landscape photography

Nevada High Points #126 – Adobe Range

D. Craig Young · December 19, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Peak 8135

8135 ft (2480 m) – 1750 ft gain

2024.10.22

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.

Route map to Peak 8135, summit of the Adobe Range, Nevada

Originally deciding on Coal Mine Canyon as an east-side entry, but after squeezing through private property, I found a good road leading to some corrals well south of my target. It looked nice, with some fall color around high springs in an otherwise late-season, sagebrush landscape. Even where good roads lead higher, I always pick a spot that is minimally 1.5 miles from the summit, where I hope I can at least get 1500 feet of vertical gain — these ‘rules’ can be difficult in the smaller hills that have found their way onto my ‘list’ of named mountain ranges. In any case, high point excursions are about the experience and not the statistics — other than keeping the list going.

I decided to document this walk, basically a random choice, as a quiet video, experimenting with other ways of sharing the Nevada high point experience. I am not a skilled videographer by any stretch, but I thought this relatively easy walk might be a good chance to experiment with video scenes bringing the viewer along. I have included my effort here. I really want to focus on photos and maps, working to bring landforms to life to the best of my limited abilities, so I will be curious to hear what you think.

A small grove of cottonwoods and willows has held its color, but it is fading quickly. The slopes of the Adobe Range are wide open, with only a few cliffs and outcrops below the summit ridge. While the walk is a pleasure, the distant scenes of the Ruby Mountains, East Humboldt Range, and the headwaters of the Humboldt River in the Tuscarora Mountains, come along as added value. The skies are low with gossamer overcast. Concerned about the coming journey east, I wish I had more time. I am glad to work these into my fieldwork schedules, but these mountains deserve more attention. Here, I am surprised by small patches of snow, left by a recent storm, telling signs of the change of seasons. The walk feels good, and provides a nice break from the drive, but it is now time to head east and find a camp. The days are noticeably short, and I am in shadow throughout the short descent. I have miles to drive before I can rest for the night.

The Adobes rise from an old landscape of eroded hills, so I do not encounter any young landforms of any map scale. The drainages are in erosional guillies leading to broad inset floodplains of Humboldt River tributaries, such as Coal Mine Canyon. The tributary drainages can hold young terraces preserving records of archaeological landscapes and recent change, but my route today was high above these. I focus on the views overlooking the tributary valleys before continuing my journey eastward.

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 #121 — Sentinel Hills

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

Hoppin Peak

6148 ft (1874 m) – 1260 ft gain

2024.05.07

It was time to close the day. I left McDermitt, Nevada, after sharing results of recent projects in a long meeting with the council of the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe. Archaeological studies driven by proposed developments are not always welcomed, and while the meetings are almost always cordial and informative, they can be emotional and contentious given the variety of views regarding the impacts, good and bad, that projects bring. I do my best to be honest and clear in my presentations, but I understand that I work for a project proponent (utility or mining companies, for example) at the behest of a government agency, and sometimes limited by my western scientific perspective, I fail to resolve and answer adequately the deeper concerns of some members of the traditional community. We could do better. Weary from the long meeting, I pointed my rig into the hills west of Quinn River Valley, breathing easier and settling into the fading light of the afternoon.

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.

The Sentinel Hills are block-faulted remnants of lava flows that oozed from the volcano that would eventually collapse to form the McDermitt caldera. Prior to its collapse, the volcano extruded a prodigious amount of rhyolitic tuff and lava. The eruption produced deep beds of pyroclastic ash with unimaginably hot and dense ground-clouds transitioning to highly viscous lavas; these may have cycled over and over as eruption followed eruption during the fiery event. In places, the weight of the viscous beds (along with somewhat unique combinations of chemistry and water content) resulted in strata of thick, glassy ignimbrite beds and, sometimes, massive glass beds of obsidian were left behind. These processes, especially the extensive evacuation of so much volcanic material, resulted in the volcano’s collapse by about 17 million years ago, leaving a mark on northern Nevada that remains to this day – and leaving a vast toolstone resource so prominent in the regional archaeological record. I have spent considerable time in the hills of the caldera but have yet to visit the high point on its eastern margin.

The day’s light faded as it bounced among building clouds. I walked the rolling hills skirting the tops of canyons that cut into the volcanic rocks. Obsidian seems absent on the top of the tablelands, as I continue to map the geography of the volcanic glass around the caldera. It is not a demanding walk, the only challenge coming from two groups of wild horses that cannot decide if I should be there. They are at once curious and then immediately skittish, and I only want to stay out of harm’s way. The horses are momentarily fascinating and beautiful, bristling at my presence, but their numbers take a toll on the springs, and the local slopes are cut by numerous trails that radiate between water sources, most of which are now dry.

In a last gasp, the light rakes beneath the clouds as the sun sets about the time I gain the rimrock and talus that guard the summit. There is a small rock cairn and the usual quiet register. I had hoped for a dramatic sky highlighted above the setting sun, but the clouds dropped in a broad western curtain, and dark began to set in. I had several groups of horses to navigate through, so I did not wait any longer.

I had, of course, packed my headlamp, but I prefer not to use it unless completely necessary. I could hear the horses shuffling nearby, but they kept their distance as I made my way back to the truck to set up camp. Hoppin Peak is not dramatic in any way, but the walk is refreshing, and I feel much better for it. I learned something about the lavas of the Sentinel Hills, confirming that obsidian nodules of toolstone quality (or any really) are absent from the tops of the flows. I can expand my maps a bit more, adding this detail to the eastern margin of the caldera. I will continue my caldera excursion tomorrow after listening to the Chukar and coyotes; a Common Poorwill sings its haunting, lonely notes somewhere in the canyon below. A quiet close to a long day — the small hills almost always provide that.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #119 – Resting Spring Range

D. Craig Young · April 7, 2024 · Leave a Comment

Map showing climbed high points with Resting Spring Range labeled as #119

Unnamed – Border Monument 105

3960 ft (1207 m) – 1530 ft gain

2024.03.10

Resting Spring Collection

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. The precipitation nourishes an ephemeral but amazing green, punctuated by blooms of wildflowers; the typically sharp and prickly landscape softens. Drawn by this ephemeral setting, like last month, I am once again in the Mojave.

**Desert evening**. Stewart Valley at the close of winter, Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #1)

After exploring a few roads on the north side of the Resting Spring Range – most went nowhere or were badly washed out, I set camp on some desert pavement formed on small fans in low, hummocky foothills. The narrow mountain range rises above the Amargosa River with most of its mass in California and only a northern spur and expansive alluvial fans extending into Nevada. My target is the Nevada high point, marked by a small, ridge-line outcrop well below the prominence of Shadow Mountain, the range’s actual summit. I will head up there too.

But, first, I will turn the calendar back to yesterday. Desna and I visited the Nevada Museum of Art where there is a wonderful exhibit of Maynard Dixon paintings, poetry, and photographs created during his excursions to northern Nevada and eastern California (open until 7/28/2024). I mention this because first, I really enjoy so much of his work and, second, I think it important to look at art, especially landscape art, and to consider what I like about it. This might provide direction for my landscape photography. Dixon’s use of saturation and contrast, in color and in light, evokes my emotional connection to desert landscapes. His composition is typically minimal, and he has little hesitation in expressing the open sky, dotted with bright clouds, over stark shadows streaking across desert landforms.

Photographers, especially landscape photographers, often cringe at mid-day or high-contrast conditions, preferring the raking, red hues of sunrise and sunset, adding in dark, glowing clouds for dramatic impact. I love these too. I can, however, find challenge and growth in applying a touch of Dixon’s eye, maybe, to my photographic work – both in seeking and exposing compositions and in creative processing, as a painter might. Who knows? I may never be successful, but it got me thinking about its application. Oh, and third, I spent a lovely afternoon with Des.

**Upheaval**. Folds and fans in the hills of Stewart Valley, Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #1)

**Camp at dark**. Foothills and pavements on the eastern margin of the Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

Back in the Resting Spring Range, after an evening exploring the pavements and hummocks around camp, I am up before first light, making coffee and collecting a few calories before setting out. I need to walk about three miles of alluvial fans before hitting a punchy slope to the Nevada high point. I go by headlamp, cresting a low hill where an almost complete darkness extends in front of me; the yawning space of the vast alluvial fans soaking all light, from the faint light of my headlamp to blackness to a very distant starry horizon. The night still feels close around me. It is a calm silence, until a Burrowing Owl calls from somewhere far ahead and below; her call a lonely reminder of the few critters that call this desert home. Again and then again, a quiet hoot-hoot is the only sound. I walk into the dark.

**Shadow morning**. Shadow Mountain at first light, Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA
(Map Point #2)

As the light grows, I am in the openness of the fans, moving between desert pavements with dark patination – old, stable fan surfaces – and incised, bouldery washes exposing light-colored alluvium disturbed only recently. The variegated surfaces alternate to reflect the temporal structure of the piedmont or bajada below the steep slopes of Shadow Mountain. A Black-throated Sparrow flits and sings among the creosote and saltbush. The beautiful, sing-song call of a Rock Wren echoes from boulders along rock levees and debris flows that choke the fan’s incised gullies. The morning is perfect. There is a pink in the sky that off-sets the dark fan surface, and newly green blooms of the desert compliment the yellow-brown of the mountain backdrop. Bright yellow highlights reach out from the growing wildflower bloom – Yellow Suncups here; I am early for the ‘super-bloom,’ but it is definitely building.

