La Madre

I would consider La Madre a "must-climb" peak in Las Vegas.  Not necessarily because the routes are especially interesting, but because it's prominent from a lot of Las Vegas, it has a cool scar on it visible from far away, and it provides very unique views.

There are routes that approach from Red Rock, but it was summer and we didn't want to spend so long at a lower elevation.  We had actually attempted the Northern approach a couple years ago, but we were discouraged by the fact that our chosen route took us through some private mining property.
This time, I did a lot more planning and found some routes that didn't require the trip through private mining property.  They would, however, require some involved rugged 4x4 driving.  For the umpteenth time, I wondered if our Xterra was up for it, and for the umpteenth time, it turned out the answer was a resounding yes.  Besides just being a very rugged road, we had to cross two dry creek beds, and both required pretty decent descents down to them, and then ascents back up.  The Xterra didn't even blink (I did).




Maybe a drawback of reading so many trip reports from such seasoned hikers (Bob Burd, Harlan Stockman, Branch Whitney, Andy Zdon) is that they can sometimes gloss over terrain that Karen and I may still find challenging.  That was the case on this trip, as the round trip mileage is only 5.4 miles.  We were prepared to follow a trail-less ridge up to the top.  Steep doesn't bother us, but what we didn't expect was the ridge being a tedious maze of rugged limestone formations and bushwhacking.  Progress was arduous and hard-fought.  As we approached the scar, it became especially important to ensure we didn't cliff out by venturing too far left.



The top was a great reward, however.  The views are truly unique and even though it was a traditionally hazy Las Vegas day, even Karen admitted that the views were striking.





The descent was full of the same bushwhacking and scrambling, but we did discover that we didn't have to stray so far from the scar as we did on the way up.  We also toyed several times with bailing on the ridge and taking a drainage down that led to a dry creek bed that would eventually take us to our car.  Ultimately, we decided we had no patience for potential route-finding snafus, so we stuck to the ridge, but looking at the topo, I still think our drainage descent has potential.

I'm mildly intrigued by the Red Rock approach routes, especially the one that passes through the dramatic notch that separates El Padre and La Madre.  However, I won't be in a huge hurry to repeat this particular Northern approach.