Northern Lights in Snake Valley!

 

This isn't something I was expecting to see in Snake Valley! The Great Basin area is relatively far south, so how in the world are we seeing northern lights? 

Well, thanks to a solar maximum this year and several large CME's - coronal mass ejections -aimed towards the earth, we're being bombarded by solar stuff (I'm 100% sure that's the technical term) that makes for awesome skies, even in more southerly locales. We're located along the 39th parallel (the Equator is 0 and North Pole is +90), so that puts us more towards the south than the north (let me remember that come winter, lol).  But with all the activity, northern lights appeared in May (which I missed due to traveling), and now they're back in October!

My friend Jenny and I had gone out two nights to try and see them over the weekend, but one night was a bust and the other night they were so dim that I didn't even post any of my photos. But on Monday night, 10/7/2024, she texted me to get my eyes outside. I boogied out, bring the whole family, and we were amazed! We could see some color with just our eyes (those naked eyes we're always hearing about!). And with a longer exposure, the colors really popped!

The kids responsibly went to bed a little after 8 pm, but I wanted to see more, so I jumped in the car and started driving around. Except the color had faded quite a bit. It was still a nice glow.

The pond was so serene with the glow over it.

Welcome to Baker, Nevada. It's extra colorful now!

I headed to the Baker Archeological Site, because I thought it would be extra cool to think about the Fremont people here hundreds of years ago maybe experiencing this same phenomenon. What would they have thought?

The color wasn't super bright, but it was beautiful. 

I was getting tired, so I decided to pack it up. But as I was walking back to the car, I noticed the colors strengthening. Hooray! Here's the path to the aurora!

And I'm on it. Check out those pillars! And cloud reflections. It was so magical.

I went back to the main site and enjoyed an amazing light show. Why do people post so many aurora photos? 

Because it changes so fast! 

And it is just so amazing being there, even when you can't see quite this much color, you definitely see that the sky is tinted.

I'll just conclude by saying Welcome to Nevada. We have more color now!

p.s. I think I have a new hobby now, these colors are just so amazing!

Hampton Creek Road Reopened!

I heard that the Hampton Creek road had been repaired in August, about 10 years after the Hampton Creek Fire and subsequent floods that washed the road out. I couldn't wait to go check it out. We went on a Sunday afternoon that was surprisingly cloudy. 

The road goes right through the dry Hampton Creek creekbed. It's dry right now, but won't be come springtime, so we'll see how it looks then!

The newly constructed road crosses a couple small springs. 

The road was nice and wide, but be aware that it is quite rocky!

Near the end of the road you can see a nice tall ponderosa pine and some mining structures from the old garnet mine.

We parked at the obvious trailhead parking and started up the trail. Soon we found lots of rocks with tiny little red garnets in them. You can also find garnets on their own in some of the alluvium.

As we continued up the trail, I got so excited to see a baby ponderosa pine!

The landscape looks so different. The skeletons of pinyon pine dot the landscape, but rabbitbrush seems to be the dominant plant now. It's easy to look way up canyon. I was glad for the clouds to block the sun.

The dog remained blissfully oblivious to a herd of elk on a far-off ridge.

Another baby ponderosa pine! It will be fun to see how these grow.

We hiked up a bit and then turned around. The trail at the beginning is awesome. How is that possible?

It's possible because a trail crew is working on it!


We stopped and talked to them a bit. They're from Friends of Nevada Wilderness and they've done a couple hitches already working on the trail and this is their last one for the year. But they'll be back the next two years to continue work on this trail and others in the North Snake Range as part of a Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (SNPLMA) project to repair roads and trails in the area. This makes me so happy, I love hiking in this mountain range!

So if you have the opportunity, you can go check out Hampton Creek now all the way to the trailhead (without hiking in an hour). It's great to be back!

More posts about Hampton Creek over the years:

 September 2008 trip report

More about the garnet mine-2008

2014 Hampton Fire

August 2014 visit, after the fire

May 2016 visit

Exploring Burned Hampton Creek

Family Backpack up Strawberry Creek, Great Basin National Park

Last weekend we went for a little family backpacking trip up Strawberry Creek. The trail up to the saddle is not well used.

I really enjoyed the arborglyphs like this one, which said "Peligro" (Danger) and had a skull and crossbones. What danger lurked ahead? Many of the abundant arborglyphs were carved by longely sheepherders from Peru in the 1980s. Nowadays the practice is frowned upon because it damages the aspen trees.

It didn't take too long to get up to the saddle area (with Willard Creek), and to my surprise, some of the aspens are changing color already.

There's a large spring in the area.

This old sign is tacked onto a nearby tree. I think it was from when the area was managed by the Forest Service, so prior to 1986.

I was so excited to enjoy the view during golden hour, and fortunately Desert Girl was willing to pose.

We heard one bull elk bugling, which is such a weird sound. But it was pretty quiet during the night, much to my surprise. I woke up early.

And enjoyed sunrise.

Clouds always make the sky prettier!

The views in this area are really pretty. Perhaps not stunning like in some nearby spots, but just a gentle beauty and peace that is very comforting.

A cow skull from days gone by is on a boulder. Cattle grazing was retired from Great Basin National Park in 1999 and sheep grazing in 2009.

This arborglyph is a bit of a map, with an arrow towards Osceola and the Robison Spring. The Robisons lived in the area for a long time and ran a lot of sheep on the Snake Range.

Hiking down the next day we saw this arborglyph from 1911. I can't really figure out what else it says.

And here's one from Cepari Palomo (who also signed a lot of trees as Palomino). Part of it says El Muchacho Universitario (the university boy), Electrosta...Ley de Coulomb (electricity...Coulomb's Law). 

My husband and Desert Boy stop for an older arborglyph.

This one that says H2O and an arrow shows where Strawberry Creek reappears and then continues flowing.

And here's an arborglyph from 1903!

We saw a couple elk wallows. Generally a large herd of elk congregate in Strawberry Creek in the fall. When they bugle, it's an amazing sound.

The elderberries were ripe, so I snacked on them.

And then we finished the hike back through the burned area. 

I don't have many photos of backpacking because the kids were so fast. I was the caboose. It was fun to go see a different area and have a short amount of miles to cover! 

Day 3 of 3-Day Backpacking Trip in Southern Great Basin National Park

Here's Day 3 of a romping good backpacking trip in southern Great Basin National Park.

Day 1 I started in Snake Creek and hiked down North Fork Big Wash, up South Fork Big Wash, and slept in North Fork Lexington.

Day 2 I continued up and over Granite Peak to Mustang Spring and up and over to Lincoln Peak.

That meant Day 3 I was starting near Mt. Washington and I was headed back to the trailhead to complete the loop. I set up my alarm for 4:30 am so I could climb Mt. Washington and descend the other side to the Magic Grove. I really wanted to be at the Quarter Tree for sunrise. 

I got there a bit before sunrise, so why not do the Tree Pose near one of my favorite trees?

And then the colors started popping as the sun came up. It was so magical!

So much beauty. I couldn't really take it all in. Just wow!

And the views didn't stop. I was just in so much awe.

Finally I decided it was time to continue. Here's my hiking shadow.

The tree was pointing the way!

The good views didn't stop. The dramatic cliffs of North Fork Big Wash and Lincoln cirque highlighted the wildness of this place.

I kept on trekking, getting a bit lost on the Snake Divide Trail. It's not really a trail. It's a route. Or maybe just a suggestion in places. So if you go up there, be sure to have a GPS or GPS app on your phone. Some sections are starting to get more heavily eroded, so hopefully a trail crew can get up there and put in some water bars. And mark the places where it's easiest to get off trail!

I saw one other person on the trail, during the three days, an off-duty maintenance employee about a mile from the trailhead. It was a lovely, quiet get-away. When I got back to the Shoshone trail, I noticed one of the waterbars had NCC on it -- Nevada Conservation Corps. They're a crew that the park hires to help with trails. 

Their waterbars were doing a wonderful job of getting the water off the trail!

And then I was back to the accessible fishing area on Snake Creek. Back to water! And back to my regular life.

This turned out to be an excellent adventure. It definitely had a lot of off-trail and bushwhacking parts to it. Having hiked many of these sections before gave me confidence to link them all together. Water was the biggest thing in my head, as there are so few water sources in the southern part of the Park, but they all worked out fine. I didn't mind all the ups and downs of the terrain, probably because I kept my pack fairly light. I purposefully didn't keep careful statistics or track what I did. But it was somewhere in the range off 30 miles and 11,000 feet up and 11,000 feet down. I used most of what I brought with me, but definitely overpacked the food. I could have done without the sun umbrella, although I really did enjoy it on day 1. I could have left the stove behind, and might for some trips now that I know cold soaking is a decent alternative. 

If you're thinking about going out and doing something wild, go for it! It does the soul good!