Trail Option

A personal geography of landscape and place, art and geo-science.

Field Notes: The TrailOption Blog

Looping Monitor Valley, Nevada — a new approach to the landforms and landscapes of the Great Basin

I sat recently, looking at loops on maps. Along with my high points and study localities, I have charted the many routes traveled during excursions across Nevada and elsewhere. The east-west highways cut through north-south, basin-and-range structures, with secondary roads, paved and not, traversing valleys in a regular looping pattern. I have long wanted to complete as many Nevada loops as possible, exploring each basin and each range.

For the past few years, I have been focused on high points, reaching the apex of 130 of Nevada’s many ranges. I have explored the basins as well, and my work often highlights the landforms of the valley floors and margins, as that is where wind and water coalesce to arrange the dynamic landforms I am most interested in. With great intent, I create these ‘interests’ (e.g., high points, roads) as motivation and planning targets for my Second Friday excursions.

Continue Reading Looping Monitor Valley, Nevada — a new approach to the landforms and landscapes of the Great Basin

Martis Dogs: A chance encounter with Coyotes near Truckee, California

To make use of the extra time, I started to scout for the requisite shots, but I was quickly distracted, just after sunrise, by the calls of a pack of coyotes. They were nearby, but in the woodlands that ring the open meadow of the valley bottom. I turned toward the forest, following a wide trail in the general direction of the melodic howling. The clustered trees favored me, as I soon caught a glimpse of a pair of yearling pups. Nipping and wrestling, they failed to notice me even though I was relatively close. They would tussle and then stop to sing and yelp. It was musical.

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Time for the visitors: Photographing comets at the margins of the Great Basin

I seem to have driven above the fall colors of central Utah. The Old River Bed of the ancient Great Salt Lake, where I had been walking an ancient delta earlier in the day, was far behind me. With the light fading, I realized I was too late in the season – beyond the middle of October – for peak color in the aspen groves of the Wasatch Mountains. Never mind ‘peak color’, I was clearly too late for leaves of any kind; the aspens formed rows and rows of picket-lined, skeletal woodland, no leaves in sight. My goal this autumn, however, was something different.

Continue Reading Time for the visitors: Photographing comets at the margins of the Great Basin

It’s What We Do – San Diego 100 Race Report

In June of 2012, I ran my first 100-mile trail race. Observing the 13th anniversary, I am republishing my ‘race report’ that appeared on an early version of the Trail Option blog (although the links don’t work, the original blog is here). It is rather long, but running 100 miles takes me a long time. In summary, I’m a 100-mile runner and that can’t be taken away; to finish is to win, and that motivates me to ‘keep going’ every day.

Continue Reading It’s What We Do – San Diego 100 Race Report

Embracing Distractions: Mason Valley – Seaman Range – Lunar Craters

Maybe high points don’t have to be the goal. I established my High Points quest in the 1990s to encourage my exploration of the Nevada outback. I knew summit goals could guide me as I traversed Nevada’s Basin and Range and grew familiar with its amazing variety of desert landforms. Over 30 intervening years, I was not as persistent in my high-point pursuit as I could have been – I missed several years or went months at a time without visiting a summit, but my exploration has been almost ceaseless as I worked on a wide variety of geoarchaeological projects and managed to summit 130 of Nevada’s 317 (or so) named ranges. I grew more patterned and regular as I began writing about the excursions. I am, however, due for change.

Continue Reading Embracing Distractions: Mason Valley – Seaman Range – Lunar Craters

Nevada High Points #130 – Pilot Mountains

Every once in a while, on these high point wanders, I choose a really good route. Not that there are bad routes, but I often end up choosing a misleading side canyon of riparian bushwhacking, leading to bouldery talus below false summits. Other times I get to the evident high point where I notice a confusing array of summits of similar elevation, so I question my maps and wander around visiting each one. Again, this is not a bad thing, it is always good to be in the hills – unless the light is fading, or a storm is coming. My route on Pilot Peak, however, was perfect.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #130 – Pilot Mountains

Nevada High Points #129 – Royston Hills

And just in time, because this is supposed to be a High Point story! As it happens, however, the Royston Hills provide a long, quiet wander with none of the small drama of my short overland drive. The drive had left me on the low, eastern slopes of the Cedar Mountains, with the geographic boundary between the ranges marked by a mature dendritic drainage that pushes basinward to the south. I can map several surfaces of the inset floodplain that cuts and isolates the bounding pediment lobes. The youngest floodplain may only be a few years old; it is now dry and likely only flows in significant storms.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #129 – Royston Hills

