Today we bagged another new peak. We have wanted to hike Bonanza for several years now and just never got the timing right. The peak has some north facing slopes so we wanted to make sure most of the snow was melted, which is was today. The low snow year is going to mean more of Mt. Charleston is accessible earlier than some years.
Driving through the little town (?) or settlement (?) of Cold Creek Canyon was very intriguing. None of us had any idea this place existed. It was a huge step up from our last town on the way to a hike, which was Good Springs. Lots of very nice houses and log cabins. Intriguing! We didn't see any power lines, but did notice most houses had solar panels. More research is to be done on this little town. The Cold Creek Canyon area is also so intriguing because of the number of wild horses that we saw. They were plentiful on the side of the road and some even had new foals trotting along next to them. Dishearteningly we saw why the "wild" horses were located so close to civilization. As were were driving out, we witnessed people feeding the horses and taking their photos and petting them. All the wild horses were clustered in the main drag of the town. They were very calm and did not see alarmed by the traffic or noisy vehicles on the dirt road.
The dirt road to the hike is doable in a passenger vehicle, but it would be a very slow journey. We made quick work of it in our Xterra and found the parking lot for the Bonanza trail very easily. The hike was 10 miles and fairly challenging with just under 3,000 ft of elevation gain. We were partially shaded throughout even with a late start. The temperature was just perfect in the 60's-70's and the wind kept us very cool. The wind at the saddle until the peak was very blustery and made the sweat on our bodies down right chilly. The top of the hike had a great flat area to eat lunch that was fairly protected from the fierce gale blowing on the high point. Unfortunately all three of us could not locate a summit log. We searched and searched and came up empty handed. We may need to put this on the short list to put a log book up there this summer, but I think I will do some searching to see if anyone can point out where it may be located on the web.
Overall, very enjoyable hike. Great company for P and K, as our dear friend Adam and his beloved J-dog came with us. It was a good early season hike and another new peak to add to our list. We also now know the route to hike Willow.
GPX file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8glm6pe79v7n2iq/BONANZA%20%282%29.gpx
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