Trail Option

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Nevada High Points #86 – East Gate Range

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Grayback Mountain

7510 ft (2289 m) – 1200 ft gain

2021.07.11

Well, that didn’t take long. I must have gotten a little sleep. It is, at most, four hours after returning from Peak 6632, which we summited soon after midnight, and Darren and I are headed for our approach to Grayback Mountain, the highpoint of the East Gate Range. The forecast is basically three words, ‘hot and smokey’, so we are at it early to beat the heat – it is generally hazy in the pre-dawn sky, but the smoke does not seem too bad.

Generally paralleling and slightly en-echelon with the Desatoya Mountains, the East Gate Range extends southward from the historic-era freight station and some time ranch at East Gate, a cleft traced by Buffalo Creek at the northern tip of the range. Buffalo Creek and its dramatic arroyo drain westward and cut eastward, and the drainage’s dendritic, upper, generally dry tributaries reach toward Buffalo Mountain above Smith Creek Valley – Buffalo Mountain ing being a distant sister to Grayback Mountain, the range high point. Steep cliffs of rhyolite outcrop in the north and punchy hills of rhyolite and volcanic tuff build into a broad range tucked up against the Broken Hills.

We hiked into the rising sun, following a long drainage, its narrow gully crowded with a two-track, jeep trail. We worked our way through an open pinyon woodland that seems to be doing well on north-facing slopes. The south-facing slopes are wide open or staked with the burnt, denuded skeletons of what was once a stand of pinyon. The slopes face one another across the gully, a yin-yang of before and after. The northward burn scar leads us to steep hills of rhyolitic tuff – cliffs and outcrops creasing the gullies that cut toward the mountain. Following a modest crease in the hillside, the peak’s south ridge the leads directly to the summit, and we take little time climbing the stairway of game and grazing trails, over tuffs of bunch grass and between rocks of talus. The summit hosts a small, slightly crowded woodland, with the register cairn tucked under a pinyon snag the appears to propping up a young tree.

HP #86 Collection

Darren in the small pinyon woodland on the summit of Grayback Mountain, Eastgate Range, Nevada

Our view is fading fast in the smoke and a growing heat haze. While smoke arrives in a rust-brown blur in the upper elevations, last night’s ground smog suffocates the lower valleys. As the day warms, the valley fog reaches up canyons to meet the summit haze. It is time to go down.

Morning haze divides the Eastgate Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada

Our return is a wander among open pinyon and outcrops until we hit the snags of the gullied fire scar. A dozer track moves along the scar margin, winding between sage and dust – a firebreak that held. Looking across the little valley, to the northwest, it seems the line did not withstand a southerly winded run; the flames climbed northward, too fast for the meager dirt line, upslope toward Grayback. The ground is barren but for the black stems of burned-out sagebrush. Regaining the south side’s woodland, we walk easily down the gully and are soon back in camp.

Traces of former lives under the pinyon, Grayback Mountain, Nevada
Our camp at Mud Spring, the Broken Hills HP of Peak 6632 in back left, Broken Hills, Nevada

HP #86 Collection

A walk in the East Gate Range is not dramatic. Sure, there is the amazing alluvial record of Buffalo Creek arroyo and, often, bighorn sheep can be seen on the canyon walls overlooking Eastgate. I love an overland that includes Eastgate, but the rounded hills do not call for attention. And yet, even in the heat of July (and the heat of 2021), a morning recce around Grayback is cannot be a bad thing.

We pack camp quickly, but not before we pile up a skottle breakfast to refuel after the two climbs. Ok, climbs like this do not require too much fuel, but our enjoyable effort is good reason for a breakfast burrito. We laugh at the fact that our climbs could not have been more different, night and day, in fact. And best, this morning’s walk did not have any spiders.

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

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Nevada High Points #85 – Broken Hills

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Peak 6632

6632 ft (2021 m) – 600 ft gain

2021.07.10

It has been a strange week, but maybe this is just how they are now. A 5.9-magnitude earthquake shook our house, Portland hit 113° (and Gardnerville not much less), the Beckwourth Fire Complex continues to rampage, and monsoon-like storms knocked the power out at StoneHeart. The latter occurred after I had left on a Second Friday excursion targeting the High Rock Country. I had met Darren at his house just as Des described a powerful storm cell at home – a lightning strike resulted in a local power outage. She said it was intense but not that unusual, so Darren and I headed north toward Gerlach. But at Nixon, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, Des let me know that the power had returned but the well had not. We tried various fixes, but it would not kick in. Although our well contractor is always quick to respond, I would not rest easy in the backcountry without the water on at StoneHeart. We turned back.

