South Camp Peak is a little known peak that lies between Duane Bliss Peak and Genoa Peak along the Genoa Peak OHV Road. While the two more popular peaks sit on the Tahoe-Ogul List and receive much more foot traffic, South Camp should not be overlooked. There is a spot in the road where it splits and goes around a tree, I had saved a GPS track that started from this location and offered a short approach. From here, you can set across some open sage brush country with Genoa Peak sitting directly at your six. There is a slight up slope in the terrain which will lead you to some pines and large rock outcropping about 0.4 miles in. This is the start of the South Camp summit. Upon arriving to this area, I flushed out two sage grouse that blew out very loudly from within a few feet of me. The north side of this rock outcropping is very steep and vertical, so you need to go up the south side of it somewhere in the center. There are multiple high points along this spine and I just tagged each one. Some of them offered some Class 2\/Class 3 climbing. There was a benchmark as well, but it was more generic than the ones I typically find at the summit.<\/p>\n
The view of Tahoe is fantastic to the west. To the north there are great views of Duane Bliss and Snow Valley Peak. You can also see into the Carson Valley and back towards Genoa Peak.<\/p>\n
This would be a nice easy trip to do with the kids like I did. The rock climbing is not too hard and the kind of stuff a little one would enjoy. Just be sure to keep a tight leash on them as the other side is a sheer drop off into sharp rocks.<\/p>\n
This peak was definitely a surprise.<\/p>\n