landscape photography

Wandering White Sands

D. Craig Young · June 24, 2025 · 2 Comments

Waypoint: White Sands National Park, Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, USA

“These images and words are a reflection, simply and wholly, of my respect for our public lands and the public science and occasional art I am, and we are, able to do there. Our ability to create and think are not trivial, and wild space and healthy ecosystems nourish such things. It is here that we will find our better selves, even as the misdeeds of a few threaten much that, until recently, provides for our common good. Keep going.“

A couple times over the past two years, I have had the good fortune to wander among the gypsum dunes of White Sands National Park in south-central New Mexico. My visits dovetail with geoarchaeological research in the Tularosa Basin, where we have been looking, with the help of and collaboration with specialists and volunteers at the National Park Service and friends and colleagues at Holloman Air Force Base, at the context of human and faunal trackways along the margins of pluvial Lake Otero. The footprints are fascinating and perplexing, and the various studies implemented at Lake Otero provide comparison to our approach to somewhat similar ichnofacies on Utah’s Old River Bed Delta, a landform of the Bonneville Basin that supported an expansive wetland between 12,600 and 8,800 years ago. By bookending daytime research excursions with walks in the expansive white dunes, I had time to consider the setting, past and present, and its broader implications at a slower pace and without contention. And, sometimes, the light is so good.

The white, gypsum sand that forms the dunes is a result of a long interplay between bedrock of the mountain ranges surrounding the Tularosa Basin, basinward erosion of fine-grained minerals derived from the parent rock, catalysts of groundwater chemistry, and climate change. In the Late Pleistocene, say, between about 22 and 18 thousand years ago, Lake Otero rose and fell – by day, by season, by decade, by millennium – as runoff battled evaporation and groundwater sought equilibrium in between. These perturbations produced an evaporite soup, at times deep and dilute, and at others shallow and practically viscous. The overlap of conditions from bedrock to basin hydrology are incomparable with almost all other paleolakes in the desert west.

With the warming and drying of the last 14,000 years, the hallmark of the Holocene, a prevailing southwesterly wind scours the exposed bed of crystalline gypsum – the relict product of the Pleistocene chemistry – that bounces and rolls to become sand-sized aggregates of dune-building material; finer particles get carried away to coat the hills in desert loess or circle the globe as aerosol clay. Earth tends toward recycling.

And so, the scoured lakebed becomes the gypsum dunes of White Sands, a process still happening today. The sand subdues and reflects the color of the sky, bending the hues along wind-sculpted crests and swales. Shadows are abrupt until blue hour erases all depth, molding the reflected glow to a calm iridescence; the changes are reversed for sunrise. Although I have visited in the early morning, park hours limit sunrise opportunities to a few minutes; it is sunset that brings productive wandering. That is until park rangers begin the pre-dark patrol, broadcasting the requirement that all wanderers return to their vehicles, leaving the dunes to their nightly rearrangement.

I hope you enjoy this small gallery of images from White Sands. Active dunes are always changing; the photos you capture are yours alone, the winds bring originality. Most visitors do not venture very far into the hills of sand, so it takes little effort to get beyond the occasional messiness of a tracked-up dune. With practice or a reliable GPS, you can be confident of where you are and where your personal trailhead is. And then, you can move slowly, let the light evolve, and make the patterns your own.

Embracing Distractions: Mason Valley – Seaman Range – Lunar Craters

D. Craig Young · May 26, 2025 · 2 Comments

NvGO Notes 2025.03.14

**Biconic**. Young volcanic cones rise in the Lunar Craters National Natural Landmark, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

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.

I love walking hills and will continue to do so, but the list has become mildly oppressive. My desire to experience Nevada’s variety of places and landforms is no less, but I found myself focusing on the summit without slowing to take time and experience a place. The value and pleasure of creating images and mapping landforms was, at times, forgotten or set aside. I will also admit that as I age, I am getting slower on the uphills (and downhills), so more time is needed to attain each summit, taking time away from other desires. I rarely, if ever, sit to watch for wildlife or changes in lighting on an outcrop or rock art panel. Something is often missing.