Nevada High Points #128 – Slate Ridge

I am on the road again. Having arrived home from northwestern Nevada only recently, I need to be in southern Nevada for some time in our Desert Branch office and a quick bit of fieldwork near Rogers Dry Lake in southeastern California. It is one end of the state to the other, and from the Great Basin Desert to the Mojave.  I enjoy the quick transitions, one ecology to another, Basin and Range to the Walker Lane tectonic silliness, and the travel day provides the opportunity to explore another high point without much of a detour.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #128 – Slate Ridge

Nevada High Points #127 — Painted Point Range

I stood here over 30 years ago, in the heat of a Nevada summer afternoon, visiting Lynn Nardella, a longtime archaeologist and sometime fire lookout. He was on fire-duty, while I was leading a university team doing archaeological survey on the Massacre Rim. Lynn would join us in a few days when we moved to a small excavation in High Rock Canyon, but on that day, he was watching the building monsoon clouds for lightning strikes. I was now standing, in scudding clouds and a piercing wind, at the same small building perched on the summit of the Painted Point Range, three decades later.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #127 — Painted Point Range

Nevada High Points #126 – Adobe Range

This is a long outing, I am headed for fieldwork on the Old River Bed in the West Desert of Utah, and then on to visit my parents in Grand Junction, Colorado. But first, I cannot pass up a chance to check out a Nevada high point along the way. The Adobe Range rises north of Elko, Nevada, in a generally south-to-north-trending jumble of volcanic hills flanked by broad sedimentary pediments. The hills are not prominent in any dramatic sense, but I have worked several projects along their flanks without taking the opportunity to visit the range’s higher elevations. It was time to change that with an afternoon walk.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #126 – Adobe Range

Nevada High Points #125 – Dolly Varden Mountains

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.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #125 – Dolly Varden Mountains

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.

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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.

Continue Reading All in a day: Totality 2024

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.

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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.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #121 — Sentinel Hills

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

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.

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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.

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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 #114 – Martin Creek Mountains

We leave the road to wander the outcrops forming the ridge to the summit. The sky is a treat today and there is dust in the air, so photography is interesting and fun. We are at the summit register easily, it is only a small cairn next to the communications box. A trail east catches my attention, and I can see that this could lead into some interesting country on its way to Martin Creek, the namesake drainage that bounds the ranges east side. There are several other small ranges to walk in this area, so I am hopeful that this trail hints at others further east. Again, I forget how interesting the hills rising from Paradise Valley are, even as I lived in Winnemucca once-upon-a-time and not so far away.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #114 – Martin Creek Mountains

Nevada High Points #113 – Whistler Mountain

I have been on a mapping excursion, developing an archaeological sensitivity model on a cross-section of Nevada, basically paralleling Highway 50. Setting camps along the way, it sometimes puts me in proximity to high points on my target list, and today I am up early for a walk up Whistler Mountain, a small mountain range rising between Diamond Valley and Kobeh Valley in central Nevada. West of Devils Cut, a prominent cut in ancient seabeds rising in gray stripes of limestone, I turn across Slough Creek to traverse along the base of relict fan lobes before turning eastward and upward on a two-track road leading into a relatively dense pinyon-juniper woodland.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #113 – Whistler Mountain

Nevada High Points #112 – Currie Hills

I was on my way to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, to join a couple colleagues for fieldwork across the Bonneville Basin, choosing a traverse of Hwy 50 as my preferred and typical route. With days getting to summertime length, however, I had time for a diversion. The Currie Hills rise easily about halfway on a south-to-north line between Ely, Nevada, and Wendover, Utah; I was due for a high point.

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Nevada High Points #111 – Pahsupp Mountains

I am headed toward the Pahsupp Mountains, where a prominent block rises above Trego Hot Springs at the playa margin, but the range’s high point is stretched out to the south as Dry Mountain (6,526’). As I turn away from the playa, the usual landmarks having long faded into the night, my view is confined to flashy, narrow strips of rabbitbrush bright at the dusty road margins. A jackrabbit darts through the high beams on occasion; hard to tell, but I don’t think it’s the same one each time.

