TrailOption
A personal geography of landscape and place, art and geo-science.
In search of place, pattern, and process
Stories are out there, keep going (trails optional, take the other).
Images are experience, nothing artificial
Image Collections at LightOpt Photography.
Patterned Ground
Video experience in geomorphology and geography; cartographic landform dictionary
Archaeologists ask questions about the technology and culture of people, past and present, to better understand changes in human adaptation and lifestyles across time and space. And yet, archaeological observations wrestle with geological problems. People leave traces of their passage on landforms shaped by natural processes–the dynamic landscape influences and alters people’s behavior and continues to alter and mask the materials and patterns left behind. We must understand these processes, along with the climatic and environmental conditions driving them, before we can find answers in the sample of artifacts and features we are fortunate to encounter and document.
The TrailOption Journal
Posts from TrailOption, LightOpt Photography, and Patterned Ground
Nevada High Points #123 — Cucomungo Mountains
t is easy to get caught up in the numbers. My list of Nevada high points, based on named ranges drawn from a wonderfully descriptive catalog created by Alvin McLane in Silent Cordilleras, consists of 324 mountains and hills spread across the most mountainous state not called Alaska. I have added a few to Alvin’s list of 314 because I thought they had some prominence that he did not consider – he had added some to the list of USGS topographic names, most of which were eventually accepted by USGS as named ranges. My ten additions are informal and already named one way or another; I thought simply that they stood apart enough that I should count them. It is all rather arbitrary and merely provides a goal for excursions in a wide range of landscapes across Nevada’s fascinatingly varied Basin and Range.
Continue Reading Nevada High Points #123 — Cucomungo Mountains
All in a day: Totality 2024
For unknown reasons in 2017, I decided to skip traveling the short distance – well within my ‘easy’ travel territory – to middle Oregon for the most recent total eclipse to intersect the lower 48 of the somewhat United States. I heard great things about the experience soon after. I knew I had made a mistake, and I would not make that mistake twice.
Nevada High Points #123 — Lost Creek Hills
A coyote woke me in the dark, sometime in the early morning. I had set camp at an intersection of dirt tracks along the road to Lost Creek Pass, having arrived late the previous evening. I had set the tent without its fly so I could feel the breeze and watch the turning stars. I hoped the song dog might saunter curiously by, so I waited silently but a sighting never came. The barks faded into the distance, only once answered by a brief but exuberant chorus in the far distance — a good morning start.
Nevada High Points #122 — Kinsley Mountains
The sky lit up as I opened the tailgate. I picked Antelope Valley, below the Kinsley and Goshute Mountains, as a good place to catch some Great Basin aurora. My eyes had yet to adjust to the fading of the blue hour, but I could easily make out white spires streaking skyward to my north; I had only just parked. I would forego setting camp and, preferably, set up my cameras. I took a few shots for settings, seeing the green and red hues of curtained aurora below the upright spires.
Continue Reading Nevada High Points #122 — Kinsley Mountains
Nevada High Points #121 — Sentinel Hills
Reveling in the sound of dirt under my tires, my head cleared; a pronghorn antelope stared at my intrusion. The volcanic tablelands of the Sentinel Hills spread to the southern horizon, and I could see Hoppin Peak rising as a rim-rocked butte, which I knew overlooked the Quinn River Valley now to my east. I would camp up here in the sagebrush and cheatgrass but, first, I thought I had enough evening light to walk a few miles to the Hoppin Peak high point. Finding a level area to eventually pitch my tent, I grabbed my pack and set off.
Nevada High Points #120 — Kamma Mountains
Once in a while – a great while evidently, a trio of brothers share an adventure. It is my 60th birthday, an adventure of its own; and while a decadal birthday is event enough, this one found Bryan with Darren and me at the foot of Rosebud Peak, in the Kamma Mountains at the edge of the Black Rock Desert playa. This excursion was set up several months ago.
Nevada High Points #119 – Resting Spring Range
I am back in the Mojave. In northern Nevada – in the sagebrush steppe of the Great Basin Desert – the transition to spring has brought a series of atmospheric rivers that vary from warm rains to several inches of new snow. Our water budget appreciates it, and the ski resorts are happy, but it lowers the potential for backcountry travel across the northern tier of the state. But late winter in the Mojave has a very different effect.
Continue Reading Nevada High Points #119 – Resting Spring Range
Nevada High Points #118 – Last Chance Range
Setting aside Second Friday gives momentum to the aspirations of finishing the list, even in its general impossibility. Yet sometimes the calendar gets pushed around – in February the push came in the form of a series of atmospheric rivers that derail my projects in southern California.
Continue Reading Nevada High Points #118 – Last Chance Range
Avocets of Kobeh Valley, NV
On this day in early June, with a thunderstorm in the distance, I drop behind a horded pile of gravel at the edge of broad pit to find that is rim encompasses a postage-stamp oasis of wetlands and ponds; it is maybe the size of a couple tennis courts. Two pair of American Avocets wander the shore, flushing in a quick circle as I approach and stop dead in my tracks. I abandon my truck, quietly grabbing my camera and a long telephoto. I will lay at the pond margin a while until the settle in to my quiet presence. It is worth the wait.
Nevada High Points #117 – Monitor Hills
A missile, about 10 feet off the ground, marked our turn. I have driven many times past this lonely missile mounted on a pole next to Highway 6 east of Tonopah, Nevada, always wanting to take the turn and head south. There is a secured gate several miles further, but we were headed to the Monitor Hills, and not this secluded entrance to the Nevada Test and Training Range. Clear skies preceded us, and yet we had been driving through an early morning that varied between fog, rain, and snow. The weather followed closely, overtaking us as we parked at the foot of the small range.
Nevada High Points #116 – Monte Cristo Range
It is an easy hike up a narrow floodplain, the only mappable landform of recent formation and age (Qa1; <25,000 years or so) that I traverse today, then onto some moderately steep slopes. An intervening gully harbors a pair of juniper trees that catch my eye. I try to work some photos of them, moving in to look at the shapes among the low branches and gnarled bark, but sadly I flush a pair of Short-eared Owls from their daytime roosts.
Continue Reading Nevada High Points #116 – Monte Cristo Range
Nevada High Points #115 – Mountain Boy Range
Below Mountain Boy. Looking into Diamond Valley from the slopes of the Mountain Boy Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA Peak 8083 8083 ft (2464 m) – 804 ft gain 2023.11.09 Mountain Boy Collection Following several days of landform reconnaissance along Highway 50, across central Nevada, I met Darren in Austin, Nevada, where he had…
Continue Reading Nevada High Points #115 – Mountain Boy Range
