D. Craig Young

Nevada High Points #125 – Dolly Varden Mountains

D. Craig Young · November 28, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Peak 8578

8578 ft (2619 m) – 1857 ft gain

2024.10.03

Sometimes it is simply a nice walk. On my way to fieldwork on the Old River Bed in Utah’s West Desert, I take advantage of the long drive day with a stop in the Dolly Varden Mountains. The Dolly Vardens are the most prominent of a small group of hills between Steptoe Valley and Antelope Valley; I have made this a common stop on my way to Utah-based projects. A well-maintained road leads to an interesting canyon in deep volcanic rocks before opening to a large, semi-active mine with vast pits and large tailings piles.

My walk begins at a junction of several roads. I head south at first, thinking I will avoid overlooking the mine area, but this relict two-track – the kind of road I typically like – begins to turn away from the canyons and gullies that lead toward the summit. I head back to the mining road to begin again.

I followed the mine road for quite a while. The pinyon-juniper woodland above the mine is thick and filled with snags and downfalls. I could be more adventurous, but it is late afternoon; I have hours of drive-time ahead of me. Although it looks well-traveled, the road steepens, its deep ruts choked with desert loess – wind-driven silt driven from surrounding basins and trapped by the steep, vegetated slopes. I sink to my shins in the dusty tracks.

At a bend in the road, I am relieved to find a ridge that traverses through open woodland to the north slope below the summit. Radio towers punch the sky near my goal; that explains the over-used road this far beyond the mine. The woodland is nice, with small stands of Rocky Mountain white fir on north slopes (David Charlet 2020). Wandering away from the trees, I approach the summit. Soon, I hear voices and notice a work crew on lift extending into the mess of antennae clustered above me. It is crowded up here.

**Summit business**. Communication crews working on the facilities atop Dolly Varden Mountains, NV, USA

I find the register in a small outcrop adjacent to three buildings. The communication crew seems more surprised by me than I am at their presence. The general commotion encourages me to head down; no reason to linger. The skies are wide open and the views to Steptoe Valley are great, but I feel distracted today. The camera stays quiet, and I enjoy the simple walk down. Above all, it is good to take advantage of a long drive day and get a walk in. Each hill is special and interesting in its own way. On a different day it would be a different experience, the mine and communications facilities are a distraction, but every hill is worth the walk.

Keep going.

Please respect the natural and cultural resources of our public lands.

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #124 – Garfield Hills

D. Craig Young · November 22, 2024 · 4 Comments

Peak 8085

8085 ft (2464 m) – 2160 ft gain

2024.09.14

I could not see the summit from camp even though it was yet another clear morning promising blue sky from horizon to horizon. Late summer in west-central Nevada, it would get warm later today, so I better get going.

The Garfield Hills hide a generally dry drainage system leading to a basin floor playa that stands white among sagebrush-covered alluvial fans and a coalesced bajada. The playa is difficult to visit because of a vaguely mysterious testing facility, vehicles of some kind, I think. When viewed from Highway 95 – the common route between Reno and Las Vegas – the Garfield Hills are almost non-descript. Brown, rocky slopes climb steeply to rounded summits; these reach over 8,000 feet but dwarfed by Mount Grant at over 11,000 feet on the horizon to the west.

I had few expectations walking away from camp before the sun crested the nearby ridge. Still, that is the primary pleasure of the many small groups of hills or otherwise anonymous ranges throughout much of Nevada, the most mountainous state not called Alaska. I cut across rolling hillslopes overlooking the Bataan Mine, a distracting scar with a few headframes, ore shoots, and too many prospect and trenches to count – I would avoid all that if possible. A canyon soon opened in front of me, much of it altered as one big prospect, but I finally climbed above the mine scratchings to gain a sandy wash that practically meandered through a granitic parkland. The granite had saved the upper mountain, no one mines granite unless its easy to transport large blocks to build financial and government buildings. It is the edges of the granite, like the lower canyon I had just walked through, that interested the miners. As a deep bubble of magma – what would become the local granitic pluton – pushed through the native rock, their interaction would encourage mineral formation as water, heat, and pressure worked their magic. Miners look at the edges of the action; I would walk into the heart of the pluton now uplifted and exposed by mountain-building as the bulbous summits of the Garfield Hills.

This I did not expect. The dry wash, climbing only gradually, is a parkland of boulders, junipers, and an occasional single-leaf pinyon. Sculptures of stacked boulders are decorated with small trees, and bunch grasses punctuate the shadows. Sitting to pack away my jacket, I notice an entire patch of boulders is walking away. The boulders are in no hurry. It soon becomes clear, with the aid of my binoculars, that I had walked unknowingly past a herd of Desert Bighorn, maybe twenty of them. They blend so well with the hillslope; it is only when they break the horizon that I can easily distinguish rams and ewes. I am not carrying a telephoto lens, thinking I would practice with one mid-range lens, so I sit and watch.

The sandy wash leads nowhere. Most washes break predictably into smaller tributaries and rills while moving upslope and updrainage; desert washes collect water and sediment, getting choked with sand as underfit flows lack energy needed to convey coarser materials basinward. This drainage seemed to ‘sky out’ as I reached a pass and drainage divide that dropped steeply to the east, the opposite of gradual parkland I had just enjoyed. It was beheaded, cut-off from the tributaries and rills I expect typically. Or so I thought. I eventually looked south to see small drainages continuing up hillslopes where an apron of rills was ready to deliver additional grussy bedload weathered from the ever-present granite. Not atypical once I soaked in the scene.

The view into Soda Spring Valley, against the tilted blocks of Black Dyke Mountain, is exceptional; dark hills against bright alluvial aprons and playas, four thousand feet below. After the gradual wash, there are steep ridges reaching toward the high point. It is a healthy walk, pushing through juniper snags braced against the wind even though it is calm today.

I find the summit register, its protective can – the usual red variety – filled with lethargic lady bugs. The insects colonize summits to avoid predation during their long winter hibernation, I am always mildly surprised to find them, but it is very common.

The Bighorn Sheep are not to be found as I descend the slopes where I first saw them. I searched the expansive hillslopes but see none. The slopes are well-tracked, so they are probably nearby, just well camouflaged. The mine looms before me, and I am soon on a well-used road back to my camp.

Once again, a small mountain range reveals its local wonder. My quest to climb all of Nevada’s named ranges is aspirational at best, but it gets me into the smaller spaces. Each is worth the effort of the small journey and relatively easy hikes. It may be that my lack of expectation is what keeps me motivated. The basic pleasure and excitement of simple discoveries – from granitic woodlands to red cans of sleepy lady bugs – are all it takes.

Keep going.

Please respect the natural and cultural resources of our public lands.

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #123 — Cucomungo Mountains

D. Craig Young · September 17, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Peak 7602

7602 ft (2317 m) — 600 ft gain

2024.08.10

It 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.

My brother and I visited the Cucomungo Mountains recently. It was here that I stumbled upon a couple numerical oddities that made us wander a bit. One of the oddities is surprisingly common across Nevada ranges; the other is simply a long-standing error on my list.

The Cucomungo Mountains are hardly recognizable from the any direction. An old mining road in Palmetto Wash leads almost to the summit – or, I should say, summits. The road is like any other in the area, winding as a two-track of gravel and dust through a healthy, if dry, pinyon-juniper woodland. Climbing along a shallow grade, only a couple miles from the highway – Darren and I had been walking for about a mile – the road culminates suddenly at a precipice of wonderful depth. This surprising switchback is the northern rim of Death Valley, where Alum Creek drops in a series of badlands and flashy drainage toward Ubehebe Crater many miles and thousands of feet below. Coming from the north, it seemed we had barely changed elevation to find this wonderful view.

