rib in the enter, then works up the diagonal crack leading to the upper left corner.

On the wide rib.

About to head across the gorgeous rib.

Looking back toward the interesting tree-filled bowl.

Starting up the Class 2 ramp leading just shy of Bridge Mountain's summit.

Bridge Mountain summit, view west toward the ridge we followed.

Bridge Mountain summit, view east toward Las Vegas.

Bridge Mountain summit, view south. Rainbow Mountain and Mount Wilson on the left.

Some cool colors.

A shot on the way back within Fern Canyon somewhere.

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Hire/refer me as a web developer or send me a few bucks if you find my site useful. I’m not sponsored, so all fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing trip reports is unpaid. I really appreciate it!