Dawns Peak

Hiked: 3/30/2022
Distance: 16 miles round trip cross country
Summit Elevation: 6582'
Prominence: 1062'
Elevation Gain: 6266'
Elevation Gain (in Empire State Buildings): 5.0
Round trip time: 15 hours 30 minutes
Recommended water: 240 oz.
Parking/Fees: Free on Rockhouse Canyon Trail
Difficulty: Very Strenuous

Dawns Peak (aka Lorenzens Peak, aka Peak 6582) is challenging destination in the Santa Rosa Mountains on the ridge between Toro Peak and Rabbit Peak. It is difficult to reach from any direction and has no trails. Summitpost has some background information on the origin of the different names. Peakbagger simply lists it as Peak 6582. I prefer Dawns Peak since it was the moniker used by Jerry Schad. The starting point was on the Rockhouse Canyon Trail dirt road, roughly 8 miles north of S22 outside Borrego Springs. The road was in decent shape, but the last few miles to the trailhead had large rocks and deep sand. 4x4 recommended.

"Hardcore" Henry Chen and I left the OC at 2 AM and arrived at the trailhead just before 5 AM. We started out in the dark crossing mostly open desert in the direction of the black sillouette of the Santa Rosa ridge. After 1.8 miles, we started up the first steep ridge that leveled out into a plateau. We were following the standard route and it drops into a wash near the end of the plateau. The wash was easy going and mostly flat. A few dry falls required class 3 or a bypass which was always available. At the end of the wash, we dropped a water cache under a boulder for the return trip. Then, we climbed another steep slope toward peak 3439. At the top of the slope was another plateau, but we were surprised to also find a masterfully constructed 4' cairn. It looked like a mini-version of the giant cairn built on Dawns Peak.

Looking in the wash from the 1st plateau

Ocotillo bloom

Dropping into the wash

Dryfall with cool chockstone, we came down that way

Leaving the wash

Henry on the slope to Peak 3489

Mini-cairn with Dawns in the background
From the 3489 plateau, we appreciated the massive size of Dawns. We dropped off the plateau and started a mile plus traverse across open desert and small gullies toward the ascent ridge. We took a long break at the base of the ridge before starting the brutal 3000' of class 2/3 to Dawns. The ridge was broken into three steep sections with short connectors. The rock was solid, but may not be anchored well to the slope. Some manzanita, junipers, and pinyons dotted the landscape. We were now in full sun, and I was moving slowly but deliberately. Henry kept a short distance ahead of me on the scramble. At the top of the ridge, there was a final bump to Dawns summit. The brush and trees here were thicker. There was a mostly clear path through but we didn't find it on the way up, so ended up with some unnecessary class 3 and scrapes. Dawns ridge is comparable to the Rabbit East Ridge, but higher angle. The summit was glorious with the famous cairn as a backdrop to the 6000' drop to Clark Dry Lake. Both Toro and Rabbit looked very far away. Salton Sea was shining. Since we didn't find the register, we left one.

Start of the ascent ridge

Two on the summit

Looking at Toro Peak

Looking at Rabbit and Salton Sea
My slow ascent put us behind schedule, so we didn't spend extra time on the summit. When we started down, we found a clear path through the brush, but dropped a couple of hundred feet on a rib past our ascent path. It looked like it connected below so we forged ahead. This cost us more time and energy as we carefully dropped down a chute, then crossed an unstable scree field to get to the right part of the ridge. Correcting course overheated me a little and I never fully recovered. We continued down the steep ridges, easier with gravity, but nearly as slow as going up. By the time we got off the ridge, I was fairly miserable. The unrelenting descent was a quad killer, and it was a sufferfest the rest of the way. I alternated taking sips of water and pouring it over my head to cool off. I guessed it was 10 degrees warmer on the mountain than the NWS had forecast. One intentional change we made to our descent was that we dropped immediately into the wash below the Peak 3489. Going up, we climbed the slope more directly. I thought the wash route was better. Shortly after, we picked up our water cache. To save energy, we downclimbed/slid all the dry falls instead of bypassing them. At sunset, my body retained the sun's fire, but I got some relief and enjoyed the shadows and twilight as we continued down. We almost made it off the mountain before dark, almost. The open desert return to the truck seemed to go on forever. I was in zombie mode at this point, shuffling across the desert, but still took notice of the bright star field. We made it back without seeing another soul on the mountain or the road.

Almost off the ridge

Almost off the mountain