We turned south along the rim to reach the high point at Peak 7602. We found the register, but soon puzzled at what seemed a slightly higher, rounded summit to the southwest, on the opposite side of the switchback viewpoint. Using the level in my camera, it was clear that the south and west ridge held the high point. It was barely higher, maybe a couple feet or so; it is difficult to tell accurately without actual survey gear. Checking my notes, I thought the western summit was a better match for Alvin’s description even if several of the local ridges fell within the same range of contours shown on the maps I could access. Then again, the western spot did not have a register; we decided to visit both.

I have found a few low ranges in the state that have several ‘summits’ with very similar, if not equivalent, elevations. This probably has something to do with common geologic structures driving local uplift, or simply your basic conspiracy of cartographers. This is not the first time I have questioned whether I had arrived at the definitive high point; indeed, I have twice had to return to mountains to attain the ‘true’ summit. Today, we climbed both to cover our guesses.

More time in the hills is never a bad thing, and we spent the walk marveling at the astounding and surprising view into Death Valley. The switchback overlook would be a great location to watch storms from the eastern Sierra fall into the depths of the desert valley. I will return.

It was only as I sat to write this high point story that I came across the second numerical puzzle. As I opened my list – after 100s of other visits – I noticed Dun Glen Peak as high point #2. Dun Glen Peak is in the northern reaches of the East Range, but that range’s summit is at Granite VABM. I walked up Dun Glen almost 30 years ago, and my journal expresses my pleasure of summiting that peak even though, as I wrote at the time, it was not the high point of the range – I have yet to visit Granite. I have no idea why it came to be on my list – although in the 1990s I likely had a growing list of ‘climbs’ that I eventually transformed into the larger goal.

Arbitrary as this all is, it means I have lost one high point on my tally. Oh well, the puzzles of Cucomungo are resolved – we wandered the hills and renumbered the list, even if I now have two #123s in the headlines of TrailOption. It really does not matter – the 324 is aspirational, and I will keep going.

Please respect the natural and cultural resources of our public lands.

#naturefirst #keepgoing

All in a day: Totality 2024

D. Craig Young · August 28, 2024 · 6 Comments

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.

But how to plan for the midwestern arc of totality, in between fieldwork and work in general? I have a brother in Allen, Texas, just outside totality’s path, and he had recently planned a trip to Nevada to join in a high point excursion. He was coming here for the weekend following the eclipse – my travel calendar was shrinking. Complicating things were media reports of anticipated chaos and economic opportunity – not mutually exclusive things – given the extra pressure on roads, lodging, dining, restrooms, and eye protection due to the humanity that would descend on local communities. It was going to be a mess; governors premeditated various states of emergency to fund signage and overtime for law enforcement and septic companies.

There is always a lot of conversation, around the time of any eclipse, about how supposedly primitive societies might have responded to a suddenly darkened daytime sky. Any prehistoric response, say, founding a new religion or something, certainly paled against the silly panic, angst, and warnings that poured from media outlets regarding the upcoming event – all of which had little to do with a few minutes of darkness. A sign of the times, but it made me reconsider, briefly.

I decided to make it interesting. I would forego lodging and sleep, like any real photographer. I booked a flight leaving Reno at midnight; I landed in Dallas just before sunrise on the morning of the eclipse (April 8^th) – I would be on a return flight later tonight. Bryan, my brother, picked me up, and we drove toward east TX and the path of totality. There were clouds around, but the sky looked promising. We found breakfast in Paris (TX, of course) where all the servers sported shirts and caps commemorating “Totality 2024!”. It may have been slightly more crowded than your typical Monday morning, but most folks seemed to be locals. It was clear that many businesses, along with a few opportunistic entrepreneurs, had received the news of and planned for the coming throng.

We drove on, pretty much on our own. The sky thickened as we reached the path of totality; the forecast and actual clouds in all likelihood explaining our loneliness. We consulted satellite imagery to find clear skies in Oklahoma. Left turn, mate.