**A start**. A pair of Lesser Scaup take flight in Mason Valley WMA, Great Basin Desert, NV

**Roost**. Double-breasted Comorants await the morning sun, Mason Valley WMA, Great Basin Desert, NV

I begin to realize this as I circle the Worthington Hills in south-central Nevada, looking for a way through the recent snow. The ridges below the summit look great in parting clouds, but I am alone and cutting steps on the steep slopes I had hoped to climb does not seem prudent. I thought I had best leave the Worthingtons for another time and head to a lower set of hills on the White River near Hiko, snow-cover should be less there. I did not want to ‘waste’ a drive this far into southeastern Nevada and not get a summit, so I drove on – Distraction #1. Although I was surrounded by amazing scenes of snow-lined and cloud-wrapped peaks above Joshua Tree sharpness, I did not pause.

**Lost snow**. Horizons fade in a late snow in the Great Basin Desert, NV

As I approach the Hiko Hills, I find a long stretch of irrigation pivots fenced behind ‘no trespassing’ signs. It is late in the day, so I decide to venture around the fields and gain the high point in the morning. I turn into the foothills of the Seaman Range and eventually find a faint two-track that leads to a secluded alcove among a maze of granite outcrops, like a lonely version of the Alabama Hills. Distraction #2. A desire to explore the outcrops begins to take precedence; attention to the nearby hills fades.

**Towers**. Granitic outcrops of the Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

**Hanging on**. A juniper tree clings to the granite of the Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

**Whale rock**. Heavy shapes in the outcrops of the Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

**Way through**. Clasts and texture in the granitic outcrops of the Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

I set camp and wander until after dark, returning to my little camp as snow begins to fall. There is enough wind to push the feathery flakes sideways, and soon an inch or two of snow powders the bitterbrush and sage and covers my tent and field boxes. Distraction #3 – these are getting healthier as I push the any high point further from my mind, wanting only to wander the granite for images in the morning light. I will probably have fog in the desert!

The squalls clear overnight, and the moon takes over, adding bright ambience to haunting calls of a Great Horned Owl. I crawl out of the tent in the pre-dawn as the moon sets beyond Mount Irish. Snow brightens slowly, while the fog teases from the canyon of the White River, far to the east. It is not adding to the intrigue of the nearby hoodoos and spires, but at least I was not wrong completely; it is here, sort of. I grab my gear and lose myself among the rocks.

**Last blue**. Sunrise approaches the snow-spattered outcrops of the Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

**Crystal layers.** Weathering release in the plutonic granite of the Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

I cannot say that I came away with portfolio imagery, but it was the most fun I’d had in a long while photographing. Distraction #4 – I could not care less about the Hiko Hills except to enjoy the fog along their distant slopes. I would not be hiking any hills today, and that was OK.

After a wonderful morning, the snow melting almost immediately with the sunrise, I head back onto Highway 93, traipsing through a couple Wildlife Management Areas, eventually turning toward Lunar Craters National Natural Landmark. Distraction #5 – I was now excited about scouting locations, thinking about landforms I could document, and enjoying an excursion without goals. I became practically joyful considering how the ‘distractions’ allowed me the freedom to develop a refreshed approach to Second Friday and excursions into the Nevada outback.

**Before or after**. A dash of color in the cold of blue hour, Seaman Range, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

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I never thought I would climb every high point on my list, it has always been aspirational, something to keep me going, something to highlight the lesser-known places – why else would I even think about visiting the Hiko Hills? But I really do not need the list, the intrinsic value, beauty, and curiosity of our public lands – now facing challenges unpredictable – is aspiration and inspiration enough. We will see where the distractions lead.

Keep going.

**Spring flight**. A Red-tailed Hawk searches the Lunar Craters National Natural Landmark, Great Basin Desert, NV

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #130 – Pilot Mountains

D. Craig Young · March 24, 2025 · 1 Comment

Desert fabric. Alluvial carved hills of the southern Pilot Mountains, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA — **Desert fabric**. Alluvial carved hills of the southern Pilot Mountains, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

Pilot Peak

9187 ft (2800 m) – 2418 ft gain

2025.02.38

Keep Public Lands Public

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.

A narrow inset alluvial fan and floodplain in the bottom of Dunlap Canyon is the only mappable Quaternary landform along my route.

I had turned off Highway 395 just before Mina, NV, heading into Dunlap Canyon. The road is well maintained, likely because it is secondary access to communication towers adorning the summit; the main, newer route is via Telephone Canyon further south and west. I suspect the road originated as the Dunlap mining district developed. I park at a prominent fork in the canyon, leaving my truck in a thick Juniper grove, and I walk the westerly fork heading upward toward Pilot Peak rising a few thousand feet above me.