Rocky, talus-screed slopes lead to the Nevada high point at 3960’ above sea-level; I have climbed just over 1500 feet above my camp. Marked by a cairn on an otherwise non-descript ridge, the highpoint is a great viewpoint, nonetheless. Shadow Mountain looms to the south and Amargosa Valley drops precipitously to the west. The sun has risen behind me, and the wind is picking up. I cross the state border in a crease where the ridge drops from the Nevada side, I then begin a good ridge-walk toward the summit, 1000 feet or so above me.

**Amargosa distance**. Playa and fine-grained alluvium at a constriction of the Amargosa River from the Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #3)

It is a nice climb with great views in every direction. While the summit of Shadow Mountain does not reach above 5000 feet, the Resting Spring Range remains a prominent landmark visible in all directions. I am happy to be on the summit and realizing I have been looking at this peak for many years, and can now enjoy it from a different perspective – it is always satisfying to be driving or flying, and while looking up (or down) at a lonely spot, knowing that I have visited and experienced it for a short time.

**Black-throated Sparrow**. Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

I work my way down, visually mapping the variegated alluvial fans with their shaded pavements of various ages. I can easily identify four surface ages based on the maturity of desert pavement. Dark surfaces with seemingly uniform pattern of rocks, some that fit together like gravelly puzzle pieces, are generally old. Very old; it takes hundreds of thousands of years for the weathering to create the distinct, intricate patterning. Younger surfaces will be lighter colored, with rougher surfaces, seemingly random rock patterning, and even evidence of recent flooding. And several intervening surfaces along a continuum of very old to, well, practically yesterday. From a distance, the patterns can be clear, and I often map landform age based on aerial imagery that resolves the temporal relationships nicely.

**Creosote crunch**. An early glow on the sparse vegetation of relic fans of the Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #3)

This is important because archaeological sites, their age and preservation, may be patterned in close relationship that age of a landform or its surface. Sites of any age may occupy the oldest pavements – let us assume there is some clustering of plant, animal, or water resources that might have led people to this location. Because that armored surface is as stable as it is old, it is very unlikely to hold buried archaeology. So, the information you get from the distribution of artifacts on the surface is the only information you are going to get.

As we move to surfaces that have formed and stabilized in the Holocene (say, the last 12,000 years or so), we may start to see some patterning among the surfaces, with some interesting changes over time; the relative age of fan surfaces may provide the first clues in looking for such patterning. Very young fans (with evident debris flows and tumbled cobbles and boulders) suggest that most sites may have been wiped out, and while you may find some displaced artifacts, there is little detailed information in such a disturbed setting. The patterns can shift rapidly as one moves across such an ancient and complex fan.

Quaternary landforms of northern section of Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

I recognized four temporal surfaces on the bajada (i.e., coalesced fans) expanding from the canyons on the northeastern side of the Resting Spring Range. On the map, Qa1 highlights the oldest surface, marked by darkly patinated and strongly developed pavement. Younger fans cut through the Qa1, leaving its ancient surface abandoned to continued slow, constant weathering. The gradient of surfaces from Qa2 to Qa4 reflects younger landforms and a general increase in recent erosion and/or deposition. The Qa4 is where the occasional floods happen or have happened relatively recently; one can hardly predict the next flooding disturbance to spread across the fans as the flashy flows find their paths basinward. A spot may be stable for centuries, until it is not.

As usual, I focus on the younger landforms (not rocks) and the processes that build the environments and habitats of today – that is why my maps only highlight the young, active landforms. The older rocks, their structure, composition, etc., play a role, but I want to document and understand the work that wind and water can do now that the mountains and hills are in their place, at the scale of the Holocene, at least. That is geomorphology, in a nutshell.

Resting Spring Collection

I reach camp happily after seven or so hours of walking out and back. It was a special and relaxing day. Unlike last month in the Last Change Range, I was well-provisioned, and my gear worked flawlessly (I did film more than I anticipated, and I should have brought my better audio set-up – the wind noise in my YouTube post embarrasses me). Although it is often better to focus on one activity during an excursion – Am I here to climb, do photography, map landforms, or make geomorphology videos? – I took the time, this time, to do a bit of everything during my walk. It is good to get a complete outing like this occasionally. This was a great one.

**Register #119**. Resting Spring Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

I continue this journey, after packing up my little camp, with a photographic excursion into Death Valley, and then on to more focused fieldwork in the landforms of the ancient Mojave River further south. It has begun well.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing