Overview

This is a moderately strenuous hike that runs up washes, through canyons, and up ridges to the summit of a volcanic peak. The route passes red sandstone crags, layered carbonate mountains, conglomerate cliffs, and multi-colored mudstones that record ancient lakebeds with myriad Cenozoic fossils and ripple marks. This is a great hike to a spectacular place, and it is a surprisingly easy hike for a desert summit. There are a couple of little pour-overs, but they shouldn't stop anybody from making the summit.

Hamblin Mountain is also interesting because it is half of a volcano that was split by an earthquake fault. Cleopatra Mountain, which lies about a dozen miles east of Hamblin Mountain, is the other half of the volcano.

Link to map.

Watch Out

Other than the standard warnings about hiking in the desert, ...except for crossing the highway, this route is pretty safe. There are a couple of low and easy-to-climb pour-overs, but always be careful when you are high enough to fall and hurt yourself. The summit is a narrow ridge, so be careful there too.

While hiking, please respect the land and the other people out there, and try to Leave No Trace of your passage. Also, this is a moderately long hike in a remote area, so be sure to bring the 10 Essentials.

Throughout the canyon, you may see signs of an old road that once ran into Pinto Valley. The area is now the federally designated Pinto Valley Wilderness Area, so vehicles are prohibited. Also, when you get into the red and white mud hills, you may see two species of rare plants (Silverleaf Sunray and California Bearpaw Poppies) that are species of concern in Nevada. Please help protect these plants by staying off the mud hills.

This hike is located along Northshore Road in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, about 1 hour northeast of Las Vegas.

From town, drive out to Lake Mead. From Northshore Road at Lakeshore Road (Table 1, Site 654), drive north on Northshore Road for 18.2 miles (0.2 miles east of Mile Marker 18) to a paved pullout on the left (Site 804). The pullout is on a bend with limited visibility in both directions. Park here; this is the trailhead.

You can't see the summit from the trailhead, but you can see it from back down the road. Heading east on Northshore Road, you pass the turnoff to Callville Bay, then go through a shallow canyon with eroded red and white mudstone hills. At about Mile Marker 15, the road crests a low saddle with a paved pullout on the south (right), and from there, you can get a good view of the Hamblin Mountain complex, which is ahead to the southeast. See the banner photo.

The Hike

From the trailhead (Table 2, Waypoint 1), the route runs south from the west end of the parking area on a use-trail. Cross the highway carefully.

About 0.2 miles out, the use-trail drops into Cottonwood Wash (Wpt. 2) and disappears. From here, walk upstream for about 1.0 miles to Cottonwood Spring (Wpt. 3), which is marked by two cottonwood trees against a cliff that is red sandstone on the west side (right) of the wash and blue-gray conglomerate on the east (left) side. For details on this part of the hike, see the description of the Cottonwood Spring route.From the spring, the route continues up the wash. The short pour-over behind the cottonwood trees is an easy scramble up. While hiking up the wash, you will see a ridge straight ahead with a red sandstone base and a cap of dark conglomerate cliffs with deep, vertical cracks. This is an important landmark, as the next goal is a fork in wash at the southwest (far right) toe of this ridge (Wpt. 4).

To get there, hike up Cottonwood Wash to the northwest (near right) toe of the landmark ridge. Stay right at a fork in the wash, which is obvious because the left fork goes along the north side of the ridge. Just before this fork, the wash makes a big jog to the west (right) in an area where there is a lot of gypsum in the soil and perhaps an old mining claim. At the fork, there is a red mudhill bluff with low cliffs on west (right) edge of the wash.

Following Cottonwood Wash along the west side of the landmark ridge, the canyon narrows to a few feet wide as it cuts southward along the western toe of the landmark ridge. Here, the rocks on the north (near) side of the narrows are red sandstone while the rocks on the south (far) side are blue-gray conglomerate (similar to the cliff at Cottonwood Spring, but orientated at a different angle).

Just beyond these narrows, you arrive at the fork in the wash at the southwestern toe of the landmark ridge (Wpt. 4). Here, the main wash is abruptly blocked by an east-west trending ridge of white mudstone. The fork to the east (left) runs along the south side of the landmark ridge, picks up an old road, and runs down into Pinto Valley. The fork to the west (right) is the start of the route to Hamblin Mountain, which is 1.26 air-miles (1.75 trail-miles) out.

Standing at the fork in the wash and facing west, the south (left) side of the canyon is a white mud-hill ridge and the north (right) side is a narrow ridge of chocolate-brown conglomerate rock. At the head of the canyon, 0.49 air-miles out, there is a low saddle on the skyline: this is the next goal.

The route runs up the canyon staying close under the chocolate-brown conglomerate ridge (stay to the right at forks). A few minutes out, you pass through a group of chocolate-brown conglomerate boulders that rolled down from the ridge. Beyond them, the wash opens up into a funny bowl where it looks like someone bulldozed out a bunch of red dirt.

