Ranges and Routes

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 · 6 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

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.

Nevada High Points #122 — Kinsley Mountains

D. Craig Young · August 3, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Antelope VABM

7882 ft (2402 m) – 1400 ft gain

2024.05.12

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. On a second camera, my Canon R7, I started collecting images for a timelapse. I lacked time to consider any compositional elements, but the skyline of the Goshutes and the light-glow of distant Wendover might make decent foreground interest. It all looked rather good — for Nevada aurora, and I looked forward to a beautiful night. A coyote sang its approval.

And then, nothing happened. I had paused to make dinner, setting water to boil on my stove, but a glance at the sky showed only stars above the false glow of the border-town casinos. I would wait — a quiet desert night is a good place to be patient.

I am on my way to meet my good friends and colleagues — Brian and Daniel — at the University of Utah, for a few days gouging around the southern Bonneville Basin. We are looking to improve the temporal resolution of landform deposition to investigate the natural taphonomy of radiocarbon dates — before archaeological dates can be used as a proxy for human population density in the Bonneville Basin of western Utah, we must understand how and where dates are preserved. If natural processes destroy or obscure otherwise dateable cultural features, we must calibrate our population proxies accordingly. There is a lot to it, but I let Brian and Daniel think about the proxies, while I try to understand the landforms. But in the dark of the night in Antelope Valley, prior to dropping into the Bonneville basin, I wait for northern lights and think about a morning walk into the Kinsley Mountains.

I missed out on a good night’s sleep. The aurora never returned, even as I waited and watched and then, waking every hour at the nudging of a vibrating alarm, monitored the sky throughout the night. Only stars. My cameras were ready but ignored. I soon give in to the blue hour. Fresh-ground coffee beans turn into a rejuvenating brew, so I can set my pack and break camp to find a canyon below the high point.

Although not known for its aurora possibilities, the Kinsley – Goshute mountain chain is the place for raptor migrations, so I had other attractions to consider. I could have done more research, but I thought maybe the spring movements might be in play. Many birds, especially hawks, eagles, and their kin, avoid open expanses of water, or former water in the case of the Bonneville playa and salt flats, preferring to hug the mountains along the margins. This focuses the migratory path into narrow bands, and Kinsley Mountains could be a rest stop along one such path. I will take the 100-500mm lens on my cropped R7 hoping for migratory birds.

Having chosen a canyon southeast of the high point, I drive along the alluvial bajada of the eastern mountain front, past ‘reclaimed’ mining waste hoping to look like hills. I notice a pronghorn antelope standing lonely on the playa-like plain of the basin fill, and I soon realize that she is not alone. She has a wobbly fawn; only a few hours old, the small thing is barely walking, it stands up, sits down. I am a little too close even though I am on a well-used road. Mom wanders off a little ways, so I move away as I hate to disturb them. My attempts at images are straight into the morning sun, so I leave the mom and her fawn alone.

Quaternary-age, uplifted alluvial pediment on southern eastern slopes of Kinsley Mountains, USA

The roads on the alluvium below the high point look good, so I turn toward the canyon of the Phalan Keegan Mine — the mine is inactive, but it is the reason the roads are here. I can see steep limestone outcrops near the summit, and the adjacent plutonic granites are noticeably different. I park below the mine and set off, trying for an eastern ridge though I will need to dodge some large cliffs along the way. I am surprised to find, at the get-go, a well-constructed no-host bar nestled under pinyon tree. It is suitably decorated and has heavy chairs, a bar rail, a rock-lined hearth, and various pretty rocks and cached trinkets. An impressive surprise. I complain about ATV-laden hunting and off-roading parties at times, but they rather know how to create some intricate lodgings for their forays in the ‘wild’.

Wandering up canyon, I noticed a variety of songbirds, thankful for the Merlin app and its off-line identification magic. Gray Vireo, Dusky Flycatcher, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Spotted Towee, Woodhouse’s Scru-Jay, Rock Wren, House Wren, Bushtit. I see the Vireo and Dusky Flycatcher (I think), and the Jay is easy and obvious. The others elude me. A small flock of Pinyon Jays (no app necessary!) heads northeast over the ridge and away. Peregrines emerge from a cliff face high above.

The walk is nice, though I am not photographically inspired. Ramps of limestone lead nowhere, but I can work my way along outcrops and across some back slopes to eventually reach a nice, rounded summit. There is barely a breeze, and the late spring temperature is perfect, practically no clouds. The summit is pleasing, like most any summit can be, but this morning stands on its own. I am unhurried in the calm and spend quite a lot of time just enjoying the views from Mount Wheeler in the Snake Range to the Rubies in the west, and the expanse of the West Desert of the Bonneville Basin rolling out to the east

I do, however, need to get going. I drop down the opposite, north side of the eastern ridge but flush a Peregrine pair suddenly. I had seen one of them earlier. They are nested in a near-summit outcrop, and I have walked in on them from above. I do my best to get quickly away, as I hate disturbing them. But disturbed they are, and I am variously screamed at and dived upon until I get some distance. I watch for a while and then continue downhill.

It is an easy descent to some relict fans that are perched below the southern slopes. These ancient alluvial landforms are very old and almost perfectly smooth except where they are cut by deeply incised drainages. They are slowly tilted as the mountains build, and it is fun to see some Quaternary landforms far above the valley fills. Soon, I am back at the truck where I can open the bar where, here at noontime, it is bring your own beer.

Cheers to a nice walk. Even when the photos fail to motivate or impress me, the high points are special, every one of them.

Keep going.