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Nevada High Points #110 – Lodi Hills

Occasionally, a highpoint excursion takes me into an area where our field teams are working, and this provides a good opportunity for a closer look at the landscape surrounding our project efforts. I left home early thinking I would get to the base of the Lodi Hills – my highpoint target on the day – to cover the relatively short, easy walk above Gabbs Valley in west-central Nevada; afterward I might check in with the crews to see how things are going.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #110 – Lodi Hills

Nevada High Points #109 – General Thomas Hills

The winter snows seem endless, the foothills of the Carson Range releasing the cold moisture from the lake effect that streams out of the Tahoe Basin. The Sierra snowpack is trending toward record depths, and we benefit from the overflow that has been prevalent this season. It does not look to be letting up as the atmospheric rivers remain productive. It means, however, that I must head farther south to find dry ground to explore. So, I am out early on Sunday morning – still a Second Friday weekend – and headed toward Tonopah where dirt will lead me into the General Thomas Hills, an easy-day outing.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #109 – General Thomas Hills

Nevada High Points #108 – Goldfield Hills

Sitting at dinner in Beatty, after our nice afternoon in the Bullfrog Hills, Darren and I decided we would explore another small range on our drive home. The Goldfield Hills are a jumble of irregular hills around the mining town of – of course – Goldfield, Nevada. Mine tailings, head frames, and shacks mingle around prospects, some active, most not.

The thing about mining towns…

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Nevada High Points #106 – Paymaster Ridge

We missed a month – the move is complete, finally – but are in the Great Basin outback for December. It is another small set of hills as we head to Clayton Valley, a good winter excursion, to explore Paymaster Ridge. There is a cluster of named ranges here. In some ways the ranges are arbitrary; difficult to tell whether the named divisions are based on geologic structure, topographic prominence, or simply cartographic creativity.

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Nevada Highpoints #104 – Bluewing Mountains

It’s hot. The sky is clear, and a parched blue horizon rests abruptly on the dusty brown of the Nevada desert. It is August, of course, when desert landscape photography is a challenge. It’s difficult to think about photography or exploring another high point when the heat is so seemingly relentless. It also seemed I could not escape from work today, so my departure moved later and later, and I considered turning around for home even as I approached my turn-off along the southern margin of the Black Rock Desert playa. I cannot, however, let the noise of the day-to-day get so overbearing that I can’t find rest in the wild.

Continue Reading Nevada Highpoints #104 – Bluewing Mountains

Nevada High Points #103 — Montana Mountains

Motivation is hard to find in the long, repetitive days of summer. The Great Basin Desert seems to curl and fold within itself, even as hazy heatwaves dance across the expanse. The high-pressure domes that keep moisture at bay seem to press downward and inward, sapping energy and making the horizons of endless days barren of interest. I have been in a holding pattern of field days on projects, day-after-day, rarely home for any comfortable time; the repetition threatening to deplete much interest in pursuit of geodata, of photography (either documentarian or creative), and – I’m surprised to admit – of exploration.

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Nevada High Points #102 – Pinto Peak

With basin-and-range faulting, several small ranges form the rough bounds of the much older caldera. Obsidian that formed during the eruption drapes many area landforms, so I have been gouging around this area for several decades mapping the natural distribution of this traditionally important toolstone to provide geographic setting for archaeological study of the technology, movement, and economy of people who have called northern Nevada and the larger Great Basin home for millennia – the geochemistry of obsidian provides direct connection to these things.

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Nevada High Points #101 – Slumbering Hills

There is something in the Slumbering Hills. The unnamed high point is below 7000 feet in elevation and there are few riparian areas, only scattered springs, and absolutely no trees. Cheat grass and desiccated plants of sagebrush and saltbush communities show the struggles of fire and scabby recovery; mining pits and piles pock the numerous roads and tracks that traverse the range. It seems unappealing and easily unassuming from the highways where one glimpses higher, snow-capped mountains that rise in the distance, drawing sightlines to obviously higher horizons.

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Nevada High Points #100 – New Pass Range

Big, round numbers are cool, and here I am at High Point #100. It is simply a step on the journey, but it is also a great measure of motivation and experience in getting here. I started this quest in 1995 visiting high points in earnest for a couple years until, some would say, bigger responsibilities got in the way. But like the 100-mile ultraruns I have completed, the long experience takes time and consists of many unique steps on many different trails. It is the process that matters.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #100 – New Pass Range

Nevada High Points #99 – Cocoon Mountains

. I have watched this small, obscure range pass my windshield many times as I skirt the dune of Sand Mountain on Highway 50, east and west across Nevada. Now, beyond the dust of the sink, Robert and I turn south into lunette dunes of the Turupah Flat, at the sill of Salt Wells Basin, pushing along a rocky road around the foot of the Bunejug Mountains to reach the sandy foot slopes of the Cocoons. The road soon dug into the sand of lake-margin dunes; locking into four-wheel drive we moved easily onward – maybe fifteen miles beyond pavement.