Continue up the main wash (south of the bowl and now beyond the conglomerate ridge), staying to the right at a fork with a red bluff in front of you, always heading in the direction of the saddle. When you are just below the saddle, there is a 4-ft pour-over in the canyon and a catclaw acacia at the top of the pour-over. Scramble up the pour-over, climb through the acacia, and immediately take a hard right to cut up a short, steep gully to the saddle (Wpt. 5). In the upper parts of this canyon, and especially above the acacia, a use-trail becomes obvious. This sounds like a lot of curving to the right, but generally the route runs straight up the canyon; the line-of-sight distance is 0.49 miles, and the hiking distance is only slightly longer at 0.56 miles. You can see the saddle from most points in the canyon.

From the saddle (Wpt. 5), the next goal is to get into the big wash to the west (Wpt. 6). Standing on the saddle, look west. Immediately before you is a fairly narrow but deep gully, and 200 yards beyond that is a big wash that drains the entire northeast face of Hamblin Mountain (the summit is visible from here). The next goal is to get into the big canyon. Surprisingly, there appears to be no use-trail to get there easily. Instead, walk south on a use-trail for a few yards to get around the head of the narrow gully, and then head west across the hillside taking whatever use-trails you can find. It takes less than 3 minutes to get to the edge of the big wash, so this is a quick task.

The route drops into the big wash and runs uphill. The wash is broad and flat with low cliffs on the sides, and the firm gravel makes for easy walking. Creosote, bursage, and Ephedra are the dominant species of vegetation, and the rock has changed from mudstones and odd conglomerates to a fine-grained volcanic.

The route runs up the wash, generally staying to the right at major forks in the wash. After about 0.32 miles in the wash, the canyon narrows and runs up into a shallow box canyon (Wpt. 7) where the canyon forks. Climb the easy 5-ft pour-over on the west (right) side of the box, which has a large dead shrub on the right edge. Just above this dry pour-over, there are some interesting conglomerate rocks in the wash where volcanic cobbles are set in a matrix of red sandstone.

Continuing up the main canyon, the wash gets narrower, steeper, and rockier, but the use-trail in the bottom of the wash becomes better defined and easier to follow. However, at a point (Wpt. 8) about 0.25 miles above the pour-over and 80 yards (0.05 mi) below the saddle on the summit ridge, the use-trail suddenly divides into about three forks, each fork leaves the bottom of the wash, and all head upward in different directions.

I found that cutting to the east (left) as soon as possible on what turned out to be a good use-trail provided to be an easy route to the saddle on the summit ridge (Wpt. 9). The views from the saddle are spectacular and provide the first look over the ridge and down into Lake Mead.

From the saddle on the summit ridge (Wpt. 9), the route is simple: head west and uphill to the summit (Wpt. 10), which is another 0.35 trail-miles out. The route winds up along the ridge running on the north side (good views of the Muddy Mountains), then the south side (good views of the lake), then across an east-facing sidehill and up a gully to a side ridge (good views of Pinto Valley), and finally back up to the main summit ridge (good views to the west) at a point only a few yards from the summit. The hiking is fairly steep along some parts of the ridge, but the use-trail is easy to walk on, and in contrast with comments from some authors, I found little scree and few loose rocks along this route.

The summit is a narrow, east-west trending ridge with a bunch of jagged volcanic rocks sticking up. To move along the crest, you have to wind back and forth among the rocks, taking care along the steep cliffs on both sides of the crest.

The views from the summit are surprisingly spectacular given that Hamblin is only a 3,010-ft peak. I was there on an overcast and very hazy day, so I'm not sure if I could actually see into California, but I could see far into Utah and Arizona. There are great views of Lake Mead including the Boulder Basin, the narrows, and a sliver of the Overton Arm. Off to the west you can see much of Las Vegas, with Mt. Potosi, Red Rocks, and Mt. Charleston standing in the background. To the north you can see the Sheep Range, Bowl of Fire area, Muddy Mountains, and Bitter Spring cliffs. Finally, to the east you can see the Virgin Gorge area, Virgin Mountain, the Gold Butte region, and Grand Wash Cliffs.

The summit is unmarked, but there is a USGS benchmark (Pinto, set in 1948) and two other USGS markers located on the ridge a few yards west of the summit (by two wooden posts). On USGS maps, this peak is marked "Pinto," which normally would be the name of the mountain, but who knows how these things work out.

When you are tired of the scenery and finished with your lunch, follow your footprints back to the trailhead. If you look at a map or the lay of the land from the summit, you will see other obvious routes down, but I have not taken any of them. On the way down, a short distance below the 5-ft pour-over in the box canyon, the wash makes big sweeping bend to the west (left), changing direction from northeast to northwest. At the corner of the bend, there is a big gray rock outcrop (the gray contrasts with other colors) on east (right) side of the wash (Wpt. 11). Immediately past (north) the outcrop, a use-trail cuts up and out of the wash. Use this landmark for finding your way back to the first saddle (Wpt. 5) that overlooks the route back into Cottonwood Canyon.