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.