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Nevada High Points #98 – Gold Mountain

It was finally time to get back to a desert high point – my string of monthly highpoints having been broken by a wonderful trip to Patagonia and Atacama Desert in Chile (stories and images coming soon).

Although we have not had good precipitation in 2022, a couple slider storms have left dustings in the high country and access can be an undesired, muddy adventure as early runoff continues. With this in mind, Darren and I ventured southward into the Mojave to find the south-facing slopes of Gold Mountain above Bonnie Claire Flat.

Continue Reading Nevada High Points #98 – Gold Mountain

Winter’s Coming to the Eastern Sierra, CA

We were closing out the 2021 field season in Owens Valley, and I had been on a long circuitous road trip working on projects in San Diego, California, visiting with colleagues in Henderson, Nevada, and traversing Death Valley to return to our team working on the fans of the Owens Lake basin. While we wrapped up our fieldwork, the first solid winter storm bore down on the Sierra.

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Nevada High Points #96 – Sahwave Mountains

Although the forecast remained stable with blue skies as far as any meteorologist could see, I figured it was a good day to get into the Black Rock area and explore the Sahwave Mountains. This small but interesting range is tucked into what I call the Bluewing Triangle, that expanse south of the Black Rock playa, east of the Nightengale Mountains, northwest of Interstate 80 and the Humboldt River. There are lots of little ranges in here, and very few people.

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Saline Valley Salt Tram – Inyo Mountains, CA

While most visitors are impressed by the remains and awed by the effort required in its construction, vandalism, whether purposeful or simply irresponsible, is an on-going concern. Our task was to map the summit structures using three-dimensional photographic tools with imagery obtained by drone. After the adventurous but grueling drive, we set up camp and prepared for some early morning flights.

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Nevada High Points #95 – Palmetto Mountains

I had planned to get out early for Second Friday, but because my brother, Darren, could not join this weekend and my back had spasmed oddly yesterday, I slept late. The schedule had changed anyway. I now planned to meet colleagues in Owens Valley for a drone mapping project in the Inyo Mountains, so my journey into the Palmetto Mountains and their high point of Harvey Peak is a prelude to that.

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Wildlife Photography: Getting Lost with the Red-headed Woodpecker

Ok, this is not a bird photography website. It just happens that this was an interesting week. Six-Mile Woodpecker Collection After our brief birding excursion along the East Walker River, Desna heard that a Red-headed Woodpecker had taken up brief residence in Six Mile Canyon in the Virginia Range, just below Virginia City, Nevada. This…

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Landscape Photography: Late Snow and Last Light on the Black Rock Playa, Nevada

I spent the day, having started well before sunrise, on an overland obsidian recce focused on the geomorphology and distribution of the Majuba and Seven Troughs toolstone sources. A series of dramatic snow squalls cut that effort short just as I reached the ‘High Road’ from Sulphur to Gerlach. However, as I broke out of…

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Obsidian Traces: Mapping Majuba

https://youtu.be/Nyfa_-sY6w0 Obsidian, a form of volcanic glass, is a key constituent of traditional toolkits — and the detritus of tool manufacture — found in archaeological sites throughout the Great Basin of western North America. It was preferred, in many ways, because of its absolutely sharp edges and the relative ease with which tools and edges…

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Twelve for 2020

Twenty-twenty might not be a year to look back on, especially for those whose lives suffered in the wake of economic setbacks, storms of fire or weather, and the unknowns and uncertainties of the insidious and unrelenting Covid pandemic. Communities, families, and friends suffered as misinformed and misguided (or worse) politics cut and infected deep…

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In the days when we could wander… Death Valley, Part 1.

There is always the desert. Although I thrive in arid landscapes, I find them difficult to photograph. Of course, there are waves of contrast in sand dunes, brilliant rocky outcrops, and magical golden-hour light, but so much of desert space is a great wide open, playas to mountains with subtle shifts in color. I occasionally come across…

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