Exploring the New Basin and Range National Monument, Nevada

About a month ago I joined some friends and acquaintances to do some exploring in the new Basin and Range National Monument, located in south-central Nevada. This national monument was designated in July 2015. It is managed by the BLM and is huge--about 704,000 acres. There is no visitor center, no amenities, few signs, and few paved roads (Nevada Highway 318 goes through part of it.) Here's a link to the BLM website with a map and more info.

We had topo maps, 4WD vehicles, and a sense of exploration.

The fossils in the Joana limestone are terrific, with lots of crinoids.

This crinoid stem had a nice star shape in the middle.

The northern end of the national monument is in the Great Basin desert, but at the southern end it is a transition zone to the Mojave desert, and cholla appear.

There are a few homesteads on the monument, including this abandoned sheep ranch.

This is a corral in a different part of the monument, when I approached from Highway 318 north of White River Narrows. I liked the series of mountain ranges framed by the corral entrance.

Most of Coal Valley is encompassed by the monument. I thought the sagebrush looked really healthy in much of the valley, and there wasn't much cheatgrass, which was nice.

There is cattle grazing in the monument, and I spotted this water tank by one of the hills.

We put up tents in a leave-no-trace makeshift campsite and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

The next morning it was time for some hiking.

We loaded up our packs and started heading up into the mountains. Note the lack of trails.

The number of fossils was amazing. This entire rock is covered.

We were also lucky to see some claret cup cacti blooming. They are so gorgeous!

Numerous holes dotted the cliffs. This one went in about ten feet, enough to get a fun view.

We kept hiking up and up and eventually made it to the top of the Golden Gate Range, the mountain range in the center of the monument. We found a survey marker and some assorted equipment that made us wonder what had been there previously.

To the west we saw Garden Valley and the Grant Quinn Range. It looked even more impressive the next morning with a fresh dusting of snow.

Here I am on the windy summit! It got so windy that day. My tent didn't do so well with all the wind.

We did some more hiking along steep slopes. Again, no trails. This place is wild!

Then we rappelled off the side of a mountain and into a cave.

It looked like we made the first footprints into the cave.

It didn't go far, but it had some nice speleothems.

The entrance was nice and wide and tall. It was fun being in a cave that didn't require crawling the entire time.

Some birds make their home there too.

I also saw some of the most amazing midden ooze that day, very orange. It looks soft, but it was actually very hard.

Later we were walking around some other cliffs and found this climbing rope dangling. It looks like climbers are putting up new routes (but I sure wouldn't leave my rope there, it wasn't that far back to the vehicles!).

It will be interesting to see how the monument is managed. They are currently working on a management plan.

A marker glued to the wall. Maybe this is the Scorpion King wall?

It is a gorgeous area. I really liked the cliffy mountains, abundant fossils, small caves, healthy sagebrush, numerous wildflowers, and isolation. We saw about eight vehicles all weekend. If you go, take supplies to stay overnight even if you're not planning to be there over night, as it's really remote and you may or may not run into someone else. Good tires, plenty of water, maps, and a good sense of direction are also helpful. I'll be back to explore!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Christmas is almost here and we've been getting ready in various ways. We've limited the decorations this year but sure enjoy looking at what others have done.

The school Christmas program included some music and then two plays, one from each of the elementary schools. There are ten students in grades K-2, and their play was about the different states they have been studying.

They did a nice job and had quite a few lines to memorize.

There are a few more kids in grades 3-6. Their play was a musical, and Desert Boy really enjoyed learning the songs. His part was king, and he also really enjoyed wearing a crown.

They learned some choreography for the songs, including a bit of swing dancing. It was fun to watch them.

We made three kinds of Christmas cookies this year. One was a dud, but the other two came out well. Desert Girl turned out to be pretty proficient with a rolling pin for these sugar cookie cutouts. She also loves sprinkles!

The kids had dress rehearsal for the Nativity Play. Desert Boy is Joseph and Desert Girl is Shepherd 1. We've been working on memorizing lines, and they fortunately catch on pretty quickly.

Shepherds' Hill includes some attitude and wandering sheep. It should be an entertaining production!

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas!

Meeting the Llamas

 So my nephew got some llamas and we just had to go over and take a look. After all, it's not every day that you get to see a llama (unless you own one, I guess).

We got a little distracted by the lamb that was wandering around. I have a feeling one of those will be in our not-too-distant future.

Then it was time to inspect the llamas. Desert Girl was the bravest.

The white one was just as curious about her as she was about it.

What a great expression!

Finally Desert Boy had a chance to look up close.

Um, maybe you don't want to get that close--llamas can spit! (Fortunately these didn't.)

