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+--- Thread: Blue Mountain route? (/showthread.php?tid=25845)
Blue Mountain route? - Candace66 - 2021-02-20
On the old forum, DV Dazed had posted trip reports and route information for Blue Mountain:
Blue Mountain on Peakbagger .com
Alas, all that information is gone. And no one else has yet posted a trip report, map, or GPX on any of the sites I'm familiar with.
Perhaps DV Dazed could repost the route information?
RE: Blue Mountain route? - DeathValleyDazed - 2021-02-21
(2021-02-20, 06:45 PM)Candace66 Wrote: Perhaps DV Dazed could repost the route information?
I do trip reports in video format and usually include route maps. I summited Blue Mountain on May 14, 2018 and returned to the summit again on September 5, 2018 with an ammo box and placed it as a register and for the third time on November 18, 2018 from Corkscrew Canyon over Borax Benchmark.. Since then Tom Arnold and Mike Reynolds, National Park Service staff at Death Valley have stood on top of Blue Mountain. I know of no others who have bagged the peak but hopefully others have enjoyed what the mountain offers. Little Blue Mountain across the wash to the north is equally fun to summit.
Candace66, thanks for asking. If you tackle Big Blue, I'd suggest the Corkscrew Canyon route which takes one up and over Borax Benchmark for two main reasons.
Corkscrew starts at a higher elevation than Artists Palette parking lot and you avoid one major ascent and decent. For example from Corkscrew you go up and over Borax Benchmark, down the south face and then up the northeast pace of Blue Mountain.
From Artist's palette one must scramble up Artists Palette Benchmark and down into the main watershed, scramble up the drainage past a major bypass way below Blue Mountain's north false summit, descend into the wash separating Big Blue from Borax Benchmark and the scramble up the northeast face of Big Blue. The AP route is approximately twice as difficult as the Corkscrew approach and much more technical.
https://youtu.be/jOm-8rk-0bU
Here is my video documentation.
https://youtu.be/R-Be6y61b3A
https://youtu.be/dn_l9wT9n0Y
https://youtu.be/GznS24g3IsU
https://youtu.be/25DcrdWOc3o