Hike Palen Mountain Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area BLM, CA

This long-awaited trip has eluded both Tyler and me for a long time due to heat and its remote, long drive. Palen Mountain was our first objective, and we started early in case the road to reach the trailhead was worse than anticipated with recent Mojave desert flooding. To reach the trailhead, leave pavement here (33.81745, -114.74829) and follow Arlington Mine Road as it heads west, keeping left at this fork (33.81622, -114.85743) and otherwise just following the excellent dirt road until this junction (33.82853, -114.93378). Keep left here, where the road begins to deteriorate. The first half from this point to the trailhead is mostly just tedious due to small dips in the sandy road and with some clearance you can make it a couple of miles. The road then becomes abruptly more rocky and without good tires you won't want to continue from here, though a Crossover vehicle could make it all the way. Where we parked marks the Palen-McCoy Wilderness boundary, so don't drive any farther north along this road.

We had the same thoughts for the route, intending to go for a loop route, both of us looking to ascend a gully on the peak's southeast side and descend via its western slope. These are two standard routes used to access the peak, so we wanted to check them both out. We took an old mining road for around a mile until it dropped into the major wash coming from Palen Mountain. Here we located a steep social trail heading north in order to escape the wash and gain the slope above. Cross-country desert hiking with some light talus-hopping brought us to the mouth of the standard gully. We enjoyed the scrambly bits as we made our way up the gully, plenty of Class 2 rock-hopping and dryfall obstacles to keep it interesting. There were a few minor junctions within this drainage, some often seeming like a better option than the primary gully, but I imagine they incorrectly lead to steeper terrain.

The majority of our ascent to Palen Mountain took place in this gully, but as we neared the peak's northern ridgeline the drainage opened up into a wide slope where we finally got some views. Once at the ridge, some Class 2 avoided a significant rock outcropping and led to the crest. More fun scrambling took us across the ridge crest and up to the summit. From below each of these scrambly sections look steep and dangerous, but all the large blocks are firmly in place and we felt Class 2+ was the maximum difficulty.

Once at the summit of Palen Mountain we took in the views of the Little Maria Mountains, which we'd hike later today, and Granite Mountain's bulk in the distance, tomorrow's outing. It felt good to be this remote on a peak that was high on our to-do lists.

Now for the descent, though in hindsight I highly recommend just returning the same way. The route started off nice enough, some more Class 2 scrambling along the crest, until we noted that the route sort of just drops down to the west on a steep, loose slope. Shaking our heads at the dumb choice to return this way rather than via the more enjoyable gully scramble up earlier, we made our way down this steep, tedious slope. Though the views to the west were pretty wonderful, this didn't seem like a good route to either of us. There's a cliff band shortly after beginning the descent that has a Class 2 gully weakness that is necessary to use. Otherwise it's just a matter of picking a line that feels the least dumb. Eventually the slope evened out a bit and we were sent into the major wash we started our hike from, lots of boulder-hopping and some fun obstacles within the watercourse making the hike interesting again. We made it back to the initial mining road and took this back to our cars.