Frenchman Mountain Summit

A mountain at the edge of the city

Frenchman Mountain stands on the eastern edge of Las Vegas. Summit Post says one of its high points, Point 3942, rises about 2,000 feet from the eastern edge of town. The land is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The UNLV geology site says the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, run by the National Park Service, lies to the east, and that the Park Service sees the mountain as a buffer zone between the recreation area and urban Las Vegas.

The same site describes a rough recent history. Until the mid-1990s the area was used for uncontrolled target shooting, illegal dumping and off-road vehicle use. Greater Las Vegas grew by 55 percent during the 1990s, and the city reached the foot of the mountain. Target shooting is no longer permitted, anti-dumping laws are more aggressively enforced, and clean-up campaigns by the BLM, Boy Scouts and other volunteers have removed much of the old trash. In 2000 the BLM classified Rainbow Gardens as an area of critical environmental concern, mainly to protect an endemic bearpaw poppy and secondarily geologic resources.

Rock and the Great Unconformity

The mountain is known for geology. The UNLV hiking guide says the western face is a continuous exposure of sedimentary layers totaling more than 4,000 feet thick, and that most are limestone or dolomite. The Great Unconformity, a buried erosion surface, is exposed here. The Review-Journal describes 550-million-year-old sandstone sitting beside 1.7-billion-year-old granite, gneiss and schist, and calls it about 1.2 billion years of missing Earth history. The UNLV geology page also gives about 1.2 billion years. It notes the feature is best known from the Grand Canyon, and says visitors at Frenchman Mountain can see it without a long hike.

The UNLV history page says an interpretive trail and overlook at the unconformity were dedicated on April 13, 2001, and that the trail is about a quarter mile long. The UNLV hike page describes that steep, rocky trail and does not mention a summit, so it is a separate outing from the summit climb. It asks visitors to watch their step on the way down.

Climbing the summit

Sources describe different routes and give different numbers, so treat them as rough. Summit Post describes Point 3942, also called North Frenchman Mountain, at 3,942 feet. Its route follows a 4WD road from a parking lot on Lake Mead Boulevard (Route 147) to a saddle about 1.2 miles in, then a Class 3 scramble to the summit ridge. It gives nearly 3 miles round trip with about 1,500 feet of gain. A separate trip report for a west face route gives 3.3 miles round trip, about 2,100 feet of net gain, Class 3 rating and a summit elevation of 4,052 feet. It describes a traverse below a cliff band as airy and a sticky limestone drainage. The two sources may not mean the same high point, and neither describes a plain trail walk.

Summit Post says early morning is the most comfortable time, shade is much harder to find above the saddle, and winter is the best season because it avoids the heat. It says no permits are required for hiking, that recent signs warn of fines up to $100,000 for driving on the 4WD road, and that camping is not permitted on the BLM land on or near the peak. It does not mention a fee. It also notes four broken, bullet-riddled vehicle bodies in the wash. The west face report’s author avoids the standard northern route because it is apparently known for car break-ins. Routes and rules change, so check with the BLM before going, and leave artifacts where they are.