Bryan guides us over the Red River, the border between the states of Texas and Oklahoma. Although the river is mostly dry today, memories flood in. This is not a random drive in unknown lands. You see, I grew up near here and basically learned to drive and, more importantly, navigate on roads just like this. I got drunk for the first time on backroads that intersect this highway, buried my truck in the Red River floodplain (not drunk), chased hot air balloons, and delivered John Deere tractors (and retrieved them for repair) driving between the small ranches and farms of northeastern Texas counties built on one-mile, checkerboard squares. The air is redolent of experiences of my 20-year-old self, and, of course, we are driving; I have not outgrown any of this.

Chasing bits of blue sky in Oklahoma, we turn into a ‘Bigfoot’ gas station and store. There are lines of outhouses, but we are the only ones here. We get a coffee and buy a ‘Totality 2024!’ sticker from a pile on the counter. Everyone is friendly and hopeful, but the clouds are building. South it is, back across the river and deeper into Texas. We eventually pierce a bubble of clear sky, and we encounter our first cluster of eclipse hunters with a smattering of tripods, cameras, and scopes. Thinking they must know what they are doing, we turn off the highway to find a lonely cemetery with an attractive and generally open cluster of trees. Land access is basically non-existent – not the vast public lands I thrive in, so small parks and cemeteries seemed our best bet. I set up two cameras, one for a time-lapse through the trees and another with the telephoto for the iconic eclipse shot. The eclipse is high in the sky here in Texas (not something I considered at length), so getting imagery that might include some landscape context is impossible. The tree canopy will have to do.

**Partial**. Concerning clouds as totality approaches, Arkansas, USA

As I took some shots for composition and focus, I could see through the viewfinder that the clouds were encroaching on us yet again. The sun disappeared soon after. Spit. Satellite imagery showed clear skies in Arkansas. Why not? North once again, mate. Now we might be driving too fast, just saying.

**Perfection corner**. A random stop at a perfect time, Arkansas, USA (Photo: Bryan Young)

We retrace a few roads and turn east, crossing two state borders in quick succession. We take a random road into a lonely, hardscrabble townsite in the Arkansas woods – a few houses and as many crumbling cars and roaming dogs as you could count. Rolling onto some dirt tracks once the houses and dogs had thinned out, I could see ‘first contact’ as the moon began its perfect transit of the sun. I immediately remembered an empty field on the opposite side of town with an open bend in the road. That would have to be it; Bryan spun us around, we waved at the occupants of a car from Florida – first car in a while, and we avoided the town dogs to get to the open field.

I was set up as soon as we stopped rolling. A lonely chimney stood in front of us, a relic of a former homestead. The clouds seemed thin enough and, maybe, becoming thinner. After all our recent hurry, we now waited. I was set with my 100-500mm lens and solar filter, and could only focus on the iconic totality image, given that the sun was partially eclipsed already, and while I liked the landscape in front of me, the sun was high above all that. We were alone with the songbirds of the adjacent woodland. Not another person or car anywhere in sight, and this was a numbered and paved roadway. It is coming.

You have seen pictures of totality, and you will see a few more here. As the day of every eclipse approaches – partial, annular, or total, the images saturate our social media and news venues. The dark round disc and its corona, maybe a ‘diamond ring’, are burned into our retinas as if we had forgotten our protective glasses during the real thing. You know what the eclipse is going to look like, but still… Totality is here.

The build-up culminates in an otherworldly tint as our surroundings become muted and the contrast of bright sun and shadow is lost. And then suddenly – especially if this is your first totality – the sun simply bursts into brilliant corona and the black hole, where the sun was seconds ago, pulls your sight into its core. The feeling only lasts a few seconds as your mind grapples to process what it is seeing – it almost makes no sense; but then logic returns to the spectacle that it is, awesome and fun, maybe, truly once-in-a-lifetime. The birds have stopped singing – although there seems to be an American Robin who thinks morning is repeating itself; crickets chime in for similar reasons apparently. It is hilarious.

I take photos, but mostly focus on enjoying the event as an experience. My new photos are not any different than the thousands (or more) that are posted everywhere – I need to plan for a foreground and some context. They are, however, mine and provide memories of our unique experience – on a quiet road in Arkansas, exulting in and laughing at the spectacle above us. I would, and may, do it again.

‘Totality’ shops and food trucks look a little forlorn as we head toward DFW airport, backtracking through Paris, and stopping in Allen for dinner with my nephews and nieces. I am on a plane toward Nevada by midnight. Thanks Bryan, it was the best of times. All in a day.

Keep going.

Nevada High Points #123 — Lost Creek Hills

D. Craig Young · August 20, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Cherry Mountain

6908 ft (2106 m) – 1565 ft gain

2024.06.29

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. Earlier, Des and I completed a breeding bird survey in Surprise Valley while visiting some wonderful friends for other excursions, but we parted ways midway through the weekend. Now, a nearby bark, maybe disturbed by the presence of a truck and tent along a well-traveled path, pierced the pre-dawn silence. 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.

I am in the Lost Creek Hills, a jumbled group of rhyolitic ash flow tuffs capped by small tablelands of basalt at the western edge of the Cottonwood Caldera. This is the caldera of the Bordwell Group obsidian, a common toolstone in the archaeological record of the northern and western Great Basin. I would visit some early collection localities as I traversed toward the high point of this small set of hills.

Stopping where an upper, dry tributary of Cherry Creek passed beneath the drooping cables of the LADC power line, I got out to pack my gear for a rolling, three-mile walk to the rounded summit of the Lost Creek Hills. I heard a car door slam. How is it that in the middle of nowhere, I stop and inevitably, so it seems, someone drives up? And this is early on a Sunday morning. They are donning packs, as I am, so I wander over to say hello. Turns out it is a vegetation survey team working for BLM; they will be walking down Clover Creek, so I head happily in the opposite direction.

I walk through burn scars with skeletal ghosts of juniper trees, while pronghorn antelope eye me curiously before darting single-file to the opposite slopes. I find a primary outcrop of obsidian, unusual with its angular and almost tabular cobbles occurring here. Most nearby obsidian localities show rounded cobbles weathered by millennia of erosion and water wear. I document the outcrop, collecting a few natural cobbles (not archaeology) for future geochemical assay. Clearly Bordwell obsidian, but one cannot assume and thereby miss some internal variability around the caldera. Along the way I notice patterned depressions typically a few meters deep and several meters across, curving across gradual slopes at the caldera margin. They seem to be associated with the outcrops of angular obsidian fragments; only later do I notice their broad patterning on aerial imagery. I am now anxious to look at this patterned ground in the near future — maybe cooling blisters in the glassy ignimbrite formed prior to the caldera collapse.

Route map for Cherry Mountain with highlight of patterned ground — Route map showing the collapsed margin of Cottonwood Caldera and patterned ground that might be associated with local obsidian outcrops.

**Toward Fox**. Fox Mountain rises above the caldera margin, from Cherry Mountain, northern Nevada, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #2)

**Cherry register**. High point #123, Cherry Mountain, northern Nevada, Nevada, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

The walk is easy but longer then I expected. I follow sparse two-tracks and cut cross-country to gain the summit ridge. The views are nice. The vast caldera drops away to the east, I can see its volcanic margins where I have found so many obsidian localities. To the west, Duck Flat sits below the southern Warner Mountains, as young volcanos rise further west in California. I only capture a few images in the direct light of approaching noon. I could do more to practice in these conditions, but I typically get motivated by the walk and forget to take time to see smaller scenes that I could work with.

The day warms as I walk back to Clover Creek. An ancient strand of barbed wire draws blood from my leg as I fail to be attentive to the wire at one of the fence crossings; I think my tetanus is up to date, so no real worries even if it looks a bit ghastly as blood trickles into my sock. I’ll make it.

I have a long drive home through Black Rock country, crossing the playa at a stretch before hitting pavement again at Gerlach. A slow end to a long excursion; happy to have the discipline to get a high point walk in and explore the margins of the caldera once again. Where will next month take me?

Keep going.

D. Craig Young

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