This is a family of llamas, mom, dad, and two daughters. My nephew is hoping to use them as pack animals, as apparently the larger ones can carry a hundred pounds. When I looked up llamas on Wikipedia, I learned that they are a domesticated camelid from South America, raised for their meat and as pack animals. Since the 1980s they also have been used as predator control for sheep and have been very successful. They usually live 15-25 years and have an 11.5 month gestation period. It will be interesting to watch them develop.

Pyramid Peak Hike, Great Basin National Park, Nevada

To recap from a previous post, my husband and I climbed Pyramid Peak in Great Basin National Park last weekend. We started about 8,100 ft to reach the 11,926 foot summit. We chose to gain that 3,800 ft (more than climbing Wheeler Peak) by hiking near Dead Lake, which I covered in this last post.

Then we wanted to head over to the main Johnson Lake trail. On the topo map it looks quite easy, and the terrain wasn't too hard, with Engelmann spruce trees and patches of manzanita, but it sure felt long.

Eventually we reached the trail, where the going was a little easier. The trail must have had quite a rainstorm recently, because quite a few sections had sizeable gullies in them.

I was so happy to reach the Johnson Mill Historic Site, where we took a welcome break.

Then it was the very steep section up to the historic cabins near Johnson Lake. Imagining what it was like to be a miner is always fun--and intimidating. That could not have been an easy life.

After a quick snack and swimming break at the lake (it was warmer than expected), we took the steep trail up to the ridge.

This is a trail bighorn sheep would like--very steep and rocky!

As we reached the ridge, Pyramid Peak didn't look so far away.

There's no trail up to the top of Pyramid Peak, so we just made our way up the talus slope. As it got steeper, the peak looked farther away.

We kept hiking and hiking.

Johnson Lake looked very small below, so we knew we were making progress.

I busied my mind by searching for the beautiful alpine wildflowers, like these alpine fleabane (Erigeron leiomerus) and Holmgren's buckwheat (Eriogonum holmgrenii). I especially like the buckwheat, which only grows on the Snake Range.

Finally we made it to the top and got a photo to prove it (there's no register like in past years). In the background is the backside of Wheeler and Jeff Davis peaks. This view makes it a little more understandable why some of the early explorers thought the peak was volcanic, since it does somewhat resemble a crater. However, the rock is in fact quartzite. (Nevertheless, over 20% of the Great Basin is volcanic, a fun fact you can learn about more in my new book The Great Basin for Kids, available in the sidebar.)

From the top of Pyramid Peak you can see a bit of Baker Lake. It looks very small and by late summer a lot of the water has evaporated from it.

 We saw bird on the peak that still stumps me. If you know it, please leave a note in the comments!

We also saw white butterflies chasing each other. They never landed so I couldn't get a photo of them, but this butterfly, I think a Great Basin Fritillary, did stop nearby.

I was also excited to see this Anise Swallowtail, my first viewing of this species.

Instead of going back the southwest ridge and retracing our steps by Johnson Lake, we decided to take the eastern ridge down, join the Shoshone Trail that goes over South Fork Baker Creek to the Johnson Lake trail, and then loop around. From the top it didn't look too bad (it never does, right?).

We saw some different plants on the eastern side, including this Purple-flowered Stonecrop (Rhodiola integrifolium). It contrasted nicely with the Erigeron.

 As we descended, I really liked the view of Wheeler and Jeff Davis Peaks with their cloud shadows through the saddle of Pyramid and False Pyramid Peaks. I've hiked that saddle once, a pleasant hike. But then we decided to go down and meet up with the Baker Lake trail--not a good idea, the slopes are so steep that when you set a rock rolling, it just keeps rolling and rolling.

The clouds were building, so we were going down as fast as we could, but the descent was hard on our knees (mine still hurt a week later). We are definitely in monsoon season, with frequent afternoon thunderstorms.

A rock wren flitted on the rock in front of us.

Eventually we entered the trees, and before long the forest was so overgrown we could no longer follow the ridge. We dropped down on the Snake Creek side, bushwhacking through all sorts of vegetation. My favorite were the aspen groves, as they provided some shade and were a little easier to travel through.

Finally we made it back to camp, about seven hours after taking off. It was eight miles in total, but with our heavy packs, I don't think we could have gone much faster. We soaked our sore feet in the cold creek.

We packed up our camp before it started raining hard and paused to take a slightly blurry family photo. Thanks so much to our family and friends who watched the kids while we did the training hike. The kids certainly had a lot more fun with their cousins than they would have on that hike!

So in summary, Pyramid Peak is a beautiful peak to climb. If you climb it from the ridge between Johnson and Baker peaks, it's not too hard, but it still is a lot of elevation gain. Bushwhacking, as usual, makes a hike more difficult. But it's kind of fun seeing the less-traveled parts of the world! So I guess even though I was sore and tired after the hike, I will be doing more hikes.