Trip report
Mar 20, 2021 — Schwaub Peak is best accessed via Echo Canyon Road, passable by mid-clearance, and overall a pretty fun road to drive. It winds back and forth and has short sections of pretty narrows. The road passes the Inyo Mine, which was a more popular destination than I expected. I passed a group of Jeeps on the way up, and a few tourists on my way back. I took some shots of the Inyo Mine at the end of my trip report.
From the end of Echo Canyon Road, I headed up Echo Canyon, which is wide and not particularly interesting. I hung a right when another wash came in a couple of miles in, heading south to Schwaub Peak. The wash slowly gained elevation and I left it to ascend a slope to the south. I followed this slope a bit and then dropped down into the major wash that drain from Schwaub Peak. You'll see two lines on my attached map for Schwaub Peak. You could ascend via the ridge on the south side of the wash, or directly up the wash. I liked both routes, and I'll describe my route as I did it. Starting up the wash, I ascended on Class 2 boulders and through short spurts of light brush. A highlight of this section was the fact that there were tons of fossils embedded in the limestone. As I reached the head of the wash, I curved south on loose, steep scree and made my way to the ridgeline. Once on the ridgeline, I kept right of the jagged crest, since staying to the left meant scary scrambling. It was only Class 2, despite looking potentially more of an undertaking. Schwaub Peak had nice views toward Pyramid Peak and into Death Valley.
I decided to descend Schwaub Peak via the northwest ridge since it looked totally reasonable from above. There were a couple of Class 2 sections, but overall it was pretty nice and I'd likely recommend it over the wash. It has nice views and skips the hassle of the scree slope I had asended, but it misses out on the cool fossils. I made my way down of Schwaub and retraced my steps to Echo Canyon, continuing north past it on my way to Peak 5969. There was a wash that I followed most of the way as I neared the base of the peak, but it's not really that obvious. I found myself instead just hiking on easy terrain, sometimes in the sandy drainages and other times on harder ground. On a topo map it looks like my route choice for ascending to the south ridge of Peak 5969 doesn't make much sense since there isn't a clear slope to ascend, but in practice I thought it looked like the most obvious way up. A few hundred feet of pleasant, but somewhat steep slope hiking brought me to the ridge, which I followed northeast. Along the way the ridge got a bit steep, and there was some minor Class 2 to navigate toward the summit. Peak 5969 was pretty than it looked from below.