However, Second Friday still goes – even if it is now Saturday. Waiting through the punishing heat of the day, Darren and I finally set out eastward on Highway 50 in early evening. We have a new plan for the short excursion. We will avoid the heat as much as possible, climbing at night and in the early morning to get high points of two smaller ranges in west-central Nevada.

It is 106° in Dayton Valley but a thunderstorm squall at Lahontan Reservoir drops the temperature along with a brief heavy rain. For a few minutes it is 76°. By the time we reach Fallon, however, it is a cloudy 104°, and it stays that way into the evening even as we hit the dirt tracks of the Broken Hills slightly higher in the Great Basin desert.

Ragged hills of rhyolite and volcanic tuffs comprise the unorganized range of the Broken Hills. On the edge of the hills, the site of Broken Hills saw a brief boom as silver discoveries drew miners to the area in the late 19th and early 20th century. McLane writes that the hills are named for either the mining district – a call to prosperous mining area in Australia – or the disparate, broken nature of the knolls, outcrops, and hummocks that make up the small, east-west-trending range. A sagebrush community forms a low-density cover with widely spaced small plants on local hillsides. There are very few trees. These are clustered in small stands of Utah juniper, typically one or two trees standing lonely along contacts between the rhyolitic rocks and volcanic tuffs, it seems. Pinyon can be found in the wash separating the Broken Hills from the East Gate Range, where the pines form a thick woodland subject to recent patchy wildland fire. The boundary between the two ranges is structural – the East Gate Range being a relatively clear north-south fault block extending away from the Desatoya Mountains, while the Broken Hills appear random and rolling. The high points of the two ranges are only a few miles apart, so our camp at Mud Springs should provide a quick base for two short climbs.

HP #85 Collection

Smoke from the Beckwourth Complex wildland fire transforms a needed rain at sunset, Broken Hills, Nevada

As we set camp, the smoke from the Beckwourth Complex alters the western sky. Storms struggle in virga, as gray curtains evaporate in the heat without nourishment. We make dinner and wait for the relative cool of night. It is 10 PM when we set out with headlamps, leaving the truck on a side-road a ridge away from camp. We have arachnids immediately. Scorpions and fierce-looking spiders patrol beneath our headlamps, dodging our footfalls and we dodging them. A black widow has strung a hopeful trap across one rut of our two-track path, a reminder that the hunters are busy in the understory and best to keep the headlamps and attention on. This desolate path to Peak 6632, unremarkable in daytime, is bustling after dark.

A storm fades in the smoke of western Nevada Ranges, Broken Hills, Nevada

The dome of Peak 6632 steepens considerably in its final 500 feet. Darren finds the small summit cairn and we complete our first night-time summit. And it is dark as night. Clouds and smoke mute any meager light, and we realize, with no stars to guide us, we have lost our bearings. The smokey haze fills the horizon like ground-fog, and the glow of distant towns and bigger cities is almost imperceptible. Finally succumbing to checking GPS, we are baffled by our confused dead-reckoning. A moment ago, we had, with certainty, thought we were facing south, only now do we realize that that direction is north; we were 180° off. Soon, however, the parting clouds reveal the Milky Way core, and we are grounded again. A large scorpion watches our confusion – it too likely confused by our curious illumination – and we keep an eye on it as we check the summit register.

Ghosts on the summit, Peak 6632, Broken Hills, Nevada

We linger for an hour or more. As the smoke blurs the shadows of hills and horizon below us, the Milky Way appears hauntingly among the clouds. Forgetting the ground-hunting creatures for a while, we turn off our headlamps to feel the dark. The wind is warm and tastes sadly of distant embers. Again, a small hill, an otherwise no-name place of interest to so few, provides a unique experience that is the dividend of motivation and the simple desire to explore the forgotten backcountry.

The Milky Way appears behind a haunting night-haze of wildland smoke, Broken Hills, Nevada

HP #85 Collection

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #83 – Toiyabe Range

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Arc Dome

11,788 ft (3593 m) – 4005 ft gain

2021.05.14

Sometimes life gets in the way. As Second Friday approached, it appeared the workaday world required more that its usual allocation. Although I am fortunate to have spent much of my career working outside and have been overlanding since it was just called ‘travelling to field camp’, running a company must be ‘work’ sometimes. Our summer field season is kicking into gear, we have had a bit of a hiring push, and there remain projects to finish; sometimes there are not enough hours in a day.

Darren and I had charted an excursion to climb and photograph Arc Dome, the high point of the Toiyabe Range, the first of a series of ranges that march across central Nevada and reach heights well above 11,000 feet, higher than the local peaks of the Sierra Nevada rising above my home. I could not, however, focus on planning our trip and I considered postponing for a week or so. But work is not life, and life is not work – though I have a great passion for many things about my vocation – and balance leads to both better work and better life. There is no skipping Second Friday.

HP #83 Collection

Approaching Arc Dome on the Toiyabe Crest Trail, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.

We met in Carson City in the pre-dawn and drove east to meet the sun. The beginning (and end) of each journey is repetitive: the same Hwy 50, usually, east along the Carson River, curving through the Carson Sink, beyond Sand Mountain and into the outback. At Dixie Valley my mind accepts that we are in the expanse. Highway traffic has dwindled (though Hwy 50 in no way resembles ‘America’s Loneliest Highway’ as the signs suggest), and I start to anticipate the turn onto dirt to traverse valleys the Great Basin long way, north or south. Today we turn south toward Ione, Nevada, climbing Buffalo Canyon before dropping at the midpoint into the length of Smith Creek Valley and Ione Valley. The valleys are nice and lonely this morning, ours the only dust plume.

One more pass, across the Shoshone Range, and we are in Reese River Valley, where the horses of the Yomba Paiute-Shoshone Reservation thrive along the broad floodplain. We climb onto the east-side fan, uplifted along the reach of Stuart Creek that points to the Columbine Trailhead. The Forest Service campground is in great shape, but, to our surprise, it is empty. It really must be post-pandemic – if movie theaters and restaurants get to capacity, maybe the backcountry camps will be quieter. Simple packs loaded and the climb begins immediately at the trailhead sign; we are immediately within the designated Arc Dome Wilderness.

Our approach traversed about seven miles of the Toiyabe Crest Trail, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.

Moving in and out of an aspen woodland – aspen groves are actually a single living entity, this one happens to be the largest living thing in Nevada’s Great Basin, we climb steeply as the trail navigates the distal side of a series of glacial moraines, remnants of a time when Nevada was more like Iceland than, well, Nevada – when glaciers, hot springs, and vast lakes prevailed. Today, only rounded ridges and lobes remain to mark the once conveyor-belt of ice and snow that emanated from the highlands of the Toiyabe Range. Like most Nevada highpoints, the trail to Arc Dome is neither technical nor difficult to find. It is an exceptional track; it is not prominent, but the narrow tread leads onward. The trail from Columbine Camp joins the Toiyabe Crest Trail (TCT), which runs along the high ridge with occasional switchbacks and otherwise sinuous wanders between east- and west-facing slopes before dropping into side canyons. The Toiyabes have a relatively comprehensive trail system that extends from the axis of the TCT.

The expanse of the Toiyabe Crest Trail, to the north, from Arc Dome to Bunker Hill, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.

Storms are building. Some in the distance look organized but those above the range look dramatic but after a snow-spitting bustle, the splash through and then evaporate. It is beautiful, and because these storms lack electricity, it is great walking weather. We jacket up for the last 700 feet, a near-vertical slope with dozens of short switchbacks. A Golden Eagle dives past, hunting along the downdrafts. There is a single ‘false summit’, our prominent goal for the last half-hour before we see the high point – and rock structure – a few hundred meters further south. The wind has calmed and for a few moments the summit s silent. Virga curtains hang into the canyons below the peak.

A springtime squall approaches the south summit ridge of Arc Dome, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.
A rock shelter guards the summit of Arc Dome, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.

Although the Mount Jefferson tableland to the east is higher. The local prominence of Arc Dome makes it special, summit ridges drop steeply, and the grand view extends across mountain-after-mountain, range-upon-range, to the horizon.  I had wanted to visit this summit for over thirty years. Nice to be here, finally.

Darren takes a break on one of several false summits above the steep north ridge of Arc Dome, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.
Darren checks the register, once hidden in the mapping station at the summit, Arc Dome, Toiyabe Range, Nevada.

We had some trail choices on the way down but chose to keep to our route. Although never difficult we had navigated several snow patches and one interesting cornice, so our familiarity with the conditions of our route up outweighed exploring the other trails. Any route back to the trailhead had north-facing slopes to traverse, and I have many times experienced surprisingly deep snow and downed trees that added undo adventure to a simple descent. This meant, however, that we had almost a thousand feet of climbing on our way down.  That is some good uphill on the downhill!  It is seven miles with a few canyons and saddles to traverse before the direct drop to the trailhead.

A camper has arrived, doubling the population of Columbine Camp. We, however, soon depart leaving the campground to the latecomers. It is time to head south to Cloverdale Canyon to map obsidian, though my legs may complain about any extra wanderings this evening. It was good to be high again. There is so much happiness in the high country in great weather, with a bit of drama, anywhere above, say, 10,000 feet, breaking into the sub-alpine ecology, pulled by the sky’s expanse, deciding which peaks to turn to next.  So, we can look back toward Arc Dome and that perfect Second Friday in May.

The good air at over 11,700 feet, DCraig on Arc Dome, Toiyabe Range, Nevada. Photo by Darren Young.

HP #83 Collection

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #82 – Mount Irish Mountains

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Morning at Mount Irish, Lincoln County, Nevada

Mount Irish

8473 ft; 2665 m. 2200 ft gain.

2021.04.11

It is April’s Second Friday, so that means it is time for a backcountry recce, but first, I get vaccinated. It is my second shot. Although I had no side-effects other than a sore arm the first time around, I thought it better to wait a day to begin our excursion to Mount Irish in central Nevada. Again, no echoes from the vax, so we took off early Saturday for a camp at Cold Springs below the peak’s western slopes.

Overlooking the Mount Irish Wilderness, Mount Irish, Nevada.

HP #82 Collection

Leaving the general chaos of Highway 95 at Tonopah, we traverse the Extraterrestrial Highway to Sand Spring Valley, the playa basin of the Little A’le’inn and Rachel, Nevada. Our drive has put us close to the Tempaiute Mountain obsidian source – I continue to map and document these for Obsidian Traces, a geography of obsidian and landforms in the Great Basin. We located obsidian nodules on the east side of Sand Spring Valley and worked our way to well-preserved remnants of the eruptive event that produced this unique source of volcanic glass. After some time, we continued overland on the track that is the Penoyer Spring Road to intersect Cold Spring Road at the foot of the Mount Irish Mountains. Finding a clearing in the pinyon-juniper woodland, we set camp as a Black-chinned Hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) greeted us.

We watched the sunset reflected by Mount Irish, where summit buildings – transported by air, there is not a road – punch the skyline. I would not say they ruin the view, but the white structures and radio towers clearly detract from the otherwise quiet views of unbroken mountains. Mount Irish rises to 8743 feet, hovering over the White River Valley, a sometime connection to the Colorado River. While other basins hosted lakes of various sizes and shapes in the Late Pleistocene (and later in the Holocene too), Mount Irish looked down on a Colorado River tributary, a narrow corridor whose outflow made the eastern slopes of the mountain – and a large area of south-central Nevada – part of a drainage system outside the Great Basin. But that is the recent stuff. The limestone of Mount Irish is a basin-and-range faulted sequence of sedimentary rocks laid down in a vast inland sea many millions of years ago. Several mountain-building episodes later, the shattered stratigraphy of the ancient seas is revealed. Pinyon-juniper woodlands reach toward the summits where Jeffrey pine and white pine grow on plateaus and in rocky cirques.

Below the summit we found a hidden woodland of Jeffrey Pine, white pine, pinyon pine, and juniper, Mount Irish, Nevada.

Sunrise finds us cresting Logan Pass, having driven a mining road that crosses the southern slopes of Mount Irish. We climb directly along a southern ridge toward the rampart of limestone that rises in two monster steps. A series of cairns hints at a trail, but these could also be mining claims, so our direction and their general orientation may be a coincidence. However, the occasional oddly piled stones suggest routing markers. Abandoning (or losing) the markers to focus on the ridge, we target a notch in the upper limestone step. The gap brings us into a woodland basin below the high point. We traverse below a southern summit to then climb a steep slope to the altered, capping bench that is the Mount Irish summit. The structure hum with electricity powering communications and weather facilities, accessible only by helicopter – a windsock flutters nearby.

Looking down the expanse of alluvial fans to the White River drainage, Mount Irish, Nevada.

Ignoring the white buildings and vibrating antennae, the summit views are splendid. There is barely a wind, and even fewer clouds, so we hang around for a while. Photos and drone flights document and translate the scenery. I find the names of some good friends in the register, remembering that Steve and Cheryl sent me a text on their summit day several years ago. I returned the summit greeting with a similar send, and then it was time to descend. We wrapped around the eastern slope of the southern summit and came across a limestone tableland, the top of the great step into the sky above Logan Pass and the drop to the fans of the White River. Navigating to a break in the wall, we followed scree slopes into deeply carved gullies. We came out east of the pass and hiked up again to find our rig where we left it a short time ago.

Steep limestone cliffs guard the summit, Mount Irish, Nevada.
A turret of limestone and small arch on the cliffs of Mount Irish, Nevada.

I finally have a Lincoln County peak! Although not the county’s highest, its prominence above the surrounding valleys makes the views a pleasure. And, I pass a little milestone of having climbed a high point in each of Nevada’s 17 counties (that is, 16 counties and one independent city – Carson City has the former footprint of defunct Ormsby County). I digress. This is a beautiful desert peak with a great mix of steep hiking and woodland walking; the cliffs provide drama and strength, especially in the morning light. It is definitely a worthwhile climb.

Darren takes in the view from the summit, Mount Irish, Nevada.

HP #82 Collection

Our trip home becomes the more adventurous portion of our journey. Upon returning to camp, I notice the tow-ball and its attachment have separated. Somehow, the bolt and lock-washer securing the ball to the receiver-insert have fallen off in camp; after having traveled the previous day and all morning (without the trailer) in a rather precarious position. All parts accounted for, we torque the bolt into the ball, but it is not as tight as I would like due to recent damage. We can roll, but we stop and check it regularly on our drive home. We finally get a tight fit in Tonopah, where the trailer position allows the ball to lock while we apply a wrench (always keep the toolbox handy). We are back to StoneHeart in late evening, with the trailer still behind us.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Wildlife Photography: Getting Lost with the Red-headed Woodpecker

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Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus; foraging for pinyon nuts. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

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 is interesting because the poor bird seems to be a bit lost. Their common range is east of the Rocky Mountains, with only occasional appearances in the West.

Des made a successful sighting in Six Mile Canyon, along with a few other Reno-Carson-area birders out to add this to their lists and to enjoy the attractive, colorful bird. She said I should get up there and get him for my new avifauna image list. That was recommendation enough, so I went up early on a weekday morning – strange to drive into Six Mile and up to the outskirts of Virginia City, a place we lived for almost ten years. Happy to see Shaun and Debbie right off; Desna had also let them know that they had a visitor in their town.

We waited along the road, hoping he would come out for some morning foraging. This was the reported pattern. Sure enough, after about 45 minutes of waiting, I saw the white wing-flash, moving from the pinyon forest on the hillside to the cottonwoods of the riparian corridor. Unfortunately, the daily flow in the Six Mile drainage is augmented by the town’s effluent plant. But the birds do not seem to care.

Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.
Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus; eyes closed, perched. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

The Red-Headed Woodpecker worked his way around the cottonwoods. It was a challenge to capture images of the bird as he was adept at hiding in branches and trunks as he forages. We lose sight of him for long periods and then he reappears in a flush of red and white. Although my images are pretty good (I still need to develop the skill of getting a few more sharp images) it is very fun to share some time with a relatively uncommon bird. I have only been ‘birding’ for a few days, and I now have a rare one on my short list. Very fun, with more practice to come.

Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus; the bird of hearts. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

Six-Mile Woodpecker Collection

Bird Image List: Red-headed Woodpecker

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing