Second Friday

Nevada High Points #85 – Broken Hills

D. Craig Young · August 1, 2021 · Leave a Comment

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 19^th and early 20^th 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

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Nevada High Points #76: Montezuma Range and Clayton Dunes Overland

D. Craig Young · February 22, 2021 · 7 Comments

Clayton Dunes.

Montezuma Peak

8373 ft (2552 m); Gain 1624 ft

2021.01.09

It was time for the initial ‘Second Friday’ excursion in 2021. Snow squalls had come and gone during the week, so our plan was to head south into the southern Great Basin so that the daytime temperatures would be somewhat warm and snow might be less in the higher elevations. Darren and I chose Montezuma Peak for our target, and I picked the dunes of Clayton Valley for our two-night camp.

**Clayton Valley**. View from Montezuma Peak with Clayton Dunes, Silver Peak Range, and the White Mountains in the distance.

I met Darren in Carson City late on Friday morning. With a stop for fuel and a few supplies, we were soon on the straightaways of Highway 95 heading toward Tonopah, Nevada. We turn south toward Silver Peak, dropping past ‘The Crater’ and into Clayton Valley. I camped in Clayton Valley on my first Second Friday excursion in January of last year — in the before times. At the time, I had made the dunes a future destination and worthy of a look.

Clayton Dunes Collection

We arrived at the dunes at sunset. Rising prominently about a mile from the road, the dunes have no maintained access and off-road vehicle activity appears to be quiet in the winter. A sandy (obviously) two-track leads into the dune’s east side; however, I was not sure the truck and trailer would make it — a meter-deep arroyo had taken over portions of the track and small dunes rolled across others. We ditched the trailer by the turn-out and explored the two-track with the truck. It was fine and sandy. Returned for the trailer and set camp as the darkness closed in.

Winds were forecast, but at dinner we commented on the calmness and its relative warmth. A coyote sang in the distance. Watching the stars and mapping out the lights on the distant side of the valley, we noticed the lights of the evaporation ponds dimming and disappearing. The pinpricks of streetlights at Silver Peak were bright against the mountains. Slowly they, too, vanished.

We sat perplexed until a quick gust of wind rattled the table and an empty beer can. The smell of the night changed. Another gust. Dust storm!

The silt engulfed us reflecting a fog of headlamp and not much else. The vanishing lights explained. We hunkered in momentarily and then thought we should make the most of this. Let’s climb the dunes. We worked our way in our silt halos watching white-outs of sand blast from dune crests — the dunes migrating under our feet.

**Clayton Camp**. My Taxa Cricket with Darren’s tent; our common overland camp configuration.

The morning was bright, a low cloud at the horizon evaporating at sunrise. We waited for golden light on the dune, but the uplands to the east were calling. The road to Montezuma, a historic-era mining town, is well-maintained and its upper reaches access private property and modern infrastructure, but respecting the properties is easily done.

A so-called ‘pack trail’, variously marked on different maps, led to a pass that crests at the northeast ridge of Montezuma Peak. It is a simple, enjoyable hike from there. Snow patches were not deep even though we approached on north-facing slopes.

Montezuma Peak Collection

**Montezuma approach**. Leaving the pack trail we enjoy rock cross-country hike toward the rounded summit.

**Toward Mud Lake**. Summit view to the northeast toward the playa of Mud Lake.

**Summit moment**. The night’s wind brought the day’s cold — we did not linger.

Back at in the dunes we wandered, following animal tracks and composing photographs for the promising sunset. I also wanted to get the know the dunescape so we could catch the early light and the great shadow play of mid-morning sun angles on the curving dunes. I tried a few things but the cold was coming hard and fast. We prepared for dinner noticing that any liquid that hit the table froze immediately. Our hands numbed if we moved anywhere away from the stove. I turned on the trailer heater so we could lounge inside, but we kept to star-gazing and the pleasure of our well-contained campfire. It is something of a challenge to stay up in the winter-darkness, so we were relieved that the time passed quickly among our conversations about future trips, natural history, photography, and video ideas. And likely a myriad other things.

**Clayton Dunes**. Basin alluvium arranged by wind the basin bottomlands.

Because the evening shoot in the dunes did not materialize, I wanted hoped for success in the morning. I climbed the dune well before dawn, it was dramatically cold (in camp, our five gallon water jug was a solid block). The simple star dune in the midst of the dunefield provide the S-curve I wanted. I could have a play with first light against the dark of the dune shadow. The shadow area held a frost, giving it some highlights reflecting the sky, something I had not seen on a dune previously — of course, I’m not often on a dune in single-digit (F) temperatures. It was very satisfying, and I warmed quickly with my success.

**Frosted dune**. Feeling the mood of the dune at first light (three-image focus stack).

Darren was hiking his own quadrant of the dune but soon joined me for a few long moments enjoying the quiet, expansive views. This first overland of 2021 had worked out nicely; we had a fast peak and some slow time in the dunes. We had the excitement of the dust storm and the calm of the refreshed, trackless dune on the cold morning. It was, however, time to head home and plan our next overland/photo excursion.

Clayton Dunes Collection

**North dune**. A five-image pano from the dune apex, looking north across Clayton Valley.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

Landscape Photography: Overland in Nevada’s Carson Sink

D. Craig Young · December 20, 2020 · 2 Comments

The Carson Sink is the terminal basin of the Carson River, draining from the Sierra into western Nevada. The sink is also, at times, the terminus of the Humboldt River; in years of high winter precipitation, the combined flows can result in an expansive, shallow lake in the typically barren sink. And yet, even in dry times, the Stillwater Marshes — a National Wildlife Refuge — reach into the basin at the delta of the Carson River. The life-giving and ever-changing wetlands have been the homeland of North Paiute people and communities for millennia; the still are.

Although the sink is relatively close to home, I have spent more time in the surrounding ranges and valleys than I have looking into the vast desert basin. I am beginning to take a closer look at the landforms, their timing and process, of this distal basin and an overland journey and geo-recce was in order. A pre-holiday storm dominated the forecast, so there could not be a better time for this trip.

Darren — my brother — and I turned off Highway 95 and onto the dirt track on the northern margin of the sink, along the toe slopes of the West Humboldt Range which separates the Carson and Humboldt drainages. The blue sky seemed to hide any evidence of the coming storm. Our traverse took us across desert fans where dusty badlands intersected the soft, effervescent playa of the former lakebed. We were alone and would be for the next few days.

Carson Sink Collection

We set camp south of Chocolate Butte on a series of bars and berms formed when Pleistocene-age, pluvial Lake Lahontan cut into the Buena Vista Hills. Our perch provided an overlook of the western sink with Lone Rock, a buried volcanic plug that protrudes from the playa, rising like a beacon. The landform, so significant to the Paiute people, captured our attention with sunset and at sunrise following.

The snow came in the night. Hearing the quiet that sometimes hints at morning fog, I looked out of the camper to see three inches of new snowfall. The desert landscape was now a white expanse, a few dark hills standing in relief. We wandered the old lake strands and berms under dramatic clouds with fog-laden breaks underneath.

Long view of the West Humboldt Range across the snow-covered playa of the Carson Sink.

The squalls seemed to be breaking up by mid-morning. Under clearing skies we made some breakfast on the skottle, re-loaded our coffee, and secured camp for the day. It had been many years since I had traversed the western bajada of the Stillwater Mountains — the bajada formed of numerous alluvial fans emanating from the many canyons along the mountain front. The coalesced fans form a two-tiered apron below the mountain and lead to a sand dune that piles and re-piles along the margin of the playa. Wind transports sand, momentarily paused in the dune-form, but water is the sand’s source. The delta is downwind where the river, mostly the Carson, sometimes the Walker, and maybe, though long ago, the Truckee, delivered sand to the fluctuating lake. The conveyor is still operating, but it has been running on little energy since the Pleistocene. Southerly winds, with the occasional redirection of a north-westerly storm pulse, push the sand to the valley margins. Starving for sediment, the dunes are now their own sand source, with new parabolic racers leaving exposed dune-core badlands in relief. Traversing the high sand faces and walking quietly through the skeletal-core, we soon encroach the playa expanse.

Checking the level, Carson Sink, Nevada.

Our second night is long and cold. The darkness of the Winter Solstice is almost upon us; nightfall is early and we pass the long hours of the evening with a camp dinner and a quiet fire. The Geminids meteor shower teases disappointingly, so we share stories and plans for the new year — ways to make the most of our time in the pandemic. Outback travel continues to seed hope and heal with a bit of distraction.

Carson Sink Collection

A second storm approaches on Sunday morning. We pack camp and continue southward; today entering the east side of the Stillwater Marshes so that we can cross the delta from east to west before once again hitting the highway. Rain squalls come and go as we traverse the silt dunes of the North Road and finally venture into recent snow-cover at Papoose Lake.

I will have several field seasons of work coming in the geography of the Carson Sink. This refresher overland re-set my thinking and provided a new foundation for investigating the open space surrounding that vast playa.

Keep going.

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

#naturefirst #keepgoing

The Crater to Ione, NV: The resolution of ‘Second Friday’

D. Craig Young · January 13, 2020 · 2 Comments

It is a new year, 2020. I thought of doing a retrospective of last year’s favorite journeys and images. “My 12 Best Photos”, calendar-like (to follow a theme), or something similar. A look back, however, reveals several gaps in my photography journey. Those gaps opened as my vocational world (not too mention much of our national and global community experience) encountered turbulence. I turned to field studies and photography as escapes – I had many good field sessions, but they were escapes, nonetheless. Not escapes from the management attention that my business requires, but escapes as relief and rejuvenation. So, leaving the turbulence behind and motivated by it, I am looking forward to a new year and another trip around the sun.

What were the gaps? I had one new blog post in 2019 and I basically avoided sharing either images or field observations on social media. The latter does not bother me all that much, the pitfalls of social media are best avoided. The former is a strange conundrum. I very much enjoy the blog medium. I spent considerable time with new formats and published several blogs based on journeys that took place in previous years; I still have a few drafts in the works. I kept thinking I would catch up eventually. Still, that is ‘looking back’; this is about looking forward.

Clayton – Ione C o l l e c t i o n

Friends, family, and colleagues know me as a scheduler. I keep a detailed calendar charting my day and keeping time for the various things I consider significant. Do I stick to it? Some days or weeks are better than others; I have never, however, considered any calendar as legally or emotionally binding. Other than engagements or appointments I should not miss, it is generally aspirational. But it is very structured. When I do stick to it, there is pleasure and satisfaction there, and, as a result, when I realize a successful calendar, I find I get things done.

A given workday, for example, has ‘Prime’ tasks and ‘Focus’ tasks. During ‘prime-time’ I allow disturbances and it is about collaboration and teamwork; it usually takes up the mornings. I turn off phones and email during ‘focus-time’, picking a specific project for the day or week that needs or can benefit from undivided attention, typically several hours in the afternoon. Field work negates the schedule for a while. Hey, it is fieldwork, that is why I do this!

My wife and I have a pretty simple home life, and I am not one to separate ‘work’ from ‘play’. I can and do unplug, but I am fortunate (I think) that my interests intertwine, mostly to mutual benefit. Like the workday, evenings revolve around a few key, calendared activities. Mondays and Tuesdays are about geoarchaeological research, notes, or projects that don’t get time at the office. Thursdays are for photography – processing, printing, and study. Other days I let randomness have its way, and I do not berate myself if the occasional distraction rips the day from the calendar.

So, what is this about? This is something of a forward-looking resolution and promise to me – discipline and practice around growth in my photography and my geoarchaeological science. It is all about the weekends!

I will call them ‘Second Friday’ and ‘Fourth Friday’, calendared and planned weekends of each month. Second Friday marks a monthly field trip, getting out on the ground with emphasis on areas where I have research interest and where I can bring my photography to that setting and topic. I head out on a Friday with a geography in mind and camp through the weekend. I might make a basecamp, or I could ramble on a reconnaissance of roads and trails untraveled. Fourth Friday begins a local weekend focused on practicing my photographic skills. I might chase golden light in the mornings and evenings, forage for images on a quick daytrip, or simply hunker into intensive processing or printing sessions. I may break from the focus to see to chores, of course, but the weekend revolves around a photography theme or themes.

Will this work? We will see. With this blog post, it is January’s Second Friday and I am in Clayton Valley, east of Tonopah, NV.

The Crater rises from the Pleistocene-age, coalesced alluvial fans that stream from the northeast margin of the Silver Peak Range. The fans engulf the volcano, but it rises in the classic composite cone, weakened only along its east side, where lavas poured into the valley, leaving black scoriated lobes paralleled the later flashy flows of the ever-reaching alluvial fans. Hwy 268 is one of the few remaining paved roads in Nevada that I have not explored, and while planning the field excursion The Crater is a highlight of my Google Earth flyby. This is where the weekend begins.

The weather is perfect. There are rumors of a coming weak storm system, but the sky remains placid, the sun unduly warm for early January. I climb The Crater and explore its blown-out center; I continue southward to circum-navigate its perimeter. The walk is crispy on the young volcanic pumice and scree. Dust profiles on the cone’s south slopes, downwind of the Clayton Valley basin-bottom playa (today a focus of Lithium production), are fascinating. Fine-grained sediments always attract my attention.

**Moonlight Crater, from the Monocline, Clayton Valley, NV.**

I drive about a mile north with the approaching evening. Some basalt-capped badlands, called The Monocline, provide a stage for sunset and moonlight photography of the dark volcanic crater against the light-colored desert fans. It is the composition I visualized for the evening practice. The light is subdued, but I enjoy the quiet evening and the invitation of the full moon.

**Tuffs in badlands of Black Canyon alluvial fans.**

Camp is a non-descript wide spot at the intersection of cardinal two-track roads in the middle of the Black Canyon fan extending from the Silver Peaks. I am in the Big Smoky Valley drainage system now, but only a short distance north of the low pass to Clayton Valley. With the sunrise I detach the trailer and scurry in the ZR2 toward some badland outcrops far up the fan. The roads cut into the desert pavements and it is a short hike to Miocene badlands where ashflows and lakebeds encapsulate occasional pockets of petrified wood. Clear sky sunrise with few clouds. I am enthralled by the expanse of fans with inselberg islands of partially buried outcrops revealing remnant landscapes, but how to express the expanse and document the temporal incongruities through photography? I will return again and again.

**Remnants**. The volcanic outcrops of Black Canyon, Silver Peak Range, NV.

Circling toward Ione via the Gabbs Pole Line road, the forecasted squalls finally intersect the weekend. There is a bit of drama in the sky as I drop into quarry pits and arroyos to walk fine-grained profiles. There is temporal information in the sequence of ancient soils separating deep packages of gravelly Pleistocene alluvium and Holocene dust reworked into the basin as loessic alluvium. The Ione Wash arroyo is fantastic, a deep slice along the axis of this vast inland valley. I walk the profiles searching for fire histories, volcanic ash, and soil formation, hoping for an archaeological trace from the basin’s past.

I camp by the roadside where I can photograph the squalls sailing through the Paradise and Shoshone ranges. Few flurries hit camp, but the evening is a pleasure, the trailer is warm, and I sleep well. The morning is clear but for some scudding clouds on the mountain tops. I tour homeward, joining traffic on Hwy 95 until skipping south at Yerington. I’m home in the early afternoon.

Clayton – Ione C o l l e c t i o n

This is the pleasure of the weekend of Second Friday in all regards. I had some targets highlighted as little more than excuses to get into new landscapes where I could consider the natural setting and its process. I augmented my taste of dirt with the slow build of landscape photography, choosing a few scenes to maybe tell the story of the traveled stage. This is how planning, and a calendar, brings discipline that ultimately evolves into the pleasure of an outback journey and experience.

Keep going.