This past weekend my wife and I finished our goal of summiting one mountain a month and since we just moved to the Las Vegas area we decided what better way to finish then climbing the nearly 12,000 ft Mt. Charleston.
The morning started normal enough until we turned on the 157 north heading for the parking lot. At 5:30am a deer jumped from the right hand bank and bounced across the front bumper/hood of our car. The deer was able to get to the side of the road. My wife ran back to check the on the deer (she used to be a vet technician) while I drove up the street to the Mt. Charleston Sheriff Sub-station. Unfortunately there was no one there. So I drove back to my wife who now had the deer completely relaxed and laying there enjoying a back rub. (Did I mention my wife is completely magical with animals, she has that touch they just love.) Any way I called 911 and about 45 minutes later a Highway Patrol officer arrived. The deer was still doing fine but seemed to have a small fracture in it back leg. The officer gave us all the info on where the deer was going to be taken and a number to call if we wanted.
So at this point my wife has been crying for nearly an hour straight and I asked if she still wanted to go hiking. Amazingly our car was still drivable just some minor cosmetic damage, so we decide to still go.
We hit the trail at 7:30am about an hour later then we wanted to and we were on the trail for about 30 minutes when we spot 3 deer and again my wife bursts out crying the odd thing is when they heard her cry all 3 of them stopped and stared at her which made her ball even more. Then the deer actually started walking towards her, they came to about 20 feet away and just stared at her, I have never seen anything like that before it was almost like they were telling her not to feel bad. She finally got it together and stopped crying and the deer’s turned away and continued on the path they were originally taking.
We caught up to a conga line of people on the switch backs but made it to the saddle between Griffith Peak and Mt Charleston by 10:30am. People were turning around like crazy at this point, it was cold and the wind was really starting to blow making it even colder. By the time the saddle cleared out there were only 5 of us left still planning on going to the summit. The group of 3 started out ahead of us while we finished some snacks.
We hit the ridge trail and made really good time, it’s all above 10k but the trail is almost completely flat and in the distance we can see the ridge that leads to the summit. We were so excited! We were going to make it! We climb up over the ridge to see that the first summit is really not Mt. Charleston and we had about another 3 miles to go and the rest of the trail was really exposed to the wind losing most of the trees and it was no longer flat it zig zaged up and down the side of the ridge.
We decide to push on when we met another couple who went up the North loop trail and were taking the South Loop trail down and we could see the group of three that were on the saddle with us just approaching the real ridge where the trail turns to the summit and we didn’t leave to long after they did.
We push on every once in a while getting nearly bowled over but an exceptionally forceful gust of wind. We make the ridge at 12:30 and turn to see that the trail wasn’t terribly far but it was a really steep trail up to the summit and with the wind blowing as hard as it was it was going to be a real challenge. We pushed on and once we turned towards the summit we started taking the full brut force of the wind which had to be blowing gusts of 50-60 mph with near constant 30-40mph.
My wife arrived at the summit at 1:30pm and instantly burst in to tears. I followed about 5 minutes behind her. It was absolutely freezing on the summit and you could barley stand up with out being blown over. My wife signed the register for us with “We did it for her!” written under our names.
Luckily there was a really nice wind break built on the summit and once inside it was really warm, we were able to remove our gloves and eat a little lunch. We took a 30 minute cat nap and left the summit just after 2pm.
We fought the wind down from the summit and it continued to blow until we got back to the switch backs which acted like a giant wind break. From that point we didn’t take another break and we just pushed ourselves down the trail and finished at 6:30pm only 11 hours later which I think was good given the circumstances.
So Monday I call the number given to us and our little friend who we thought was a girl, turned out to be a boy and he was doing fine and was going to be taken to some kind of animal rehabilitation center and would be released back to the Mt Charleston area once he is fully recovered.
It was truly one of the most emotional and physically exhausting hiking days I have ever had, but we finished our goal with a bang. The South Loop trail is a truly spectacular hike in some of the most beautiful scenery around; you almost forget you’re only an hour from Vegas.