A lonely cabin sits among trees just off the road, and it is here that I decide to leave the graded track to find my way among Juniper woodland and patchy snow. Although it has been incredibly warm for late February, a few snow squalls had rolled through in the past couple of days. Snow covers north-facing slopes where the sun cannot reach on even the warmest days. I climb away from an inset floodplain of Dunlap Canyon to find dry ridges on volcanic tuff. The Juniper are widely spaced; vegetation density drops as we approach the transition to Mojave Desert communities not too far south of the Pilot Mountains. The route steepens so I contour among the few trees and sparse sagebrush before heading directly to the north ridge that extends from the main summit. Scant and twisted Juniper greet me at the ridge, artifacts of the arid wind that binds them to the distance as the valleys drop to either side.

Turning south, I avoid a false summit by crossing crunchy snow, cutting solid steps on the steep slope. It is at the southern end of the snow that I find the road from Telephone Canyon, which I can see tracing into deep, dark, and snow-filled canyon far below. It looks very interesting but would have been a very long, slow approach in late winter.

I reach an expanse of 360-degree views on the summit, but the highpoint is otherwise unimpressive. Buildings and towers crowd machine-cut platforms, and a low hum of electronics (or cooling for the electronics) pervades the calm. The sun is setting beyond Boundary Peak and the White Mountains to my west, and Earth’s shadow rises opposite. I put on another layer, but do not linger long. It is going to be dark soon, and I have left my headlamp in the truck. Time is of the essence.

Steep-cut switchbacks wind among mining prospects on the eastern front of Pilot Peak. I can follow these, cutting through occasional snow, until I find a descending ridge that leads me into the dark of Dunlap Canyon. The dirt of the road is just visible in the last gasp of blue hour. Imaginary sounds in the Juniper at road’s edge keeps me attentive; I am curious what the Mountain Lion – the one I never see – thinks of this wandering figure in the canyon bottom. Not worth the effort, I hope. Nevertheless, the adrenaline jumps every now and then, as my thoughts wander.

I never feel any real danger in the back country, I am cautious typically. My technical climbing days are over, so I pick routes of relative ease. The chances of encountering a predator interested in me are low. I have yet to see a Cougar, the one large animal still missing from my list of Great Basin critters. It is good, however, to know they are out there, keeping it wild and keeping us thinking about them. The wild things help me to feel alive, my senses present. I hope someday to share a moment with a large cat, as I have with song dogs, Bighorn Sheep, Pronghorn, and the birds of night and day.

Pilot Peak was a good loop. By chance, and some practice, I chose unbroken ridges and fitting slopes. I had the pleasure of evening light on the summit, and the tingling thrill of a canyon walk in the dark. I will view the towers often as I drive Highway 395, but I will also know what lies beyond the altered high point – the ridges and slopes where you can see and feel in the dark. And that brings us life.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #129 – Royston Hills

D. Craig Young · February 23, 2025 · 2 Comments

**Rolling summit**. High points can be subtle, Royston Hills, Great Basin Desert, NV, USA

Unnamed

6675 ft (2012 m) – 980 ft gain

2025.01.09

While I try to keep a regular schedule to get into Nevada’s Basin and Range every Second Friday, regardless of other fieldwork obligations, it is also good to combine an excursion with a visit to a fieldcrew working some project, somewhere. At the moment, we have archaeological survey crews working in the Broken Hills above Gabbs Valley, so my day begins there. It is nice to solve the puzzle of locating them in the open landscape of volcanic hills – an area my brother Darren and I visited a couple years ago. Darren is on a fieldcrew this rotation, and he gave me some approximate coordinates so that I could get close. I park within a mile of his coordinates and set out, finding the first crew as they work the lobes of an alluvial pediment east of the Broken Hills mine site. I then move north to find Darren and his crew in dendritic inset washes and pediment lobes in higher country.

Leaving the fieldcrews in the early afternoon – I am not currently on the ‘official’ rotation, so I let them continue their surveys and head south of Gabbs to access the western slopes of the Royston Hills. As I climb a good road away from Pole Line, heading for Dicalite Summit, a low pass between the Cedar Mountains and Royston Hills, I encounter large washouts from inset floods of past years; likely relict scars of the tropical moisture of Hurricane Hilary in August 2023, or something very similar. The roads are incised but passable, but I cannot find several of the mapped two-tracks that run parallel to the local drainage pattern; they are eroded away. I eventually turn down a wash, hoping to find a spot in the now-widened floodplain to set camp and begin my evening walk up the Royston Hills. The gravelly sands provide a good surface. There was once a two-track, mining road here somewhere, but I am now passing larger boulders and uprooted trees – a powerful flood coalesced recently in this drainage.

Active floodplains (Qa4 and Qa3) are inset into older, beveled fans or alluvial pediments (Qa2 and Qa1). These are bounded by older volcanic tuffs (Qp2 and Qp1) beveled as the younger fans formed. The inset wash of Qa4 formed in the past few years.

Cenozoic tuffs and ash deposits rise in light-colored pedestals in the interfluves and at the channel margins. The white outcrops might make good photo subjects in the morning, so I decide to camp in a flat section of gravelly floodplain. Things get quickly interesting as I turn around. A sudden undercarriage impact and spinning rear tire finds me perched precariously on one of the erratic alluvial boulders. While I missed sighting it, I did not miss getting hung up on it. I climb out to have a look and find that my front tires a basically in the air, one by several inches. Mild panic – I am well stuck. I gather my thoughts and get my shovel out – this is the second time I have been stuck after visiting the Gabbs Valley Survey Project, and the only two times I have been stuck in many years.

The rig is fine; it simply rests on the boulder, like a jack-stand – I could do tire maintenance as I sit here. A closer inspection, however, reveals that the cavity exposed by the turned boulder could be enlarged. If I can get rear-axle traction, I may be able to push the rock into its own divot. Several minutes of shoveling creates good space into which the rock can fall. I lock the differentials and shift into low gear. I apply power slowly, and the truck moves forward, at once releasing pressure on the rock as it drops into the larger hole. I am free. I roll a few feet and shut it down; with fresh relief it is time to walk.

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.

I am soon climbing west-facing slopes of the Royston Hills, reaching tabular basalts above Miocene volcanic tuffs and minor rhyolite outcrops. The basalt forms a rugged cap below which talus forms stone stripes that drape across the underlying stratigraphy. The rounded summit is a broad, boulder-strewn tableland. It is one of many all-too-common summits where it is difficult to determine the actual high point. The mapped benchmark is not it. I use the level in my camera to compare a nearby hilltop to the marked point – points marked on maps do not signify the high point by default, but they provide an initial target when contour lines do not help. The sun sets as I traverse to the higher, similarly rounded hilltop.

It is a good summit regardless of its lack of drama. The views are nice in all directions as Arc Dome rises to the north and the dispersed ranges surrounding the southern reaches of Big Smokey Valley wrinkle the skyline to the south. The views disappear quickly as twilight transitions to night. I pull out my headlamp and begin a slow descent through bouldery talus. After walking through a small group of cows, I begin the easy walk up the inset floodplains toward my campsite. Two green points blink my way and are gone just as quickly. They reappear on an elevated surface to my left, looking very much like a vehicle on one of the still-remaining tracks higher up. But as I turn my headlamp on and off, the eyes wink back in time. Does the coyote wonder what this single-eyed creature is? It turns away, lost in the night.

I reach the truck and set camp by moonlight. It feels cold, but there is no breeze. Dinner is simple, and I am feeling the good walk at the end of a long day, so I crawl into my tent for the night. I am hoping to explore the Cedar Mountains in the morning.

The wind had different thoughts, however. Having fallen asleep sometime around midnight, I was awakened with a start by flapping nylon of the windward vestibule. I had set shallow stakes into the sandy floodplain, holding the tent easily in the earlier calm, but now the wind had pulled its first anchor. I had not zipped the tent door in the nice calm, so the vestibule fabric joined me inside. Then, as I rolled over to rearrange things, a roiling gust collapsed the tent suddenly and completely, pulling all windward stakes, leaving me as the only weight and last anchor as the bundle of fabric flapped vigorously in the freshening gusts, with me uselessly inside. I scrambled and pulled at the fabric to stick my head out of the folds to find sideways snow streaking past in the moonlight. A low bank of clouds, backlit and soon to swallow the moon, scudded across the Cedar Mountains. I had to move carefully to keep the collapsed tent from ballooning down the wash. I was very cold, quickly.

Holding the tent like a disjointed flag, I pulled its maze of poles from the fabric, having decided I would pack up and drive to the opposite side of the Cedars. It was just after 3am, and I wanted to photograph and document this storm that had ripped my tent from the ground and jolted me from my sleep. I stuffed the loose gear into the backseat and loaded my various field boxes into the truck bed. Easy enough.

A gauze of dust and snow veiled the stream-cut road as I worked my way down-fan toward Pole Line. As I turned toward Gabbs Valley, I looked forward to photographing a sunrise behind this powerful little storm. My hopes were soon erased. The moon reappeared, and the more I looped around the Cedar Mountains, the more the storm dissipated. It was soon gone altogether – not a cloud in the sky. I grew sleepy as the excitement faded into another orange to blue morning. Disheartened, ,I simply turned toward home, happy with the windy little adventure after the peaceful walk in the Royston Hills. First, though, I needed some sleep to drive safely. I turned off Highway 50 on a large gravel and strandline berm west of Sand Mountain, laid out my sleeping bag on a coppice dune, and slept for a couple hours. Just another Second Friday exploring the amazing landscape of the Great Basin, even the simplest walk is an experience.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #127 — Painted Point Range

D. Craig Young · December 28, 2024 · 1 Comment

Yellow Peak

7171 ft (2186 m) – 1194 ft gain

2024.11.10

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. This time, however, I had spent the morning walking here.

This week’s excursion focused on a geoarchaeological recce with some colleagues from the University of Nevada. Staying at the TD Ranch near Vya, Nevada, we had gouged around Macy Flat laying the foundation for a thesis project focusing on landforms, habitats, and archaeological sites of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. It looks very promising. So, being in the area, I took off early on our home-bound travel day, for a walk to Yellow Peak – we had driven along its base several times over the past couple days.

Although it stands prominently at the northern apex of Massacre Rim, it is a relatively easy walk even if one avoids the road as I did. It is the third highest point within the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge. I began along the access road where it switchbacks above Long Valley, near the refuge’s western boundary. After seemingly endless clear-sky walks in central Nevada, it was good to begin under low-hanging clouds and dark, imposing skies. I traced a route along some outcrops of volcanic tuffs with scraggly juniper trees. Although the refuge has done some woodland thinning in hopes of fire management, it is not as devastating as similar efforts I have observed elsewhere, and many snags seem to be left from the days of cutting limbs for fence posts. Snags can make interesting photographic subjects, but the common amputated limbs are unmistakable. An abandoned line of posts stands nearby, its barbed strands long removed; the posts standing tauntingly close to the trees, now dead, where they grew.

The ground is wet from recent snowmelt. Small patches of snow extend as white shadows from the base of trees and hide below stands of sagebrush and deeper grass. Spotting a coyote unaware of my presence, I duck beneath a juniper that will act as a perfect photo blind. In my quick excitement, I forget about the snow and my crunching boots alert the coyote to my presence, even though it’s quite distant. I am sad that I spooked it, but its run is lovely, and it soon disappears into the camouflage of the sagebrush background.

The cabin is an easy marker at the top of the hill. I approach a low rimrock below the summit and a small herd of deer, a buck and two does, peeks from a thicket of chokecherry and sagebrush nearby. The sun punches through to highlight the local slopes, leaving the sky dramatically dark in the distance, and I am buffeted by a steady wind. Cooling after the hike, I pull extra layers from my pack as I explore the platform of the lookout. I cannot find a summit register; maybe it’s in the building. Bracing against the wind or hiding behind the lookout, the view is the epitome of the basin and range province. Guano Rim leads out to Beattys Butte and the Massacre Rim runs to Coleman Rim and on to Hart Mountain. Some of the best of the Nevada-Oregon outback is visible from Yellow Peak. I understand why Lynn enjoyed his time up here.

I drop into a beautiful little drainage that curves around the ridge of my approach. I spend some time among aspens and juniper. The wildlife is quiet, only a few birds among the trees and a pair of distant ravens squawking at a red-tailed hawk. It is a nice walk out, surprising for its stands of Wild Rye along the narrow, inset floodplain. A good archaeologist once told me these stands mark locations where people paused to process grass seeds, allowing a few escaped seeds to colonize the landscape. It is, in fact, somewhat common to find grinding artifacts near these stands. No artifacts on my little transect through the floodplain, but I would not have been surprised.

It is raining when I get back to the truck. Barely a shower, but I really like the change from the dry days of the summer and much fall. Yellow Peak stands behind me, another enjoyable hill in the sea of mountains that is Nevada. But now it is time to drive home. I will head south among the calderas of Cottonwood Creek and into the Black Rock Desert, a nice commute any time of year.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing