Search To Save Nowhere

-About This Site-

2020-01-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

First of all, thank you for visiting the site! Check back often for updates and new posts.

Statement of Purpose:

This site is dedicated to the Great Basin and all those who care about it. If it is any one thing, it is a work in progress which I hope will spur interest and admiration of the Great Basin, Nevada, and all the folks who cherish these places enough to let it influence and change the way they live.

How to use this site:

Yes, this is a blog, but I have done my best to make it appear and function like a regular website. On the right side of the screen you will find categories of posts. These categories are: Introduction, Journal, Photo Album, Links, and Archive.

Below each category are links to individual posts or collections of posts. Click on any one of these to navigate to the post.

Take action!

After you muse through the writings and pictures and say "WOW, Nevada ROCKS", please visit the links provided (especially Environmental Defense Action Center) and write to your legislators about current issues facing the west. It works, and if enough people do it, it gets the job done.

Share!

Pass this site on to anyone you think will enjoy it, and also pass on your stories, articles, photos, comments and all other digital manifestations of the splendor that is the Great Basin to me and I will post them under your name!

Thank you, and enjoy!

All photos and writings by Eco-O unless otherwise noted.

2009-08-17T11:30:00.001-07:00

Day 7 and The Future

2008-12-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

Done a day early, we slept in inside the tent, away from bugs, late into the morning We woke in full-body tiredness and the humid dankness of sweat inside a hot tent. We hand bathed in the creek, kicked around the campground, and hiked (without our full packs, for the first time in a week) up the trail a mile or two into the steep canyon towards Mt Jefferson, just to see the sights and gain some vantage on the last few days walk. Spent some time walking in the cold creek to cool off and pamper the feet trying to catch trout in a mosquito headnet and mesh stuffsack. Failed at the fishing but had great success in the pampering.

The day of leisure was full of reflecting upon the 70 rough, exciting and breathtaking miles of Great Basin landscapes we had witnessed in the last week. We also marveled at the nearly 200 miles we had come in our journey across Nevada. Sitting at the future head of leg IV, we knew we would be back sometime to continue the experience.

Around 3:30, a suburban rolled up the road and circled the campground. It was Mr. Bath, our ride home. We exchanged salutations and chatted as we loaded our packs into the vehicle.

The ride back was quiet. We stared out the window at the passing valleys and mountain ranges, gauging the distances and sizes of mountains in a hard-won sense of bipedal reality that was at its sharpest after a week of honing. The several hour drive was a salute to how fare we had walked from our home in merely two trips. I did not feel that I had conquered the distance. Rather, I was grateful to have experienced it and humbled by the vastness of the country we had made our way across. It was then that I came to the realization that a good life is filled with real adventures. Real adventures are dangerous, trying and sometimes questionable. The good life is a life to be proud of when it ends, whenever that might be. It is a life that, in its darkest and saddest hours will illuminate and uplift itself with the treasures of past experiences and the prospect of more to come.

That night we were treated to showers and a meal at the Historic Hotel Nevada with both sets of our parents. Greasy casino food and good company is just what we needed.

* * *

The rest of the summer was a good one, at least for my brother and I. That fall, we returned to our respective universities in the Northwest and Paul to Reno. The following summer of 2008 found everyone in different places and sadly no progress was made on the trail. The continuation of the Trail remains a goal for all of us. Until then, we wish that you, fair reader, will endeavor to take some chances and embark on that journey you have been thinking about. It will be worth the ride.

-Carson and Owen Baughman and Paul Bath

Day 6 - The Final Steps of The Successful Leg

2008-12-23T21:45:00.001-08:00

We all slept in late because we only had 6-7 miles (all downhill) slated for the day. We arose at 9:30 and had bland oatmeal; the breakfast of champions. Packed up our camp in the ravine and left around 10:30 to climb to a nearby saddle. We soon hooked up with the trail we needed on top and followed it to a main trail for the area. We followed it a bit too blindly and ended up taking the wrong fork for about a half of a mile. Slowly, we began to realize we were not really heading down the drainage we needed to. We turned around and backtracked to the proper trail that had been obscured by the young undergrowth of a recovering aspen stand. The trail was the main artery into the area and was pretty well traveled and studded with piles of horse dung. It lead through some thick and rocky pinyon and juniper forests to a cliff.

From here, we could look out over the Mosquito Creek drainage and see where it met the floor of Monitor Valley, behind a long ridge pointing northwest that slowly eroded into the valley. Out plans had us camping along Mosquito Creek where it met the valley, and finishing the trek the next day. We stopped for a break along the cliffs, contemplating the landscape, and collectively decided to finish the trek that day by crossing Monitor valley in the afternoon. We would end up at Pine Creek, the rendezvous, in the shadows of Mt Jefferson and the Alta Toquima range.

We hiked down to the creek and tanked up on water, saving a liter or so each for the jaunt across the valley. We also had lunch and took a nap in the grassy meadow to the bubbling background of the clear cold creek. I did some important foot maintenance work, letting them dry out a bit and popping a few small blisters. After nearly a week in the moist confines of thick leather or nakedly strapped to sandals in the parching alkaline dust of worn out roads, our feet were beginning to require attention if they were to remain willing participants in the trip. As I worked on my feet, we enjoyed the warm sun and a stunning Ruby Throated Hummingbird mating display. It consisted of the male making an unending and wildly fluctuating string of calls, spiraling up into the air. Once it was high enough that we could barely see it as a noisy dot in the sky, it would fly straight down at extremely high speeds, making a dive-bombing sort of noise, narrowly missing the ground. We were impressed, but there was no sign of a fellow hummingbird in the audience.

Around 2:30, we figured out that the valley crossing was to be in the neighborhood of 9 miles. This figure motivated us to get started, in a demotivating fashion. We left the presence of the foothills, crossed and left the creek, and fought our way through some very thick and tall basin big sagebrush. Two antelope watched us from a salt crusted mound that sported a warm and stinky hotspring and lush green grass. We deviated a bit to check it out, but being only the size of a bathtub full of mud and sewage, with ankle-swallowing mud surrounding it, it did not provide much excitement. We continued across some very alkaline flats and horsebrush for about 40 minutes, making our way eventually into some sage and gravely hardpan. The sun was still decently high and stealing appreciable quantities of motivation from our overheated and overworked bodies.

Looking across the valley, we could see that the next tree was all the way across the valley, miles away. There was no hope for a shade break unless we endeavored to huddle under larger sagebrush or behind our packs, which was sounding better and better and we marched along, staring at the impressively massive Mt Jefferson. To our delight, we came across an old stream bed cut into the valley floor and after only a few minutes, we found a section that was just deep enough and with walls just steep enough to immerse ourselves in the shade. We sat in the cool gravel of the stream bed in the shade and dozed off, looking back at Table Mountain. The cool and shady area in the mid afternoon heat was prime habitat for sharks, and sure enough, within a few minutes, a shark attack ensued. The pack of sharks made its way around, boosting moral and providing immediately available energy. We consulted the map and discussed how we would hook into one of the many roads in the valley.

Revived, we crawled out of our spot around 4:00, as if emerging from some subterranean underworld onto the flat and expansive valley floor. We tipped our hats down to catch more sun and trod on for over an hour. Walking with a pack through the sagebrush at this point was becoming second nature. After 6 days of immersion, the art of living on my feet was finally beginning to be habitual and nonchalant. In the respect, it was a shame that it was to be the final day. If we had the time and the supplies, I have no doubt that we would have decided to continue for several more days, over Jefferson and Arc Dome, into the vast 40 mile stretch of dry low hills south of Tonopah, and perhaps on past Walker Lake. However, it was not to be. Today was it.

We connected with a series of roads that would lead us to our destination. I stopped to put on sandals for the road walking. We zig-zagged along various paths, separating a bit, heading to the main bench road, then cut a corner through a healthy and forb-ridden patch of Wyoming sage. In the lowering light, with the shadow of the Alta Toquima range almost upon us, exhausted, we stumbled onto the main road heading straight up into the pinyon and juniper to the Pine Creek campground. This was the final push. The end of the road for leg III of Trail 22. We were a day ahead of schedule and over 24 hours from our scheduled pickup time. We rested a bit, ensuring that we enjoyed the last steps of the journey we were still beginning to realize that we had actually undertaken. We took a few pictures in the setting sun and walked together up into the trees along the road.

The familiar smell of campfires and the unfamiliar sounds of other humans than ourselves greeted us, and after circling the campground to make sure no one was waiting for us early, we found a campsite, started a fire, and cooked the last supper.

The walk was over, at least for now...

* * *

In the Gut of Silence

2008-12-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

May 17th, 2008

The silence of the Great Basin night is without compare. The breeze dies down, but persists enough to make you sure that if you were anywhere else, the rustling of leaves, grasses, wind chimes, twigs or other things would break the soundlessness. It seems like a crime to break it. Scraping my metal bowl to clear its insides sends harsh waves into the night, never to return, all to die somewhere in the robust shrubbage that surrounds me for miles in every direction. Some may be lucky enough to raise the head of a coyote, a rabbit, a meadowlark, or the ass-end of a tank-like stinkbug on its mission into the night.

I dare not break it intentionally. I've got a harmonica, in the key of D, packed away in my stuff somewhere. The thought of becomming audibly blind to the silence is intimidating. I don't have the guts.

It's a silence that is so complete that all you can hear is the humming of your head. The ringing whir of who knows what. Brain static.

I can only hope some creature doesn't breach the moonlit peace with a howl, squak, roar, quack, or gurgled groan. I'd likely jump out of my skin or blow a hole in an artery.

I don't have the guts to bare witness to such a breach.

--From a camp in the expansively empty Eden Valley in Humboldt County northeast of Winnemucca, NV

Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 3 & 4)

2008-04-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

The morning of day three found me groggy but alive. I checked my watch and was surprised by its reading. 9:00 am. I popped the door open and crawled out of my sleeping bag and stumbled over to a Forest Service bathroom in my socks. My feet, legs and hips were sore and stiff from the past day. I came back to the car and sat around until Paul woke up. As we made breakfast a man came over from the camp that we had driven our car out of the past night.

“Morning”, said the man.

“Morning”, Paul and I mumbled back.

The man was dressed in a well worn undershirt and a pair of grey sweat pants. His receding hair was cut short and his face aged him to be about forty-five or fifty. The man made me nervous. He looked like the kind of person that it is best to avoid less you get caught up in their troubled lives. The man continued.

“Hey, I just wanted to apologize about setting up in your spot. We figured you guys were parked there for the day”

“Oh, not a problem”, I responded. “We’re fine right here.”

“Alright, just wanted to make sure. Hey, do you guys party?”

I was a bit confused by his question. Why does this guy care if we party? We’re as far from the party scene as you can get. Being simple minded a slightly out of the loop, I took his question literally.

“No, I don’t”, I said in all honesty for I had never gone to anything that I considered to be a party of the type I thought this guy was referring to. “But this guy does”, I said, pointing to Paul who I knew had gone to many a party in his high school days. The man shifted his attention to Paul.

“Actually, I gave it up. Just not my thing”, said Paul

“I’m freakn’ confused”, I thought.

“Ok, I was just wondering” said the man. “Well, you guys take it easy”

Paul and I said goodbye and with that the man turned and walk back towards his camp. After he was out of ear shot I started trying to figure out what the guy was all about. Then Paul turned to me and said, “Hey man, when someone asks you if you party they are really asking you if you smoke pot.” I felt about as bright as bat shit in the bottom of a cave. We still managed to laugh about it and agreed that the sooner we left the better.

After a light breakfast of instant scrambled eggs, we were about ready to move on when our sketchy friend came back over. This time he told us that they were there because they were traveling the country and that they had run out of gas and money. He asked if we had any cash to spare. Now I was really feeling nervous. His story wasn’t making much sense. The camp ground we were at was well off the main highway. If you were running low on gas it would make much more sense to press on towards Ely rather than drive into Cleve Creek. I had twenty bucks in the glove box but had no desire to give it to him. We simply said we didn’t have any cash because we were backpacking.

The days walk would take us 6 miles up Cleve Creek and then another 6 miles up to the top of the Schell Creeks where we would camp for the night – a 4,374 ft. elevation gain.

As we walked up the canyon, leaving my defenseless Suzuki with the pot smoking road tripper I couldn’t help but think that I was going to return in a few days and find my car’s windows smashed in and its insides gutted.

The road up Cleve Creek was easy going besides the fact that it crossed a broad creek several times. We ran into a brood of Blue Grouse and stopped to eat some ripe elder berries. We also ran into our first rattler. I heard it hiss as we approached. The ol’buzz-worm was of fair size but like most snakes wanted nothing to do with us. I poked at him with a stick just to get it to rattle then we left. The further up the canyon we went the smaller the road got. Maybe four fifths of the way up the road, some movement caught my eye. It was big and close and standing in the trees. It wasn’t spooking like a deer or an elk would have. It was silent except for its footsteps. I was so puzzled by the creature that I had trouble focusing on it for I didn’t know what to look for. Finally after a few seconds I realized what it was. A horse, a tethered horse nonetheless, seemingly materialized in front of my eyes. Then I looked up the other side of the road and right before us was a sheepherder’s camp.

The camp looked like any other sheepherder camp. The iconic covered-wagon-like trailer sat off to the side of the road with provisions scattered about. Unlike other camps this one had a vehicle parked near it. Most camps lack a vehicle for two reasons. The herders, immigrant workers from South and Central America as well as South Western Europe lack the financial income to purchase and maintain vehicles. Secondly, even if they could afford a vehicle they could never use it for their job entails being stationed in the backcountry with the sheep for months at a time. Their job is to watch and move the sheep which leaves little time for joy rides except on the back of a horse. This of course explained the horse in the trees. My mind jumped and played in the field of logic.

With the camp set right next to the road we couldn’t help but walk through. As we passed the trailer the occupants came into view - two men and a woman. Being the only humans for miles we were all intrigued by one another’s presence. Paul and I stopped to say hello and were met with unexpected hospitality. The herder, a young man not more that thirty stepped forward and introduced himself as Caesar and told us he was from Peru. We introduced ourselves and told him where we lived and briefly about our hike. He spoke broken English but smiled with interest. He introduced the other man and woman, actually a mother and son who turned out to be visitors from Las Vegas.

Caesar ran back to the trailer opened a chest cooler and pulled out two ice cold bottles of water and gave them to Paul and I who were happy to have the water after the long walk up the road. We talked some more about the area. We mentioned elk and Caesar again ran back to the trailer and pulled out his prize possessions - two elk dead heads he had found while riding his horse in the area. Someone thought of taking pictures and so I took pictures of Cesar and Paul each holding a head and then had Paul take my picture with Cesar. Wishing each other good luck and farewell we parted and Paul and I resumed our walk up the road.

In a short time we reached the end of the road. Caesar’s sheep had been hard at work grazing the forage to stubs. The water, ground and air reeked of sheep crap. A perfect place to break for lunch and pump water before entering the high country. As we sat in the shade, the ruckus of a car engine could be heard making its way up the road. Before long a silver heavy duty pick-up truck rolled up the road. It was turning out to be a people filled day. The truck was no regular civilian truck. It had state license plates, and as it veered to the right a familiar emblem could be seen stuck to the door. It was that of the Nevada Division of Wildlife, the same agency my father worked for.

Anxious to see who it was, we approached the cab of the truck. The face of the driver was unfamiliar to me. So was the name. But he knew my Dad. We talked about our hike, what the biologist was up to and what we thought of the creepy people back at the camp ground. With yet another farewell Paul and I shouldered our packs and headed up Taft Canyon - a side canyon of Cleve Creek. We had been watching for the canyon on the map all day and now, around mid day we were fairly confident that we were at its base.

According to the map and what we had heard there was a trail that led up Taft Canyon to Cleve Creek Baldy, one of the local peaks in area. From the peak, a foot trail led back to Success Summit where we intended to camp that night.

We found a trail that led out of Cleve Creek and up Taft but it wasn’t apparent whether we were on a human trail or a deer trail. As time went on it became more and more clear that it was of the latter type. The trail led up the bottom of the canyon, passing under and over fallen trees. The duff from unknown years of needles and droppings made our trail beaten feet a little happier. In the dense pines we lost sight of the surrounding topography and began to loose track of ourselves on the map. Obviously we were still in Taft Canyon but we were unable to tell what part of the canyon we were in.

“See this little bump in the topo lines?“

“Yeah?”

“I think that’s this ridge to our left”

“I don’t know man, are you sure were not over here? That looks kind of funny”

“Yeah, I can’t tell”
“So where to?”

“I don’t know. Let’s keep going up. We’ll have to climb no matter what way we go.”

“Sounds good.”

In the end we ended up taking the wrong route which led straight up the northeast side of Cleve Creek Baldy rather than the slightly less steep route which approached the peak from the north. The climb up the peak was probably the hardest of the whole trip. On a slope close to 45 degrees with sage brush up to your thigh, every step was a struggle. Our feet were in great pain but there was nothing we could do about it. The rewarding aspect of the climb was that we could look back all the way across Spring Valley to Mount Moriah and the table. A total distance of 30 miles and 56 percent of our entire trip lay in one view.

Late in the day after several false summits Paul and I climbed up and out of the steep slopes of Taft Canyon. We were beat from the climb but we had another 4 miles to go before reaching Success Summit and camp. The hike off of Cleve Creek was aided by a trail that I had been on before. Finally we reached Success Summit and found a suitable camp site in a small gully filled with scattered aspens. We walked under the light of dusk and set up camp as the sun left the glowing sky. That night, after dinner, Paul led us down a road that took us to Camp Success, a place which I had heard about but never been to.

Camp Success is a collection of cabins and bunk houses that has been used by youth groups, scouts and the general public whenever someone wants to hold a shin-dig up in the mountains while maintaining certain civilized standards like running water, electricity and refrigeration. The camp is nestled in a thick forest of firs of a north facing slope. I must say I was impressed. Besides just wanting to check out the place, Paul and I had empty water bottles which could be filled at relatively lightning speed with a hose. Paul was disgusted when he found that the main door to the main lodge was unlocked. It is a relative of his that has become the prime care taker of the camp. We went inside and looked around.

We were standing next to the kitchen filled with grills, refrigerators and utensils. We looked out into the dinning center that was filled with tables and chairs. Curiosity got the best of me and I took a peak inside one of the refrigerators. Expecting to see nothing more than the typical empty mayo jar and a box of baking soda, I found the exact opposite. The fridge was packed! Bread took up most of the space but the regular non perishables were all there. Crackers, chocolates, even ice cream in the freezer! I wanted to tear into it all as I was still hungry after dinner. I managed to keep my composure. I did however find a jar of jelly that had already been opened along with a jar of peanut butter and proceeded to make myself one of the best tasting PB&J sandwiches I had ever eaten.

Water bottles full and curiosity satisfied we plodded back up the road which took nearly a half hour. It was pretty late when we got back to the camp and a smoldering campfire. We crawled into our sleeping bags for the last night of our trip. Tomorrow we planned to hike out of the mountains and into town whose lights could be seen from just over the hill.

The morning came. Bright light, clear skies and crisp air. Tucked in this package of mountain joy was a whole slough of aches and pains. My feet, specifically the heels, were swollen the point that any up hill walking caused my boots to compress my heel which was very painful. There were no blisters, just pain. Paul’s feet were hurting a bit as well but had held up surprisingly well considering he was in running shoes. The packs had left their marks as well in the form of sore shoulders and raw hips. The camp which we had selected in the fading light the past evening had proved to be a little more sloped than was comfy. Thus the night had been interrupted with adjustments and repositioning. But all of this didn’t matter much as we knew we were on the last day and would be home by dinner.

After breaking camp we hiked up and out of the tiny gully that held our camp and onto a two track that led to the local apex of the mountain ridge. All the uphill walking was a terrible way to start the day but after a while our feet, boots and motions fell into somewhat of a harmonious state which slightly dulled the pain. As the road climbed to the top of the ridge it became steep and heavily rutted which would have made it a challenge for anyone in a vehicle but for us it was still easy walking after the miles of bushwhacking. This made me realize the true versatility of backpacking.

Other forms of recreation have their merits but most are strictly limited by their fundamental elements. You can go a lot of places on a mountain bike and even more on a four-wheeler or dirt bike. The degree of comfort one can experience in the wilds when riding inside a climate controlled air tight bubble of an SUV is unreal. And yet with every one of these mechanism one flirts with total disaster. One bad belt, one pesky sparkplug or bent frame and you’re up a creek. Not so with backpacking. Compared to the complicated forms of short term recreation, backpacking is beautifully simple and always adaptable. If you pack smart and keep your wits about you there isn’t much that can go wrong that can’t be dealt with successfully. When the shit hits the fan, when you are forced to offer your pack to the bears, when your tent blows off a cliff, your walking sticks break in half or your water pump is smashed to bits with a rock, there is really no problem because all you have to do is walk home because you, being a backpacker, will have no problem walking for a day or two to extract yourself from a predicament. Better yet you are presented with the opportunity to make your own repairs, sleep under the stars, christen a new walking stick or drink from water boiled and smoked over a fire.

Why is backpacking so adaptable? Because the sport is based on human anatomy. What is backpacking besides walking with a heavy load? Not much. But what is walking? Walking upright, my friend is a characteristic not shared by many creatures on this planet. Even fewer are capable of the level of efficiency that we humans possess. And this walking is an age old tradition. Over three million years of practice has gone into walking bipedal and to not take advantage of it, to not put it to use whenever possible seems a waste. Any dog, pig, dolphin or jellyfish can perch upon a four-wheeler and go for a spin. But it takes a human to go backpacking.

Cresting the ridge, Paul and I cast our eyes on the all too familiar Steptoe Valley nested under the foothills and benches of the Egan Range. Ely sat quietly to the north, too far to see or hear the details of its existence. Its dusty summer-roasted streets and buildings blended nicely with the sage and juniper. I felt an urge come over me and wandered off into the woods to take a crap.

Paul and I debated over which route to take. Again we had the option to descend directly into the canyon (Mosier Canyon) or take a slightly longer and less steep route along one of the ridges. With all our aches and pains in mind we opted for the gentler but longer route. We decided we would side slope under Camel Peak which rose directly to our south. After reaching the other side of the peak we would take the main ridge down which was in view and looked fairly easy going – limber pine and aspen that ran into open grassy slopes that dropped into the mahogany forests which slowly transitioned to pinion-juniper. By the time we hit the mahogany it would be hot and dry but it’d be down hill. Paul and I posed for one last picture, he and I with our backs to the camera looking out over Steptoe Valley with Ely in the distance.

The walk down the ridge was long and tiresome. To be honest I don’t remember much of it. We followed deer trails and passageways through the dense mahogany. For a while we were on some form of a trail that was more than deer. Paul thought it was an old pack trail that he had heard about once. We bottomed out in the bottom of Mosier sometime in the afternoon. An old sheep trough was overflowing with water that watered a gassy meadow. Paul and I took five under the boughs of a chokecherry tree.

The signs of civilization were becoming more and more apparent. Beer bottles and cans of every kind could be spotted while walking around. The road out of the canyon, which is a popular drive for locals, was littered with cans. Scrap tin lay further off the road, slightly more interesting that Coors and Bud but still unsightly.

We could see the end of our trip was going to be the hardest. So far the endless stream of curiosity had kept us going. Every bend in the road or crest in the trail held the possibility of surprise. But now we were in known territory. We knew that what lay ahead wasn’t anything exciting or grand. The only prospect was final relief from the trail.

The walk out of Mosier canyon was on a hard-packed two track. The sun shown brightly and the air was hot. My feet were throbbing with pain on every step. We broke out of the canyon and onto the bench where we followed another road. I opted to walk on the shoulder or out in the brush where the ground was softer. Paul and I didn’t talk much. He stayed on the road while I wandered out in the brush. The distance between us grew and shrank. We were beat from the trail. We took another break under the shade of some spindly Juniper. Sausage and cheese washed down with water then back on the trail. It was probably another three or four miles to the house from where we sat. The town sat in the distance busy with nothing in particular. I wondered if anyone would see us two lone souls walking in from the mountains. Would they be curious? Would they even enquire as to where we had been? If so I’d happily (and proudly) tell them. If not, it wouldn’t make a difference.
We polished off the last four miles in a single run. The less breaks we took the faster we’d be home. The whole way was on roads. The last mile was on pavement which I found excruciating and again, opted to walk where it was softer. Being in the suburbs, this meant strolling through lawns. Paul and I did take one little break in a park three blocks from my house, where we let ourselves fall into the cool grass where we lay until we were ready to finish. Even in the urban setting we were still on our hike. If we ate, we ate trail food. When we drank, we drank warm water from old plastic bottles. We did pass a pair of women out on an afternoon power walk. We passed each other in silence.

We walked the last few blocks to my house, the same walk I had made a hundred times in the course of my life. We walked into my house, I dropped my pack said hi to my thoroughly confused little brother and then out to the VW to give Paul a ride back to his house. I dropped him off and our trip was through.

Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 1 & 2)

2008-04-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Round Two

In late August of 2003, Paul Bath and I struck out on what has become known as Trail 22. The ‘trail’ was more of a collection of hunting roads, Forest Service trails and backcountry routes that I had formulated in my head during the doldrums of my junior year in high school. The route ran from roughly the Utah border to our home town of Ely, Nevada. I had found the mileage to be somewhere around sixty miles and later found the net elevation gain to be more than 13,000 feet. We had given ourselves four days to hike it.

Earlier that summer I had attempted to complete the route alone but had reluctantly given up half way through on account of a failing camp stove, failing knee and ominous premonitions of snakes. But I believed that if I had a wingman of sorts, I would definitely be able to complete the trek. Paul Bath had become my wingman.

I had played high school soccer with Paul for three years but until the day of the trek, I had never spent much time with him off the soccer field. He had invited me over to his house after an ultimate Frisbee game. He asked if I wanted a glass of water. I accepted and asked if he wanted to trek from Utah to Ely. I don’t think he believed me at first but when he realized that I was serious he jumped at the bit. The only problem was that he had college starting in the end of August. “Time would be tight”, we said, but we had confidence that we could do it.

The first day of our hike involved driving two cars out of Ely - me in my Suzuki Side Kick and Paul and his father in their rig. As a safety measure, we would leave my car in a primitive campground half way along the route. After ditching my car I hopped in with Paul and parent and we motored on out to Utah. We bounced and bucked up the last mile of road to the trail head of Hendries Creek. We ran through last minute checks and said our farewells to Paul’s father and began to walk.

Those first few minutes were hard on the mind because that’s when we first realized what we were about to do. I had run through the trek a hundred times in my head but each time the entire trip was covered in mere seconds thanks to my advanced CPU (Cranial Processing Unit). Now that we were actually there, the thought that, “We are going to be walking for the next four days” left me with a feeling of anxiety.

This first day of our trip would take us from an elevation of about five and a half thousand feet to an elevation of about eleven thousand feet over the course of eleven miles. There, on top of the Snake Range, we would camp. The next day we planned to hike out of the mountains, across Spring Valley (elevation, 5,580ft), and to the Cleve Creek Campground. We would spend the night at the campground then hike up Cleve Creek and up to the top of the Schell Creek range (10,700ft) where we would sleep for the third night. The next day we would hike out of the Schells and into town.

We started in the bottom of Hendries creek and followed a Forest Service trail up the canyon. The creek was present for more than half of the distance so we didn’t have to pack much water which made for light packs. The canyon, like most, was filled with leafy trees, cool shadows and green meadows of grasses and flowers. The trail cut back and forth across the creek and at times we had a hard time keeping track of it but it made for a more active hike.

Through stages, we eventually gained enough altitude to leave the moist green forests behind us. We then found ourselves amongst the regions oldest elders; Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) and Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva). White firs and Engelmann Spruce soon surrounded us as well. The thick grasses and ferns had long since thinned into a scrappy carpet of grass, small forbs and spindly brush. The water had thinned out as well. While Hendries Creek was still flowing strong, our trail had led away from the water and now our bottles were near empty. No worries though. On my previous excursion I had discovered a tiny spring of flowing water near the top of the trail. There hadn’t been much but there had been just enough to pump. Now, late in the summer, I was wondering if the water had dried up. We dropped packs and deviated from the trail with our empty bottles to where I remembered the spring to be. At first we couldn’t find it but eventually we located the water. The pungent odor of elk urine gave the impression that the seep was heavily used by the wild life. Sure enough there was still a pool deep enough to successfully pump the diluted elk piss into our bottles.

Bottles full he walked back to the trail and our packs. One final push and we were on The Table, a flat expanse of tundra-like landscape that sits at eleven thousand feet. Twelve thousand foot high Mt. Moriah lay just beyond a ridge line to the south. Lightning flickered in the distance as the sun began to sink. We hiked across the table and into a thick stand of bristlecones were we set up our camp for the night. Eventually, a storm that had been off in the distance was upon us. We walked out into the openness of the table and sat on an ancient piece of eroding wood and watched the lightning until it moved on. With the lightning gone and the evening light fading fast, we retired to our tent. We felt good after the first day. We were both sore and tired from the hike up but saw no problem with going on.

The night before we left, I was down in the basement running through check lists for the last time. It was nearly 11:00pm and after a full day of work, I was wishing I was asleep. As I stuffed some things into my pack and tightened some straps I heard a voice behind me. I turned to see Paul. He was covered in dirt and his cloths hung off of him like he’d been crawling in a ditch all day.

“Hey man, what’s up?” I asked

“We had to go out to a wreck. A semi carrying lumber drove off the road on Antelope Pass. I spent all day hauling lumber out of a ditch.”

“That sucks, man” I responded. “You still game?”

“Yeah. I had a question though. Do you think these shoes will work?”

I looked down at his pair of New Balance Running shoes.

“They are all I have right now” he said.

“Yeah, I guess they’ll have too” I said.

The fact that Paul was attacking this trip with a pair of running shoes had me worried but as I would later learn, it was symbolic of Paul’s attitude which was: Don’t worry about the problem at hand, just keep working on the goal and a solution will arise.

The sun pushed us out of the tent the next morning. We had slept in a bit but not beyond reason. We ate and broke camp and were hiking by 8:30. To get off the table we followed another Forest Service trail that both Paul and I had been on before when we were younger. The trail took us down into and then up out of Dead Man Canyon until we reached the trails head. Once at the head of the trail we followed a road to the head of another canyon that we planned to drop into so we could get out of the mountains. After looking into our canyon and assessing our situation on our map we decided to stay on the road and swing around the mountain to the north and hike down a ridge rather than drop into the crotch of some wild canyon.

We made good time on the road. We encountered our first cows and discussed weather or not we could manage to kill one if need be. The issue was left unresolved. A little further down the road we passed our first human establishment – wall tent, four wheeler, pick-up truck, beer cooler – the unfortunate usual. Archery season had begun a week or so earlier. No human to be seen. Finally we arrived at the top of the ridge we intended to hike down. A faint two track followed the ridge for a while so we followed it. Eventually the road died and we were left to find our own way.

By now we had lost enough elevation that we were into the mahogany and pinyon forest. Bitter brush, cliff rose, ephedra and prickly pear were abundant as well but on the south facing ridgeline there was almost no underlying vegetation. Descending further, the ridge too began to die out. The slopes on either side began to get steeper and steeper. As we looked off either side of our ridge, we could see cliffs of rock becoming more prominent so we decided to slip off the east side of the ridge and down into the bottom portion of Salt Marsh Canyon. The going was rough. Thank god we were going down. The slope was littered with huge boulders and loose rocks, the result of thousands of years of erosion. I couldn’t help but push a boulder off the lip of a small cliff and onto the top of a pinyon.

After working our way down the bouldery hillside we ran into and paralleled a fence that led us out of Salt Marsh Canyon and into the main drainage of Negro Creek. A well establish two-track led out of Negro Creek and into Spring Valley. Once on the road we resumed our quick pace. The bush-whacking that we had to do to get down the ridge had taken it out of us. So far we had hiked 10 miles and lost five thousand feet of elevation. Luckily the march down the road was made bearable by heavy shadows from the building cumulonimbus.

About two miles down the road we stopped to pump water on account of empty water bottles. As Paul got started pumping water I scampered of into the basin big sage to respond to the calls of nature. Just as I was wrapping things up several fat rain drops pelted my head. Then another few, and more, and more. Before I knew it, the sky was down pouring. I ran down the road to help Paul knowing that none of our packs were covered. I rounded the bend to see him dragging our packs like wounded soldiers into the scant shelter of two massive cottonwoods. We broke out our pack covers and raincoats but most of the damage was done. It felt good to be wet after the dusty day. We sat under the trees and watched the road fill with water. The torrent was soon accompanied by salvos of thunder. The rain and rest rejuvenated our bodies and as soon as the rain eased, we finished pumping and moved on.

The rain still fell as we walked down the road. The thunder was mind blowing. Every thirty seconds a fait flash of light would wash over us and then three to four seconds later the thunder would follow. At times each thunder clap was overlapping with the other to the point that there was almost constant rumbling. I was a little worried that with so many strikes, our odds of getting hit were slowly improving. Nevertheless we marched on. Eventually the rain ceased and near 4:00pm we reached the mouth of Negro canyon and stared out across Spring Valley.

As I looked north up the valley a lightning bolt from another storm cell rocked the valley floor. A few moments later, another bolt streaked down from the heavens and solidly connected with the earth. The thought of walking across the valley under such fierce skies made me nervous. We’d be the biggest lightning rods out there compared to the sage, rice grass and wild rye. Paul and I talked about if either of us felt up to it and what time we would be getting to the campground. We concluded that we were both beat and that if we started walking right then, we would get to the car sometime around midnight. We decided to go for it but not before another downpour forced us to improvise a rain shelter which we sat under for most of an hour.

It was close to 5:00pm when we started walking. The valley was about nine miles across. All I had ever been told about the valley was that it was filled with snakes. This rumor had helped me give up on my initial attempt. The thought of walking in the dark and stepping over a bush and onto a hunting rattler had always been on my mind. Now, snakes or no snakes, we were going to walk it.

We cruised down the bench of sage brush for a mile or two until we got to the main dirt road that ran up the valley. There, we stopped for our last big break before the last push. Rested and ready we crossed the road and walked down a steep slope that used to be the shore of an ancient lake that had filled most of the valley. The valley floor was filled with small sand dunes, dried up springs, and shallow empty basins that hold water in the rainy season. A whole new array of plant life surrounded us that we had not yet encountered on the trip. Of course, all of it had seen the vicious hooves of hundreds if not thousands of cows over the past few seasons. The rain clouds remained as the evening light began to fade. However, the sun was not about to be out done. In the last minutes of light a fiery sunset managed to break through the grey.

By the time it was getting dark, we were about half way across the valley. I was starting to feel tired and my nerves were starting to fray. I still hadn’t given up the thought of death by snake bite. At one point I was following Paul along a trail when his foot brushed the seed pod of some plant (likely a larkspur). The pod shook violently and its dry seeds rattled in such a way that my tired mind took it to be an angry rattlesnake. I jumped back and let out a curse before I realized I had been fooled. A good laugh nonetheless. Throughout the night a thunderhead that could be seen over the Schell Creeks routinely blinded us with bursts of silent lightning.

Sometime around 10:00pm we hit State Route 893. A paved road that felt funny under foot but a fine place to stop. My usually busy mind had grown weary of all other tasks except placing one foot in front of the other. I snapped a couple of pictures and we sat down on the side of the road to relax in the cool of the night. I ate the last of my food and drank the last of my water. We had walked over twenty miles that day and we still had a few to go. As we were about to leave, a halo of light appeared on the south horizon of the road. Headlights of a car soon crested the hill. “Let’s see who it is”, I said.

The pickup blasted past us in the dark. “Odd”, I thought, so much for country hospitality. The brake lights suddenly blinked on and the truck rolled to a stop then drove in reverse back towards us. The truck slowed to a stop in front of us and a man in his forties appeared in the driver-side window.

“You boys alright?”

“Yeah we’re fine. Just taking a break.”

“Oh?” said the man

“Were on a backpacking trip”, said Paul.

“Where you boys coming from?” the man asked.

“Well this morning we were on Moriah.” I said, figuring he was a local and familiar with the area.

“Are you serious!? Whoa! You guys are some crazy bastards! Shit, grab some beers! There’s a bunch in the cooler in the back.”

Paul took up the offer and slipped two Coors into the breast pockets of his flannel shirt. We thanked our road bound friend and ambled off into the darkness.

Finally, near 11:30pm we tramped into the campground. My car was where I had left it but someone had made camp right next to it. There was a pickup with a camper in the bed and a tarp canopy stretched off one side. A pile of fire wood sat next to a fire pit filled with smoking, glowing embers of a dead fire. I didn’t care that the occupants were asleep as I started my car up and moved it to another camp sight.

We decided that it’d be easier to sleep in the car rather than set up the tent or risk getting rained on. Sleeping in the front seat of the Suzuki probably wouldn’t have worked the other 364 nights of the year but after hiking nearly 30 miles in one day we weren’t too concerned with the cramped quarters.

The First Attempt

2008-04-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

The First Attempt

[Italics indicate trail-written journal material]

I pull my Suzuki Sidekick into the cleared parking area at the bottom of Hendry’s Creek and its trailhead. It's about 9:15 on a Friday morning during the summer of 2003. "Oh man", I think, "This is it, you're actually going to start this." I park the car in the shade of a large water birch and shut the engine off. There's a moment of silence before I open my door and get out. I find myself in the bottom of a canyon. On both side of me, steep talus slopes rise up, covered in sparse soil, low brush and cheat grass. The bottom of the canyon is flat but filled with scrub brush and a small but perennial stream that is hidden by birch, willow and rose hips. Hidden from view are the rocky toped Snake Range Mountains of eastern Nevada. Mount Moriah - one of the highest points in the range - cannot even be seen from the canyon bottom where I stand.

My father, who had been riding in the passenger's seat, also opens his door to get out into the fresh air. We both wander around to stretch our legs. I walk off to relieve myself and finishing that, return to the car. Dad has peeled an orange and offers me half. I accept. We wash our hands in the creek and return to the car.

"You want me to take your picture at the trail head?" he asks.

"Sure, that'd be great"

I shoulder my gear-laden pack and walk from the car over to the trailhead. While I try to contort my facial muscles into a decent smile, my dad snaps the photo. He slips the camera back into the top compartment of my pack and steps back while I tighten the necessary straps on my pack. Finished, I look up at my father who is looking at me. "Well" he says, "I guess this is it". We approach and shake hands then pull one another into the half hug that is customary of the time. Standing there I realize that this is the first time that I have embraced my father in a long time. With our farewell completed we exchange a few words then I turn and head out on the trail.

Something inside me doesn't like what is happening and fights it by filling my body with emotion; most noticeably a lump in my throat. I ignore it. As I walk on I hear the tiny engine of my car jump to life. I keep walking. I can tell that the car is not moving or that it has only moved slightly. I stop and turn around and see that the car has moved but instead of it facing the way out it is facing me. What my dad is doing I have no idea. Is he having trouble with something? Does he see an animal? Is he holding the car there as an act to give me a chance to call it off and return to the safety of my home? I don't know, maybe he just wants to watch me go. I turn and walk away, partially wanting to turn back.

So that was it. That was the start to the great adventure that I had spawned in my head several months earlier. The plan…? Well, at first it really wasn't a plan, more of an idea. The idea was that I would load a pack with gear; head out my front door and into the mountains. Four or five days later my parents would drive the hour and a half over to the Utah border and hopefully pick me up. Needless to say, my parents were not too thrilled by the idea. I was 17 and relatively efficient in the outdoors but they believed they had put to much time and money into me to take a chance like that.

The idea eventually evolved into a plan complete with a mapped route, preplanned campsites and emergency supply caches. The trek would start at the Utah border and end on my doorstep in Ely, Nevada. The route would cross over 60 miles of Nevada terrain, which included three mountain ranges, one wilderness area and two valleys. I planned to do it in 4 days. As far as I knew no one had ever done it.

Why anyone would want to start such a trip was still relatively unknown to me. I do know that I had been inspired by my Nevada History class, which dealt with westward expansion. After reading about the Donor Party and their adventures I felt an urge to experience a situation of similar circumstance (the traveling part more than the collapse of social norms). I was also eager to hit the mountains after spending most of my winter in the lowlands. My adventurous spirit had to be satisfied.

It was these reasons that resulted with me at the Hendry's Creek trail head on July 18^th at 9:30am. Not much to do but walk. Not a lot happened. Eventually I depleted my one full water bottle so I decided to take a breather and pump some water from the stream that I had been following. I pumped enough to fill the bottle then pumped directly into my mouth to quench my thirst. Finished, I packed up the water pump and grabbed the water bottle. What I saw sent a wave of panic through my body. FLOTSAM! "No, it can't be" I thought. My bottle was filled with it. The water was almost cloudy with debris when it should have been totally clear. "Shit! Did the pump fail? Oh God! I pumped all that water into me!" I was petrified with the possibility of a broken pump with twenty-plus miles to go until there was totally safe water and terrified with the fact I could have ingested water that could hold any number of water born parasites. Was I going to get sick? No help from below, still another 10 miles or so to the table. Was I going to die? "Damn" I though, "How did this happen?" I dumped the water out and tried again. Less flotsam. I figured that was a good thing. I walked back onto the trail. As I looked at the water I realized that most of the particles were fairly large. These, I concluded (and hoped) were actually particles that had washed off the rubber tubing. I was still unnerved about the water. "Carry on", I thought. I realized there was really nothing I could do about it now. I could boil it. Not worth it, to much fuel. The damage, if any, was done. Besides, I'm always up for making friends, even if they happen to reside in my small intestine.

To keep my mind off the water incident I let it wander. Several thoughts passed through my head. The first, weightlifters. Yeah, that's right. I'm talking about those big, burly, iron pumping, vein busting individuals of society. Someone of such dedication and devotion to one's self should deserve quite a bit of respect, no? Ha! Respect!? You'll get none from me. You'll get none until I find you where I stand now. Until you put your freakishly built body to work you are deserving of nothing. You wouldn't even know where to start when it comes to backpacking. Weightlifters; kiss my ass. Another thought, more of a realization, is that all of us, in various and often hidden ways, are dependant upon our parents. As we live out our last hours of life, it is apparent that all that we were in our lifetime can be based upon our rearing in the home.

Further up the trail now. I find myself amidst the Aspen, fur trees, columbines and grasses. The stream is smaller now and flanked by mosses and ferns. I need water. I pump. Looks clean, I'll trust my gear. Could be the last water for a while, so I fill four liters into water bottles. One two-liter bottle is throwing my pack off balance. More hiking, more thoughts.

Again I find myself without water and thus in need of it. Goddamn life cycle. I'm close to the table of Moriah now. Less life about. The grasses thin, trees make room between one another. The lush Nevada forest I had been hiking through for the past few hours gives way to the alpine landscape. I see a dry creek bed and decide it's worth investigating. I drop my pack, drink the last of my water and proceed up the dry creek bed in search of a seep. The creek bed runs west to east. Its head is a talus bowl that runs down from the high ridges that lead to the peak. It runs downhill, across my path, down into the trees and I assume back into Hendry’s Creek. My uphill search ends waterless. I return to my pack and decide to search downhill. Success! About 400 meters down the creek bed water breaks the surface and pools about the rocks. I am elated, for now I don't have to hike the three miles back to the last water I saw. I also pride myself in the fact that not many people would have found the tiny seep due to its size and ephemeral nature.

I settle into a comfortable position and begin to pump from a small pool not more than six inches deep. I am careful not to stir up the silt. Don't know how much this pump can take. As I sit pumping, a small sparrow appears at the edge of a pool below me. It flits onto a rock, freezes while it checks its surroundings. Assured that it is safe, it dips it's beak to the water and returns to its cautious stance upon the rock. All of this being done in the blink of an eye. The bird goes on like this for a minute or so. While the bird drinks and I pump I feel a strange yet strong connection to my environment. Here we are, bird and man, one small, one powerful, caught in the same dance for life. I, the member of a social group so powerful that we alone could determine the fate of the entire planet (my feathered comrade included) and the bird, who's presence on this planet is only noted by myself and his or her mate. We now sit together with one shared objective: to drink. So simple. So beautiful.

Thunder rolls through the rocky crags of the high country. For me there is no better sound than that of thunder. It is a sound of good things to come. I love it. I love it now more than ever. At the sound of the thunder my mind is cleared except for her. I see her, with all her grace, intellect and beauty. She fills my head and life is good. Sonic aftershocks rise and fall, and she too fades then returns in my mind as the thunder rolls on. I long to share the moment with her but would it be the same?

My bottles filled, I hike back up to my pack. The extra weight of the water is painfully felt. My hips are raw from the hip strap sliding over them. Some pack adjustments are certainly needed.

The steepest part of the trail now lies beneath my feet. Soon I crest the hill and find myself on the table. A wondrous, nearly level, tundra-like place. There exists only small forbs and grasses, a few trees cling to the ever rising mountains but for the most part it is a level tundra. A murder of crows, numbering close to 200, rolls along the table. I assume they are feeding on the grasshoppers which appear to be quite numerous.

I find a camp site after chatting with two gentlemen who came up from the west. It begins to rain. I sit in silence under a tree and wait. The rain slackens enough that I can set up my tent. I spend the evening watching animals, eating dinner and writing.

That night, I fell asleep without a definite plan. I knew I was going to hike off the table and down into Cricket Canyon and the south fork of Big Negro Creek. Once out of the canyon I would be on the eastern side of Spring Valley. I had planned to cross the desolate valley under the cover of darkness to avoid the sun and ranchers whose land I would be crossing. Once across the valley I would camp for the night then head up Cleve Creek the next day. I would hike up Cleve Creek until I reached the bottom of Kraft Canyon at which point I would follow it out of Cleve Creek and up to the top of the Schell Creeks where I would camp for the third night. The next day I would hike out via Mosier Canyon and into town. It had never sounded extremely difficult before but after the incident with the water pump, I felt like I was pushing my luck on borrowed time. My stove was also on the fritz and required constant attention when in use. To add to my indecisiveness, the only things that I had heard about the ten mile wide Spring Valley was that it was full of snakes. I hardly had to imagine how easy it would be to step over a bush and onto a prowling rattler in the dark of night.

Morning found me sleeping in, and I wasn’t able to break camp and begin hiking till close to 8:00am. Luckily the clouds from the night’s thunderstorm were still thick and succeeding at keeping the temperature low. The hike off of the table was easy due to the fact that there was a trail and I was in slightly familiar territory. The trail was steep and with a heavy pack it was very easy to hurry along. I reached the trail head some time later then bushwhacked a mile or two to a point on my map that showed a clear but steep ridge that dropped into Cricket Canyon. I had never been into the canyon before but the mapped showed a road heading out the bottom of it so I figured it’d be an easy walk.

My assumptions about the canyon turned out to be dead wrong. The canyon walls were cliffs of crumbling limestone which limited my points of access from Cricket to Negro Canyon, and the Negro Canyon bottom was choked with vegetation. The road was there, sort of. Parts of the road were open but most of it was shrouded in thistle, choke cherry, rye grass, birch, rose hips and many other species of plant. By now the sun had come out and the temperature was beginning to rise. Inside the canyon, with its thick foliage and stone walls, it began to get rather warm and humid, a rarity in the Great Basin. As I barged my way down the road I realized I was in perfect snake country. I was grateful I was in Nevada and not some place back east where you really have to watch where you step. I totally lost the road at one point and, faced with a wall of foliage, resorted to walking down the creek. At least I could see down the creek and the fear of snakes dwindled. The going wasn’t much easier. At one point I slipped while walking a log and instinctively grabbed onto foliage for balance. I was disappointed but not shocked when I realized I had grabbed a hand full of stinging nettles.

I left the creek after fifty yards, clawed my way through the rosehips and eventually found the road again. At one point I stopped to catch my breath and to take in the sights that were around me. I examined a tree for no reason in particular and was stunned when I followed one of its branches out to its extremity. There was fruit in the tree! “Apples!?” I thought. Sure enough, tiny apples about the size a chicken egg were in the tree. I marveled at the tree and thought about how old it was and who had planted it. Maybe there were more trees like it in the canyon. In the garden paradise that was Negro Canyon, I took the fruit from the tree and did eat them so. When I realized my seemingly biblical situation I was certain that the serpent was lying somewhere, basking in the warmth of solar radiation.

I had lost about 4,000 ft of elevation over 7 miles in the course of four hours. My right knee which had ACL problems in the past was starting to feel strained. I stopped for a quick lunch of crackers, cheese, and meat then forged ahead through the Nevada flora. As I moved down the road an impulsive buzzing came from behind me and I added an extra yard to the step that I was in the middle of. There, under a ledge of limestone, the unmistakable coils of the rattler slowly restricted around themselves. The serpent of paradise had finally showed himself. I examined the snake while my heart and lungs began to function again. It was a medium sized snake that, had he struck, would have left me in pain and sickness for a few days but alive. I apologized for disturbing his basking and eating his fruit, then cautiously walked on. A lot of people shoot snakes on the spot. I for one have never killed a snake out of spite. Like most ‘dangerous’ animals, if left alone they really pose no threat.

I finally broke out of the jungle that was the south fork of Big Negro Canyon. My arms and legs stung as the sweat oozed into the numerous lacerations that were left from a dance with the rose hips. It was another five and a half miles down a well defined two-track. The sun was high in the sky now and the temperatures were nearing their highs. I arrived at the stashed car around four-o-clock. On the way out of town the previous day, Dad and I had each taken a vehicle. We drove to the bottom of Big Negro Creek and left one rig then drove the second to the other trailhead where I was dropped off. The only problem was that the car to be left at Big Negro (our Ford Expedition) had suffered a flat tire. This was resolved by installing the spare, but this left the rig vulnerable to future flats and left me with a sub-par escape vehicle. Dad planned to return with the Suzuki and a patch the tire before my trip would end.

I ate some food, lounged in the shade, then heard the whine of a car engine and saw my white Suzuki Sidekick crest the hill with my parents inside.

They asked how I was and if I was going to go on. I though about it for a few minutes then said no. My knee, the stove, the snakes…they all had twisted my will into submission and I couldn’t argue myself into continuing. As we all left the canyon and I left my endeavor unfinished, I vowed that I would begin as soon as possible with a second attempt. If only I could find a friend to come along…

Day 5 - The Table Mountain Hop

2008-03-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

The whispering breeze through the lone piñon above our tent sang us through the night. When the sun began thinking about rising, we were thinking about breakfast. Carson popped out around 5:25 and nursed the coals back into a cooking fire. I made grub, pouring what was supposed to have been about five days worth of brown sugar, almonds and raisins into the regular oat ration. Well worth the idea. It was almost sickeningly sweet. Almost.

After a few large rabbitbrush flare fires to seer the skin and warm the engines, we left camp around 7:30. Fifty yards had us into the Table Mountain Wilderness Area, and the two-track quickly degraded into an overgrown swath of willow and chokecherry.

The ‘trail’ became apparent occasionally, and we did our best to follow it. Up, up, up. The dry streambed was soon a bubbling creek beneath the willows, and we moved up the canyon as the sun began to warm us up. We followed the main canyon for a spell, then aimed for the left fork, looking for the mapped trail, now amongst the aspen, and got pretty thoroughly stuck in the shrubbery. The trail was gone (all for the better), and we couldn’t see the layout of the drainage or its relation to where we wanted to make the top of Table Mountain. We split up and made our way slowly through the brush in the narrow canyon. Fed up with this after about an hour, we discussed our objectives and decided that we should hike up the left side of the canyon to clear our path of the dense aspen and rosehips, and side-slope it up to a saddle to the southwest. Before we did this, we pumped and drank a bit of water (we were not really carrying any), and had a snack break.

Paul took things to the next level and pulled out two packs of sharks, establishing the break as a bona fide shark attack. We began to get really cold, even though we were in the sun, so we struck our course up the steep canyon side, and leveled out a bit to hit the saddle. From the saddle, we had a sheer face of about 1,500ft gain. Wanting to get to where we were going in a gnarly direct kind of way, we started up the steep face without trying to switchback at all.

Before it got too steep, Paul discovered a tattered piece of a cotton game bag and a full lemon lime Gatorade beneath a mahogany. We gave it a sniff test, which it passed with flying colors, and abruptly consumed it. Electrolytes, baby, bathed in the elements for who knows how long. A year? Who cares. Delicious.

We continued, and it soon became steep enough that there was a hazard of rolling rocks on one another, so we staggered ourselves across the slope. An hour and ten minutes later, we busted our way out of a dense aspen and fir stand, excited to summit. Pumping endorphins, we approached the top only to discover that we had been duped by the topography. False summit. Looked like another twenty minutes through scrub aspen then rocks to the real top. Endorphins crashed. We took a few minute break to contemplate exhaustion, then continued. I huffed it, trying to muster it in one shot. I succeeded, summiting a few minutes before Paul and Carson. I plopped down, with my back to the fiercely chilly wind, and stared into the great wide open, under the skies of blue. Carson and Paul arrived shortly after; rebels without a clue. We were in awe of the view and beautiful day. The trip up to that point had been a hard scramble through the scraggy lower mountains, rewarding in its own ways, but the 360 panorama into the heart of Nevada was invigorating. We all bundled up, putting on those few extra layers we had packed but not used yet. Cold front coming.

We took pictures, refueled the guts, and giddily paced about admiring the land. A survey to the east with binoculars revealed that we could see every mountain range we had crossed in our entire Trail 22 journey, except the first; the Snake Range. The Schells were the most distant, shining snow fields through 120 miles of cool May air. Hoping to milk a few shots out of the decommissioned video camera, we pulled it out and set up a shot on the east side of the peak out of the wind, hoping to speak briefly of the last two days and also to share our rewarding easterly view. The battery held, and we got what we wanted. Pleased, we filmed a bit on top as well.

Table Mountain is literally a big four mile long table. To the west, it is slowly sloped down through some of Nevada’s largest aspen stands - the top of a crooked fault block - cut by small streams and gullies that turn into canyons as you move down toward Monitor Valley. The east side, which we had just ascended, was steep and abrupt, representing the end of the fault block.

Needing to get a move on, we packed up and started to hike south along the flat mesa-like ridge. Quickly, we spotted a few blue and white tent-like structures at the head of a meadow a bit below us in a wide gully. Interested to possibly meet some folks or discover something interesting, we descended the gully and approached the tents. The lone wall tent was surrounded with axes, pulaskis, boxes of other tools, deer antlers and various bones, beer cans, 50 gallon steel drums, crude tables, saws, and other stuff. It appeared to be vacant. We yelled “Hello?” to no response. We entered the large tent to find several more packed up tents, a dozen large plastic tubs full of stoves, fuel, cookware, food, Gatorade mix, hunting supplies, chairs, cots, and, to our astonished and unbelievable delight, beer. Beer in quantities we could only dream of. Beer of several types, all cheap, but something to the order of 130 cans. Paul did not hesitate to tear into a 32 case of Bud lights and start tossing them to us, as if they would soon disappear. We rummaged for food, as it was apparent that no one had camped there in a half year or more, but soon discovered that most of it had been consumed by rodents, including about five pounds of yogurt-covered and sprinkled animal cookies (Damn I say!).

Ready to go, we put everything back where it had been, tied everything back up, and left the tent. We ended up taking only five beers, two small snack bags of Cheetoes and a small quantity of Gatorade powder. I began to feel a bit of guilt for our plundering as we walked away, but after I thought about all of the beer cans, trash, and diabetic mice that the establishment had generated, I shrugged it off. Plus, there was more beer in that ragged hut than four rednecks could drink in a week and still hunt properly, so I felt no shame. This Bud’s for me, drunken dudes.

Regaining the ridge, we continued in the afternoon sun a mile or so to the south. We spotted several elk and deer groups along the way. Eventually we hung a right and crossed a low ridge through an elk-hammered aspen stand. We disbanded a bit, separated and getting a tad out of touch with one another. We reconnected, though, and from there we descended a winding draw full of wet meadows. The sun was down behind the ridge, and it was starting to get chilly. We were looking for a suitable camp spot but it was too steep, mushy and full of bushes and trees.

The trod continued, and we began to get boxed into the narrowing canyon. It was very Colorado-ish, noted Carson. The draw turned into a canyon and eventually we came to the confluence of our canyon and a small stream. Our route had us following the small stream back up its canyon for a ways, then cutting out to hit a saddle. We began following it up, not wanting to have to go all the way to the saddle to camp, but willing. Within several hundred meters, we found a spot just big enough to pitch our tent. Arms reach from the stream, bordered on all other sides by downed aspen logs, and nestled between the steep rocky mahogany and fir covered slopes, it was a perfect place to end the day.

We set up the tent and got dinner supplies ready. I gathered a big load of prime sun dried mahogany and we fired up the fire and cracked the beers. On a pee walk, about twenty yards downstream, I discovered an ancient forest gallery of carved aspen porn. About a dozen erotic positions were represented as well as various forms of self pleasure. Oh, the solitude and woe of the lonely Basque shepherds.

Cheesy noodles with cheesy cheese soup was on the menu for dinner, and we finished by passing around a pot of scrumptious stream-cooled Oreo puddin’. The eight dollar Brazilian stogie then made the rounds, as well as a bit more of the Whiskey. The evening was cold but we were in good cheer and spirits (figuratively, of course…and literally too). Darkness eventually exiled the twilight, and the night awoke. Buzzed, beat, elated, and beginning to tire, we rolled into the tent one at a time, wrapping ourselves in all our warm fuzzies. Siesta.

Day 4 - Flowers and Misplaced Optimism

2007-12-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

Flowers and Misplaced Optimism

The day began at 5:45 with an alarm sounding me to the bed of coals. It was oatmeal time again. We ate, packed up, and started out of camp by around 7:15. Up the canyon we found slight pools of water amongst the plentiful coarse red volcanic rock. Water was abundantly on and off for several miles. Although the canyon was an average narrow wash where we started, it kept surprising us with flat meadows, large openings, rock-walled narrows, and even a thick healthy patch of aspen. This was of note, Carson informed us, because they were the first aspen in our journey since the saddle of Mousier Canyon, overlooking Ely, on Leg I. They were a welcomed sight. The meadows we encountered were stuffed with blazing stars, which almost overcame the rocks as the most plentiful objects in sight. At one meadow in particular, we had to throw down and take a break because it was too stunning to stroll by. We took pictures, hoping to capture this beauty, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t get much of it. If you head on over there, sometime in May or June, you’ll find it. It escapes description. Among all of the places in Nevada I have been, which is a considerable amount, the meadow was the most “Nevada” of them all. That is - if you threw the whole state in a blender (cutting out, of course, the bruised and mushy parts like Vegas, Reno, and the Liberty Pit), the smoothie you would come out with would look, smell and taste like the Hot Creek Range. You might think I’m crazy, but trust me on this one.

The beauty of the canyon was balanced by its ruggedness. We were constantly presented with rock escarpments to scramble over. For the first time on the trip, I became ‘gassed’ before 10am. It was sad, but humbling. We took several breaks, and eventually scrambled to the top, over what had gradually become slopes of solid rock. We were greeted with a decently strong and cold breeze, and, of course, a good look at Table Mountain. We had made appreciable distance since our last vista, and now the snow lined ridge loomed only one valley away, Little Fish Lake valley. Sparing no time, we dropped into a canyon that would spit us out into the valley. The canyon was extremely steep and lacked most of the pleasant characteristics of the east side. We had to take off packs to pass them down a large cracked slab, which was an exciting breech of the standard, however it quickly became the norm. After less than a mile of steep rockiness, busting through p/j, aspen, mahogany, and rosehips, we popped out on to the bench. In about 45 minutes, we had descended the range that had taken us more than five hours to ascend from the other side. At the time, it was quite astonishing.

From the bench, we could see a large dirt road that we were to follow across the second half of the valley and a large hill/mesa about half way across, before the road. We decided on the hill for lunch, and continued our stroll. We broke up, all heading the same direction, and weaved through the old growth juniper and the warming breeze. Several regions of the woodland were nearly sand dunes of granitic grit. Several stringers of bitterbrush also made their way down from the tight thick canyons in the Hot Creeks to the southeast. We reached the hill, and walked up the side to discover that it was mostly cliffs on the other side. We had lunch on the edge, eating “our gloriously meager portions”, taking naps, and surveying the walk across to the big mountain.

We left the windy perch and found our way down through the cliffs and steep slopes to an interesting outcrop of hard white chalky rocks. To the south was a beaten and dusted draw that must have had water in it at one time, because there were about 50 horses hanging out. We caught their trail down to the real water in the valley bottom, and in the process spooked all of them, setting off a monumental dust cloud that marked their location even as they disappeared over several hills out of sight. At the valley bottom we found a muddy slurry of spring ruts. A decomposing rock and wooden one room house and the skeleton of somebody’s once trusty truck sat in the dirt on a hill close by. We crossed the flat and tied in with the well grated county road.

The road was a blessing and a curse. I gave Carson a shot at the sandals, and as he put them on, Paul and I took off down the road. It was a very straight road that had several yee-ha hills that could give you a bit of zero gravity if you were going upwards of 70 mph, but, alas, we were averaging about three miles every hour, so it was slightly less exciting. Paul and I swapped stories to pass the hammering walk, and after Carson caught up, Paul kept our minds off the trail with some interesting stories of his studies and parties in Vegas and his adventures in Israel and Sweden. We took a break under a juniper, only to find our feet slightly relieved at the cost of having to sit in the whipping wind, full of sand and poky vegetation. The break was ended and we plodded on, truly plodding for the first time. As we began to move up the alluvial fan of the other side, we came to an old ranch, the Clear Creek Ranch, which had been the subject of a conversation about a week before.

* * *

“There’s not really any place with people except for Hicks Station that we can head to in an emergency. Even if we get cell service, there’s only a few places we could call you in to easily” my brother said to my dad, both gathered around a few 1:100,000 maps spread on the table. Paul and I were examining a Nevada gazetteer.

“There’s no ranches over there? It’s been a while since I’ve been that way. You guys have gotta have some sort of a safety net figured out, you know, in case something bad happens…you’ll have a place to go. There’s got to be someone out there” my dad said, scratching his head, still hovering over the maps.

Paul and I spoted a dot on a page in the gazetteer, “This say’s there is a ‘Clear Creek Ranch’ right there in Little Fish Lake. I bet that’s still there, these gazetteers aren’t that old.”

“Yeah? I don’t know. Where?....Yeah……It’s not showing up as anything on the 1:100,000’s, although some of the other ranches are left out too” my brother said optimistically.

“Well, that’s at a good point in your trip to have something. You’ve got the Suzuki stashed at Big Lout, Hicks station in between, and then that ranch, maybe. From there…..” my dad was trying to piece together all of the details we’d thrown at him that evening.

My brother finishes for him. “From there, it’s a day on to Table, and two days down and across Monitor to Pine Creek. That’s a decent campground. There’ll be people there.”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t know about that ranch,” he said. “Let’s hope.”

* * *

We walked in the dropping angle of the sun past the buildings. Several were made of trimmed juniper logs piled with dirt, caving in to the six foot sagebrush bushes growing out of them. The corral fenced in several robust rabbitbrush, with a lone and dwarfed elm watching it all unfold. Some safety net. One shed had a deep rusted purple corrugated steel roof balancing on walls of milled boards, but everything else was made of the local wood and salt of the earth. It had to have been abandoned for more than sixty or seventy years. The sight of all of it was enough to make us chuclke at the follies of misplaced optimism in the planning process.

The creek could be heard as we got closer to the mouth of Clear Creek, and after I switched out into the sandals and Carson took pictures of the industrious ranch, we all dug deep for what little energy remained and we kept on keepin’, and eventually ran out of road, ran out of steam, and located the trailhead with a decent campsite right next to the clear and cold creek. There was even a pile of wood there, although it didn’t look like anyone had camped there in several years. There was an epitaph of one Robert V. League welded onto a sheet of metal, welded to a pole about knee height, decorated with a lone, faded, and empty whisky fifth.

Dinner was cous-cous-potato-mash, and the fire was great, even if it was mostly piñon. We worked on our own supply of whiskey, having not enough to make a difference but enough to make the point. The night came quick, and sleep accompanied it.

Our much anticipated ascent of Table Mountain stirred up a few butterflies and black holes in my stomach that afternoon and evening. We had been catching sights of it for the last few days, as if it were a yeti, peeking over every next hill, with a big dark and gristly grin, waiting to devour us. Now we were here, and with out first steps in the morning we would be walking into its jaws.

Day 3 - We'll Take Lots of Pictures

2007-11-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

We'll Take Lots of Pictures

We groggily came to at 6:00, and Carson hopped out and got a fire going from the still hot coals. He cooked the oatmeal, and when I rolled out at 6:30, it was hot and ready to scarf. Paul and I broke camp and we cleaned dishes and got stuff packed. We were out by 7:30. We had to saddle the Park Range, drop down into a little valley where Hicks Station was. Hicks Station is a scary looking ranch. It’s one of maybe three or four little ranches within about 5,700 square miles (a little more than Connecticut). After we rendezvoused with pop north of that ranch for the pump, we’d have to make a bit more progress, across the little valley and into the Hot Creek Range to camp.

There was a bit of debate regarding how to saddle the Park Range after we left Tank, but we decided and trudged on. Our path led us up a narrow and steep wash with thick trees and a healthy serving of rocks. Eventually, we came upon what we thought might have been an old trail. It looked as if rocks had been placed and switchbacks made at one time, but it was now almost unrecognizable. We split up a bit to explore the open mini-basin at the top end of the wash, and we reconvened at the saddle. From the saddle we got great views of the journey to come. We could see our rendezvous spot, the Hot Creek Range, the next valley and in the far distance, the snow fringed Table Mountain. A quote straight from my journal:

“…we then stared at Table Mountain in the distance. It is going to be a bitch. I had a bit of an epiphany about my lunch rationing lately and decided that I should stop binging on lunch food and save some extra for the big Table Mountain day ahead.”

We extracted the map and spent a good time reckoning our proposed route through the Hot Creeks. Because we had never seen this country before, we had drawn our route up a canyon that, on the map, looked reasonable, but in reality was pretty gnarly. We examined the landscape a bit and picked a secondary route through the range to follow if our original route still looked nasty as we got closer.

We dropped off the ridge into a small canyon and walked it out, finding an old road that was not on the map. We took advantage of a good filming opportunity and I climbed up on a large precipitous volcanic rock spire and filmed a beautiful pan from above as Carson and Paul strolled down the road below. We ran into a few full water troughs and a muddy stock pond. At this point, our road started going northwest, and after a good rest under one of the last good trees, we broke off and continued towards Hicks Station through the scrub and brush. We were all pretty gassed from the late night, and still feeling the dehydration a bit. This could have been due in part to the fact that even though we had water, drinking enough of it to get hydrated was a psychological accomplishment of its own. We walked the low hills, flushing a few sage grouse, and eventually came to the main grated road that runs to Hicks Station. I sandaled-up and walked in a road daze down this path to the agreed spot of rendezvous. This spot was where, for Leg II, Carson and Paul had placed a food and water stash. We never made it to this stash that year, of course, and Curt had to pick it up a year later. Because he knew where this was and we knew too, it provided a good place to meet that eliminated a lot of navigational and communicational variables. We arrived much before 3:00. I stayed in my sandals and sat under a huge juniper that was raining ticks, and Carson and Paul dropped packs and continued down the wash to look for water and to look at the Hot Creeks and gain more insight about how we were to cross them.

They returned shortly and said that they had seen a water tank on a hill and a green meadow below it about a mile south in the valley. We decided that this was our best bet for water, and that we’d stick to our original path up the higher canyon. It was 1:00 and Curt was to arrive at 3:00. We sat, journaled, slept, and picked off ticks that were bombarding us from above in the most peculiar set of tick tactics I’ve ever seen.

As timely as a man should be who intimately knows most every dirt road in half the state, Curt arrived at 3:05, judging the three and half hour drive from Ely about perfect. We sauntered down to meet him from our perch on the hill, and examined what he had brought us. He could only locate a well used filter for out current pump and had a few other options for us. He had more iodine, two squeeze bottle filtrations systems, and one chinsy hand pump that Paul’s father had scrounged up from SprotsWorld. We discussed these options and ended up taking the used but decent filter four our pump, the chinsy but potent SportsWorld hand pump, and one of the squeeze bottle filtration systems. Curt sampled our smoked horse dung water, and said he admired the smoky mahogany flavor. I guess it could be pleasing if you didn’t have to see it through the whole process. We dumped all of our brown water and refilled a few liters from a water cube that Curt had brought. We didn’t want to fill up all the way, to preserve what little dignity we had left. We only took enough to get us to the green meadow Carson and Paul had spotted. We chatted for a spell about the impending cold weather that was to hit us when we were on Table Mountain, and then we left and Curt drove off. Once the vehicle had disappeared over the first hill, our isolation was quickly restored, and we were feeling pretty good about things in general.

We walked down the wash Carson and Paul had scouted, toward the green fenced in meadow. Carson took the video camera to set up a good walk through shot, and discovered then that the battery (the only battery) was only a few minutes from death. It had been accidentally set to another mode and had been left on in our packs for about five hours. Our good feeling about things in general was put out like a Boy Scout’s fire. We agreed that our coverage of the trip with still cameras from then on would have to be more complete than it had been. Regarding the few minutes of filming we apparently had left on the battery, we decided to pack up the camera and save it for possibly more exciting views on Table Mountain. Our good feelings were restored relatively quickly after we pondered how we wouldn’t have to deal with filming anymore. It was a relief of sorts.

We made it to the bottom of our wash to the fenced in fields that apparently belonged to Hicks Station. It’s time now to talk a bit about Hicks Station.

As one of the only ‘safety net’ locations on this trip, meaning there are humans there occasionally, we wanted to learn more about Hicks Station prior to the trip, in hopes we could take water from their property. Indeed, the only water in the valley was on their property. Two years earlier when we had placed the stash near the ranch, we learned that whoever lives there has been there a very long time and does not want to see you. Scattered about on every hill was old rusting machinery and vehicles, broken water tanks, piles of wire and other ranching debris. The turnoff to their private drive was gated with a locked padlock and a few dozen welcoming signs including ‘NO TRESPASING’ (sic), ‘KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY’, ‘NO ONE BEYOND THIS POINT’ and ‘STAY AWAY’, among others. I believe one of the fence posts was even adorned with the oxidizing skull of a cow or horse.

A few days before this trip, we opened the White Pine/Nye County phone book and looked for a ‘Hick’ or ‘Hicks’ family to call to ask about possibly getting water. There were several, none of which were in Nye County, and we decided to call the one listed for Ely. Paul called and had a very brief conversation with them.

“Hello…Hi. My name is Paul Bath and a few friends and I will be backpacking in Nye County next week, near a place called Hicks Station. I am wondering if you have any relation to the folks that live there, so we could talk to them and possibly get some water from their property.”

“Hicks Station in Nye county? No, we don’t know them.” [Hang up]

“Ok, thank y--…hello?”

All of these things together made us quite weary of Hicks Station. So, as we approached their fenced in oasis, complete with a few trotting trained horses, we were a bit worried about conflict. From where we were, we could not see any structures where people might be, but such structures were only right around a hill about a quarter mile south of us. We hid our packs in the rabbit brush north of the meadow, and grabbed all of our bottles and the pump with the used filter. We jumped the first fence and crossed the meadow where the two horses were grazing. They were very well taken care of horses, and they were curious about our presence. We jumped another fence and made our way to a spring head that came out of some rocks. The pool it made was very clear, but colored, and had little minnows of some sort in it. We crouched as much as possible and pumped for all we were worth until everything was full. We drank from the pump, too until we were as full as we could be, and then left. After we crossed the first fence, the horses decided we were nice enough and came trotting up to greet us. They must have known that I hate horses, because they ran to Paul, who petted them a bit and rubbed their noses, but when I approached they spooked and left. We crossed the meadow, jumped the other fence, and were on our way again.

Directly west was the entrance to our canyon, and we decided to hike up it and camp right before it got narrow. A few miles up, the combined exhaustedness of walking in sand and having been walking for three days caught up to us and we set up camp among some lofty pines and steep rocks on both sides.

We quickly got a fire going and cooked some soba wheat noodles and heated four pre-hydrated MRE main course meal packets. This filled us up, relatively. After dinner, having had a hard but very good day, we broke out a big stogie, a Punch, and passed it around until it became as wasted as our battery, and then moved on to work a bit more on the liter of whisky. Drugged and slightly intoxicated, we sat around the fire getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, trying to stay in the smoke, and then retired to our tent.

We had talked that day about luck and probability. Never before on a trip had we run into problems as we had done in the last two days. These problems were not horrific by any means, but they lead us to believe that if we could overcome them, all things being equal, the probability of running into more problems was much less likely - almost impossible – given our track record. Of course, all things were not equal, and never really are, but the thought was enough to relax us into the mental state we had been craving since the last leg of this adventurous journey. As I sat next to the fire, staring at the wall of the canyon and watching the sun retreat up them, I rose from our camp to a height of several miles above the mountains, and I realized some things: I was nowhere I had ever been or seen before; I had walked to such a place from miles and miles away; I was with only two people, surrounded by thousands of human less square miles; and I was carrying everything I needed to keep going for four more days.

These realizations put me at peace, and I have longed for this peace ever since.

The Adventures of Trail 22

2007-11-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

In 2002, Carson Baughman developed a plan to hike from Utah to his home in Ely; a 60 mile journey across the Eastern Nevada wilds. He would make the four day journey alone.

For one reason or another, his first solo attempt in 2003 was unsuccessful.

Determined to make the beautiful journey, he tried again the same summer. This time, he teamed with a friend. Paul Bath was the man for the job.

The two set out following the same path, and successfully completed the trek in three and a half days. They called their route Trail 22.

Invigorated by this trip, the two, along with fellow adventurer Owen Baughman (that's Me!), soon began to dream of crossing the great state of Nevada in a series of legs.

These are their stories.

Leg I - August 2003 (Paul and Carson) & August 2006 (Owen)

---Writings by Carson---

The First Attempt

Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 1 & 2)

Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 3 & 4)

Leg II - June 2005

Coming soon!

Leg III - May 2007

--- Writings by Owen ---

Day 1 - Off The Grid

Day 2 - And Then We Drink It

Day 3 - We'll Take Lots of Pictures

Day 4 - Flowers and Misplaced Optimism

Day 5 - The Table Mountain Hop

Day 6 - The Final Steps of the Successful Leg

Day 7 and The Future

Day 2 - And Then We Drink It...

2007-11-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

And Then We Drink It...

I arose at 6:00 to see the sun doing the same and made my infamous bland Good Morning oatmeal and rocketed by 7:20. Baby ravens had apparently survived the cold unaided by mom and were screeching away as we passed.

We started across Little Smoky Valley and stopped every hour or so to keep our speed reasonable. The walk was splendidly uneventful. The lack of any sort of independent features humbled us and we slipped into valley mode. We diverted off our bearing a bit about halfway across in order to intersect a curious rock outcrop standing alone on the other side of the valley. We walked with breaks to the rocks, conserving our dwindling water (as it was, not drinking enough).

We reached the rocks, which were larger than we had imagined, around 11:00, and hung out, shade hopping, for about two hours. The rocks provided only the motivated and crafty with shade. I moved from spot to spot, curling up on rocks and in cracks to keep as much of me in the shade as possible, and as I dozed off, Carson and Paul scampered around the other side and rigged a shade canopy with a ground cloth and a trekking-pole. They told me to come and join them, but I was too comatose to hear them, sleeping in my shrinking shade. I awoke later in full sunlight, sweating profusely. Grumpy, I searched for my compadres. I could not find them, so I sat dehydrating in the mid-day sun wishing I had either enough shade or enough water to make the situation pleasant.

Carson and Paul came back, and we bitched and argued about why I had not been thoroughly aroused and informed to participate in the man-made-shade. In the process, either dehydration or increased blood pressure (likely a combination of both) set fourth my first bloody nose of the trip. Wahoo. I dealt with that and we loaded up and plodded off in the dusty heat.

We made decent time stumbling tired through the sage aiming towards a canyon with two topographic options. We debated several times which option would take us to Tank Springs, a spring that we had confirmed dependable two years earlier for the unfinished ending of Leg II. We finally decided to follow the horse sign, figuring the mangy beasts would know where the water was. The packed and dusted horse trail wove us into the scattered piñon and juniper and the foothills of the Park Range. Everyone was getting pretty thirsty, reserving about a half liter in case Tank was dry. We would be in a world of hurt if it was, but we could make it another six miles by night to water at Hicks Station’s springs in the next high valley if we had to.

We rested in the welcoming lengthening shadows of a few piñons, knowing we were close to Tank, but not seeing any sign of water yet. Reaching over his head into his top compartment to feed from his bag of GORP, Carson spilled the contents of said bag down his back and into the deep duff of an ancient piñon pine. We helped him pick up the high calorie chocolates, nuts, and raisins, but stopped helping when he started picking individual oats from the porous pine needles. Food back in bag, we plodded on, running into horses and pushing them out in front of us as we approached where the map indicated the spring was. In uncommon appreciation of the horses, I hoped they were a sign of dependable water.

A bit of a climb led us through some choke cherries, currants, service berries, and other water loving shrubs. We rounded the corner of a thick stand of PJ, tired and thirsty, to behold the mangy Tank Springs, totally fornicated by horses.

“I guess that means we can drink up.” I said.

We dropped packs and spent some time trying to figure out how to pump water from the few square feet of inch-deep chocolate brown stud-pile infused water. In time, we decided to make a bit of a mud and rock reservoir below the main pool. We slightly drained the main pool, flushing it with a little clearer water from the seeping bank above. We let the bank refill the main pool and then overflowed that into our deeper reservoir. The reservoir filled in about ten minutes, and, hoping for the best, we wrapped a t-shirt around the acorn filter and began pumping.

The pumping soon got quite difficult and the pump (our only pump, and our only filter) eventually seized up after about a liter. This was decidedly not very good. Frightened, we took it apart to take a look at the filter. In the past, we have used standard filters for our pump, which, when you extract them, show you the riffled surface of the filter itself. When this white surface becomes soiled and brown, the pump is shot. This filter, though, was a new super-deluxe filter that had an additional filter screen that wrapped around the riffled primary filter. It had been used once in southern Utah a few months previous for a few liters, but was still very white and clean when we packed it for this trip.

We extracted the filter, and the outer screen was still stark white, just as wee had packed it. All three of us huddled closely over the filter, and Carson cautiously peeled back the outer screen, and we quickly learned that the super-deluxe extra screen was not an indicator of how clean the real filter was.

“Ohh…fuck…” He said gravely in a quivering tone you don’t hear when things are OK.

He exposed the surface of the main filter and it was a blackish brown, spotted with mold. It was the dirtiest filter I’d ever seen. Our hearts dropped into our thirsty bowels.

Paul and I gawked in relative silence at the filter for a moment. The rough edge of reality had hit us hard, and after a bit of disbelief and anger, we sat down next to the mud hole to talk about our options.

We could:

1. Try forcing more liters out of the pump, possibly contaminating our water or breaking the pump

2. Continue on, without a pump, boiling all of our water before drinking it

3. Continue on, depending upon our combined 23 liter supply of iodine tablets

4. Swallow our pride of a non-supported trip and try to call in another filter via cell phone to be rendezvoused to us at Hicks Station

5. Call off the trip and head back to the car about 17 miles back

6. Die of dehydration, waterborne illness, and general bad luck

There were obvious breaches of common sense in options one through three, and significant breaches of pride in options four through six. Thirty minutes of reasoned discussion led us to get a few fires going, set up camp, and start boiling water. I cleared out the dugout of a foundation of an ancient cabin about 60 meters through the trees from the spring and started two fires. Paul and Carson discussed what to do, sitting next to the spring. I got a nice bed of coals going and started the first pot of brown soupy water boiling. The water was too murky to see the bottom of the small pan, and as it boiled it smelled of fresh horse dung. As the pan cooled the first bed of coals, I stoked the second fire to get another hot bed. I switched the pot after about ten minutes, and it began to boil on the second fire. I re-stoked the first fire and continued this ad naseum.

Carson and Paul returned. We sat around the fire and Carson finally said what needed to be said:

“Besides pride…” He paused. “…Is there any reason that we shouldn’t call in another filter?”

Paul and I thought for a good while and agreed that there was not.

With that, Paul and Carson took Paul’s phone and headed up the side of the canyon to get up on a ridge. It would be a slight miracle to get reception out there, 40 miles from Eureka, 70 miles from Ely and 80 miles from Tonopah, with mountains between us and all those places. If there was a dead spot anywhere, it ought to have been there.

I remained within the bubble of light in the PJ, tending the fires and thinking about death, sickness, pride, and all sorts of hypothetical outcomes. I was suddenly humbled more than I have ever been by the elements, so dependent upon them for my acceptable survival and my uncertain future.

* * *

They returned within thirty minutes and said that they got through to Curt, and that he was going to meet us at Hicks Station the next day with a new pump or a new filter around 3:00pm. This firmed up our future quite a bit. We settled in for the evening and the water processing procedure began to develop.

However, first things were first; we needed to eat. We drank most of our reserve water and decided our cheese filled noodles were the best choice of food for the evening. I poured the dry noodles into the second batch of boiling water and cooked them on the fire in the scuz, hoping the noodles and subsequent cheese sauce mix would mask the dung overtones. It worked well and we eagerly ate the amazing soupy noodles as we began the lengthy and laborious process of refilling our water supplies.

None of us had ever had to depend upon boiled scuz-water for hydration before, so how exactly to go about the process was up for creative development. After we dispersed into the dark woodlands in search of good wood, we brought back a few good loads of juniper and mahogany. We had two aluminum pots, one bigger than the other. The smaller pot was used to boil the water for twenty minutes, and after it had, the water was poured into the other pot to cool and settle. Settling was very important here - there were a lot of 'things' in the water. The small pot was refilled in the pool and put back on the fire. After the boiled water had cooled enough to put into bottles, it was poured through a camp towel into a nalgene where its true clarity and quality could be assessed in full for the first time. From cold murky pool to warm murky nalgene, the process took about 45 minutes with good fires. The resulting water had a very interesting tase.

“And then we drink it. Mmmmm.”

The first few batches were immediately consumed since we were quite dehydrated. Manning the scorching mahogany fires contributed to this dehydration, but we eventually began to fill our bottles with this tinted, smoky and organic flavored water. These festivities continued late into the night. We had had enough around 12:30am. The fires were left to die beneath the clear sky and waxing quarter moon as we stumbled exhausted, dirty, and satisfied with our efforts to the tent to greet unconsciousness.

The second day was our first real day 'in the nowhere’. To awake and retire in such a setting puts one at the true mercy of the elements of the landscape. Considering the rugged and unforgiving nature of the central Great Basin, the day had definitely been representative of the landscape we were in: rough. We had been stripped down to the water-dependent and weak little creatures that we really were, and always had been. We were reminded how un-evolved we were for unassisted travel, yet also how enjoyable truly living by your wits can be, even if only for one night.

The next day, we would swallow our pride and scuzzy water and rendezvous for a filter re-supply. We would continue through yet another disappointing realization and end up deep within a landscape we had never seen, about to discover some of the most beautiful landscapes of our journey.

==========================================================

Day 1 - Off the Grid

2007-11-10T10:56:00.000-08:00

-Off The Grid-

Awoke confused at 4:00AM, and made breakfast; 2 eggs, some bacon, and a bowl of soggy granola. It seems that good things tend to start with granola. Did a bit of last minute packing and hit the road. The previous evening was a time of serious uneasiness and doubt. I kept assuming that we’d never return, that we would all die, and that I needed to say all of my goodbyes.

We picked up Paul, talked to his mother for a spell and then topped off the Suzuki on gas. I bought me a pair of cheap sunglasses, as I had recently lost my other pair, and headed up Murray Canyon. Made it to the top of Murray and remembered that we wanted to bring the Nevada gazetteer in the car in case one of us needed to return to the car and navigate to the site of some horrific accident. Not assuming a horrific accident was eminent, wee backtracked the 8 minutes to get the gazetteer just in case. All of this set upon a backdrop of Moby’s Play and Oasis’s What’s the Story Morning Glory.

----------

Some might say that sunshine follows thunder
Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine
Some might say that we should never ponder
On our thoughts today ‘cause they all sway all the time

---------

You might run on for a long time
Run on, ducking and dodging
Run on, children, for a long time
Let me tell you God Almighty gonna’ cut you down

----------

We arrived at Big Louie spring, the pitiful cow trough which I had last seen in the dying evening light almost two years ago with a heavy heart of foregone yet unrealized adventure. It was 8:00 on the nose, and we allocated trip food and packed up. Threw our packs back in the car, and set up camera for an arrival shot. Spent another ten minutes shooting said shot and shooting a few more scenes at the tank.

We hit the trail by 8:30 and hiked solid for an hour or so, most of it on a two track.

Had a bit of controversy over how to hit a little saddle, but made it over with a good stint of steep and thick bushwhacking

through some neat rocky escarpments. We saddled at our mark, getting a decent peek at the terrain to come, and descended the west side a bit to a good shade hole for lunch. Carson, who you could call our Water Guru for the trip, had studied the map enough to understand that our first essential water source could be dry. He discussed alternate options with us. We resumed our trek after about an hour lunch and slid into a bit of a high narrow valley in the Pancakes.

There was significant horse sign in the valley, and at a point, the horse trail we were following broke off of our westerly course and headed to the north. Our ‘water’ was a few more miles west, over another saddle and in the foothills of the next valley. The horse sign suggested to us that water might be to the north, and Carson confirmed a seasonal spring about a mile up. He volunteered to side trip down the horse trail to get enough water for us to scrape by for the next day and a half if the next spring was bust. He left, pack on, and Paul and I retired to shade of a lofty hedged juniper, kicking off our boots to rest up.

It’s been a while now, he must have found some water, or lost his mind and kept walking into the endless country to the north…

* * *

[insert Carson story]

Carson returned in one hour and fifteen minutes, and had found and pumped five liters. We gathered in a circle in the afternoon sun and all stared at the slightly yellow colored water of a nalgene. Carson took off the lid and smelled it.

“Hmm, it’s got a…a pleasant nose. Slightly hydric…it’s a little wet.”

He took a swig, “Tastes like water” and passed it to Paul, who also took a cautious sip.

“I don’t know what arsenic tastes like, supposedly it’s tasteless…” Carson said as Paul swished it around a bit. He passed it to me like a bottle of whiskey.

“It’s a little flat. I think you should go get some more.” I added.

All of us deemed it high quality H₂O, “The elixir of life”, despite it’s color, and we continued. We came upon more horse sign, and this sign eventually developed into real live horses. We pushed them out ahead of us and to the sides as we strolled along through the notably abundant and beautiful forbs and wildflowers in the grainy granitic soil. We saddled the west ridge of the small high valley and followed the intense horse sign down to the nuked Sand Spring, which had been our essential water source of the day before Carson deviated to play it safe. Paul and I made a bit of a pool in the Horse-poo-mud-mortar and waited for it to flush with clear pumpable water.

We pumped our packs to full capacity (about four liters each) in preparation for the evening’s dry camp and the Little Smoky valley walk that would greet us the next day. I put on sandals, Paul put on his tennis shoes, and we wandered down the two track out of the piñon and juniper forested foothills for a few miles to the edge of the trees. The valley stretched before us in full in the evening light, and we found a sandy place near a wash amongst some large granite boulders to camp. Pitched tent and started a fire by 5:30.

We cooked up some couscous-tater-TVP hash (which, if you might doubt it, is quite delicious) on the coals of the finest juniper. As we ate, Carson discovered three newly born ravens in the top of a nearby juniper, and we all took turn crawling up to admire them. They were very newly born, quite nasty, and looked more like archaeopteryx chicks than ravens. Momma raven was nowhere to be found, not even circling, and she never did come back, as far as we could tell.

We sat around the fire a bit, and Paul decided the day had been good, and, to the surprise of Carson and I, extracted from the depths of his pack a one liter travel-lite plastic bottle of Canadian Mist. It made it’s way once or twice around, and shortly thereafter we hit the hay.

It was a good day. My feet were a bit sore and I thought I could smell a blister coming on, but the last scrawled sentence in my journal reads:

“I’m happy to be out in the nowhere.”

The next day would bring bright and early oatmeal, a good long walk across Little Smokey Valley, and, unbeknownst to us as we slept, an error that would force us to take drastic measures to keep the trip alive.

===================================================================

The Ruby Mountains

2007-11-08T21:59:00.001-08:00

The Ruby Mountains

The Ruby Mountains are about the closest thing to a 'home' I might ever have. Born and raised for a while in their shadows, in spittle range of their grandeur, and with their grit in my gut, these mountains rock. I don't have many digitals of the Rubies, and it's just as well. You gotta go there to see 'em. So, many of these are courtesy of fellow Rubyan by birth Bo Bradley. Thanks buddy.

Cheers for the Rubies!
(Click here to learn more about them)

a bit of digital editing here but wowsers anyway - the view from Spring Creek - 2005? (Bo)

looking north from Ruby Dome - 2006 (courtesy of Bo)

the end of Lamoile Canyon, Liberty Pass, Liberty Lake, and splendor - July 2005 (Bo)

a great pan from a good gnarly knob - July 2005 (Bo)

north from the south Rubies - August 2006

darkness falls, and pop better be gettin' off the mountain - November 2006 (Curt)

a gawking goat - November 2006 (Curt)
a gaggle of grazing and gawking goats - November 2006 (Curt)

looking north from Pearl Peak - December 2006

Kurt summiting Pearl, Ruby Valley in background - December 2006

frozen Franklin lake in background, frozen Kurt in foreground - December 2006

a mighty perch just off the east side of Pearl - December 2006

northeast from Ruby Dome - 2006? (Bo)

there is a lot of elevation change represented here: the top of a spire, Island Lake, bottom of Lamoile- July 2006 (Bo)

mis padres descending upon a secret place - August 2006

looking east - August 2006 (Carson)

one of the thousands of beautiful perches in Lamoile - 2006? (Bo)

Pearl Peak in spring...see the spire to the left of the peak? - June 2007 (Carson)
fire was here long ago, now life abounds - June 2007

Carson enjoying the flowers...yeah not really, they were chuck full of big greasy Mormon crickets - June 2007

the fam-dam in a tree that will see the end of us all - August 2006

First Snow Soup

2007-11-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

First Snow Soup

(2003)

It’s September 19th, and I’m cleaning my room to the soulful smoothness of Spyro Gyra. Not exactly cleaning music, I know, but I had to compromise. My CD player is tweaked, you see, so I dusted off an old vinyl from by brother’s room and threw it on.

Ok, I take that back, I’m not really cleaning my room. There is a storm outside, the first winter storm of the year. I habitually look out my window, watching the wall of white slowly approach me. I wander about my room, trying to remember what I was doing, what I was ‘cleaning’. About the time I remember what I was doing, I look back out the window again, and my brain turns into soup and runs out my ears. It’s good soup.

“We could still go out today, it’s only 1:30” my father says to me as I sit in the living room looking out the window, eating some good soup. He’s talking about deer hunting. This weekend was the muzzleloader opener. We both have tags in the same area.

“Yeah, pretty crumby weather though.” I love this sort of weather, but it’s not the kind of weather I’d like to haul my hand-finished walnut Kentucky Long-Rifle around in for its first hunt.

“We ought to though; you don’t have many days to hunt.” He says. Between school and soccer season, I don’t have many days to go out and have a quality hunt. Even though leaving the house at 1:30 on a blustery Sunday afternoon isn’t what I’d call ‘quality’, I agree to go out. As we prepare our packs for an evening of hiking and hunting, the phone rings.

It’s a worried wife, and not my fathers. Supposedly, her husband and son had also gone on a hunt, but for the entire weekend. They have been good family friends for many years. They live about 3 hours north of us, in Elko Nevada. They traveled south to the Cherry Creek Range, a favorite place of our two families to hunt deer. It’s good high country, and there aren’t many people there. The father and his son have been there since Friday, hunting the 10,000ft high spine of the range, from an undisclosed spike camp. At 9:00am or so this morning, they called home and said that they were having ‘vehicle problems’. Somehow, the call had been forwarded to us, perhaps because we know that part of the mountain inside and out. My father offers to drive up and get them off the mountain.

“We are going to the Cherry Creeks.” My father tells me as he hangs up the phone. From listening to his side of the conversation I know exactly why. We leave all of our hunting stuff in the vehicle, because the Cherry Creeks are in our tag’s hunting unit.

As we drive out of town, Ely, Nevada, I notice a motor home, covered in snow, heading south; two distinct signs of autumns approach.

North we go, straight into the country that always seems to see more weather than Ely. The road becomes wetter and wetter as we go, the clouds darker and darker. An hour later, we drive past the failing town of Cherry Creek, a collection of trash, hicks, primordial buildings, mangy dogs, and a handful of adventurous retirees. The pavement ends right in the middle of town. As quickly as we drive through town, the hills around us turn white. The road gets muddy, fast.

“Uhh,…this might not happen.” My father says as he struggles to keep our fishtailing Ford Expedition on the muddy road. I say nothing, in consent. He keeps driving.

“Watch for deer.” He mutters a short moment later. Upon hearing this, my eyes change from the road to the surrounding landscape, and the soup begins to flow. Snow! It finally hits me that I haven’t seen fresh snow since April. That white, fluffy substance completely re-works my mind. I begin to think about skiing, snowshoeing, snow-ball fights, shoveling snow, eating snow, digging snow out of my pants, breathing snow. Oh boy!

We slime our way along the winding road, thinking every minute we should turn back. The road winds down into a valley and becomes straight. It’s now a bench road and continues, endlessly, into the stormy abyss. So do we.

A few minutes later, we are greeted by another sad collection of trash emerging from the white. Our vehicle slows as we pass the Paris Ranch. It’s a habit to slow down, usually to avoid dusting them out. Now, though, it’s to avoid sliding off the twisting road and adding another wrecked vehicle to their junkyard.

As we round the last small turn, a camp trailer, with Utah plates, comes into view about 50ft off the west side of the road. A pick up truck and three four-wheelers surround it. My father hesitates to stop, and continues to contemplate it as he drives by. Coming to a late conclusion, he stops and reverses to the turn off that parallels the camp. He drives up and gets out. He knocks on the door, hoping someone inside will have seen our friends, or know something about their whereabouts. No ones home. They must be out hunting. We resume our northwardly movement, turning right on to a road that leads up the bench, towards the steep pitch of the Cherry Creeks.

When the low-lying, stormy clouds diffuse into thin air, the towering face of the mountain appears in full for the first time since our arrival into the valley. It’s enough to get the soup flowing again. The vehicle stops and both of us grab our respective binoculars to search the slope for the road, and to search the road for a vehicle, or signs of one.

“Nothin?”

“Nothin.”

The road, which switchbacks up an open face then follows the ridge for a while and finally reaches the top after crossing another slope, is devoid of signs as far as we can tell. Of course, we are still close to a mile away.

We go another quarter of a mile towards the mountain. We are forced to stop again, and look, for we are losing important landmarks on the ridge in our decreasing line of sight. While raising my binoculars to my eyes, I see, in peripheral vision, a stand of attractive orange Aspen locked up in the snow. I lower the binoculars, never letting them reach my eyes. I stare at the orange, in awe. You see, normally the Aspens have all dropped their quaky leaves before anything white falls from the sky, around here at least.

+*+*+*+*+*+

I’m up on the slope, now, looking through the orange fringed limbs of an elderly Aspen. Snow is lightly falling through the gaps. So lightly, in fact, that it might just be my imagination.

Rodents and birds move amidst the branches, boughs and earth, trying to remember where they positioned their stashes of forest-goodies, hastened by the early snow. In the same respect, I imagine myself in my basement, frantically trying to remember where I left all of my winter-goodies.

It’s not winter yet, I remind myself, looking once again at the orange oblong leaves, still attached to their twigs. And I’m not even looking at the orange oblong leaves, I remind myself as I awaken to find myself on the road below, searching the road for tire tracks.

“It’s pretty awesome up here.” My father says as he looks slowly in a full circle at the lofty white mountains and the vast valleys that separate them.

“It’s almost worth the trip just for the sights, eh?”

“Oh yeah…” I say, from within the mountains, eating a warm bowl of soup beneath my patchy ceiling of orange.

“Hell yeah.”

(photo: not a first snow, not the Cherry Creeks, but a comparable warm fuzzy aura - Ward bench February 2006)

Schell Creek Wilderness

2007-11-08T15:57:00.000-08:00

Schell Creek Wilderness

One of White Pine County's Newest Wilderness Areas

Hooray for Wilderness! Please enjoy a few of my favorite pictures of the Schell Creeks as a belated congratulations to all the folks who helped push it from a Wilderness Study Area to a true blue Wilderness!

Click here for a link to more information about this awesome range of righteousness.

coming night from Middle Schell - July 2007

Kurtis ascending North Schell - July 2007

Kurt walking the ridge to North Schell - July 2007

the Schells from across Steptoe - November 2005

Timber Creek - 2004 (photo: John Watt)

North Schell from Squa Peak - 2004

North from Middle Schell - July 2007

Taft and South Schell beyond happy youth - July 2007

nocturnal bristlecone in Timber Creek - July 2007

alpine forbage - July 2007

an edit of another of John Watt's pictures - Timber Creek - 2004

2007-02-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

Soup, Taters 'n Puddn'

2007-01-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

A Trekker’s Rumination

“Soup, Taters ’n Puddn' ”

It was the end of the fourth day, around the fifty mile mark. Upon inspecting the small flattened space amongst a cluster of western juniper, my exhausted brother threw out his arm and pointed in a circle around the area, and muttered “This’ll do.”

He immediately threw down his pack into the dry Nevada dirt, and Paul and I followed suit. A few seconds of pack rummaging produced a tent, a stove, a pot, and some water. Paul and I took to setting up the small three man tent in the duff and my brother set up the stove and started some water boiling.

“What do you guy’s want for din-din” he said within a sigh, in a tired yet excited way.

Paul responded as he yawned “What do we have left?”

“Yeah, what we want and what we have aren’t exactly the same thing” I added.

“Well if you guys are going to be picky, then you don’t get to choose” my brother said as he pulled out some Bear Creek Navy Bean dehydrated soup mix, and a bag of dehydrated potato flakes.

“That crap better be good. It better be perfect.” I said jokingly. I knew it was good.

“Why? Are you not going to eat it if it’s not? Go for it man. I dare you. More for me.” He added with a sarcastic chuckle, as he consulted the hand-written directions of the Ziploc bag and poured something into the water. He also pulled out a box of pistachio pudding mix and threw it aside for desert.

What is the perfect dinner? For me, a big bleeding Elk steak with homemade chunky mashed potatoes, a slab of grilled fresh salmon and a bowl of New England clam chowder. Of course, Paul carried neither an Elk nor a salmon, and all of the clams that I had with me had unfortunately slipped out at the last water break. On a backpacking trek such as this, the logistical spectrum of available foods is a bit more than slightly limited. However, it is still quite possible to have a fantastic three course meal.

A trekking dinner is the final and only ‘prepared’ meal of notoriously long and grueling days. This meal is very important both physically and mentally, because it needs to supply your body with adequate sustenance while also being tasty and fulfilling enough to inspire further trekking. A bad meal can throw off a good day and bring disaster to a trip. It also needs to be small, light, and fairly cheap, because the average backpacker wants to maintain a light pack and a fat wallet. The perfect meal should also be relatively easy and quick to prepare. That is - the recipe should not call for measuring cups, whisks, beaters, or one-hour bake times; and it should require only small amounts of fuel to prepare. Satisfying all of these requirements is tough, but possible. That’s why, when considering dinner foods for a backpacking trip, choosing dehydrated navy bean soup mix from Bear Creek - with a side of mashed potatoes and pistachio pudding - is a perfect choice.

Choosing food for a backpacking trek is a delicate and complex process. Many important criteria are measured and weighed to select food that best fits the specific trip. In general, however, the most important aspect of any food is its energy content and composition.

Most food advertised for outdoor recreationists is high in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, or carbs, are the easiest substances for the body to turn directly into energy, and are very important to trekkers as a main source of daily energy. However, according to sports nutritionists, carbs are processed quickly and leave less residual energy than do substances such as fat, protein, and fiber. Protein, fat, and fiber are important for trekkers because trips generally last more than a few days, and without extra intake of these substances, the body will turn to its already stressed stores of fats and may begin to break down unused muscles (Sports Nutrition, Faqs.org). This is bad news to trekkers. To avoid this, foods should be high in energy that is attained from all of these substances. Navy bean soup mix provides significant energy derived from carbs, fats, and proteins, respectively, while dehydrated mashed potatoes are mostly carbs and fats. Although the combined protein content in this meal provides less overall energy than the carbs and fats, it represents, according to label information, an impressive 25% of your daily recommended amount per serving. Considering that trekkers usually eat a double or triple serving, this meal provides a filling and well balanced meal. In addition, bean soup also has an above average content of fiber (Calorie-Count.com). The pistachio pudding, of course, is mostly carbs and provides a tasty and energy packed end to the meal.

Furthermore, vitamins and minerals are also important to trekkers and are more likely to be found in foods (such as navy bean soup) that are diverse in energy sources. Sports nutritionists maintain that sodium and vitamin C are among the many important substances for those involved in extreme and prolonged exercise. Although lots of sodium is usually dangerous to a diet, the body utilizes sodium to sweat efficiently and requires a significantly elevated supply of it when sweating is increased. Vitamin C is helpful in the healthy and expedient repair and maintenance of muscle tissue and the proper functioning of cells and is therefore obviously important (Vitamins: Water Soluble, Faqs.org). Bear Creek bean soup is high in both vitamin C and sodium.

The next most important aspect to consider for food is ‘pack impact’. The size, weight, and packaging of any particular food contribute to its overall ‘pack impact’. Experienced backpackers typically make every effort to reduce the size and weight of their packs and the amount of garbage they have to carry around.

Weight is key. The energy contained in each ounce of a given food provides a useful ratio with which a foods’ weight may be evaluated (Backpacking Food, AdventureAlan.com). Food that has a high energy/weight ratio is light but full of energy, while food that has a low energy/weight ratio may be full of energy, but it also weighs more than about a pound per meal. Choosing dehydrated foods is generally the best route to take. Dehydrated potato flakes (and the powdered milk required to make them) are packed with energy and are extremely light, giving them a high energy/weight ratio. Bean soup weighs about 1 oz per serving dry and supplies substantial energy, giving it, too, a moderately high energy/weight ratio. Pistachio pudding, on the other hand, is almost a quarter-pound pile of sugar and nuts (Calorie-Count.com). Its energy weight ratio isn’t too bad, but it isn’t as high as the other foods in this ‘perfect’ meal. Pudding, however, is essential in satisfying other criteria.

Size is another central aspect of ‘pack impact’ and essentially follows the simple rule of ‘smaller is better’. When compared to the most popular form of dehydrated backpacking food, which comes in large, two serving plastic packages; soup mix, potatoes, and pudding are much smaller and more energy packed. The large packages of these popular meals are required in the preparation of the meal to adding boiling water, and must then be carried around as garbage. They usually become covered in whatever they contained and may attract small and pesky food stealing animals such as chipmunks, marmots, mice, and grizzly bears. Slimy garbage is an annoying but avoidable byproduct of almost any food. Being able to repackage food into simple and small bags is a sure fire way to avoid this concern. Soup mix, potatoes, and pudding can all be measured precisely and transferred from their original packaging into small Ziplocs, which, when empty, become immediately useful for other things. Honestly, you can’t beat that.

Preparation is the next big factor to consider. Often, foods that are healthy, light, and have high energy/weight ratios tend to take a long time to prepare, or are complicated in their preparation. The popular grains wild rice, polenta, quinoa, and lentils, as well as dishes such as spaghetti are perfect examples of such resource intensive foods. Cook times above ten minutes are usually inefficient, requiring the trekker to either carry larger amounts of fuel, or run out of patience and eat it before it is fully prepared, and lose much of its nutritional value in the process. Mashed potatoes are instant and require only the addition of boiling water, without any additional cook time. Bear Creek, alternatively, recommends that you add their soup mixes to boiling water and simmer for at least ten minutes. This is not necessary, though. If the mix is soaked for ten to fifteen minutes prior to cooking, it needs only about five minutes of simmering. Instant pudding, of course, requires no cook time.

As mentioned, some foods require various additional ingredients and materials in their preparation. As a general trekking rule, the only thing that should need to be added to appropriately selected food in the field is water; and the entirety of the meal should require nothing more than one aluminum pot and a plastic spoon or fork as preparatory objects. No strainers, skillets, mixers or additional sauce pans should be required. The resulting food should be easily eaten from a bowl that can comfortably fit in the hand. Eaten separately in a two course meal, bean soup and mashed potatoes are easily prepared in the same pot, and pudding can be whipped up in a Nalgene bottle by vigorously shaking; and everything can be chronologically eaten from the same bowl. The only ingredients that are required for this meal are water and milk. Milk, however, can be added into the mix of the potatoes and pudding as powdered milk prior to the trip, and, thus, water is the only necessary field ingredient. When trekking, simplicity is a virtue.

The next characteristic of backpacking food herein deemed important is often overlooked. Many trekkers will repeatedly cook up a universally known and appreciated food-mixture that is lovingly dubbed ‘hash’, which completely satisfies the aforementioned criteria. This hash, however, has no unique or distinguishable taste and generally resembles various shades of Gerber baby food, both before and after it passes through the baby (see photo). While this hash is nourishing, light, and simple, it severely lacks the aesthetic qualities of average day-to-day food and is not inspiring enough to make the trekker look forward to dinner. These concerns may seem silly, but much of the drive and motivation to complete and enjoy a backpacking trek stem from the food that is consumed (Why Hike Light?, Adventurealan.com).

Unlike most people, trekkers know exactly what they will be eating for the entire duration of their trip and know exactly when they will eat it. There are no surprises. Thus, if this food is consistently tasteless and mushy, a trekker may be motivated to end the trip early or, even worse, proceed without enjoyment. If a trip is not enjoyed to its fullest, it is practically worthless. While every trek will ultimately contain a significant amount of ‘hash nights’, bean soup with mashed potatoes and pudding is the perfectly balanced meal to keep spirits high (especially the pudding). This meal will likely come after a few long days of extraordinarily grueling travel and/or near the midpoint or end of a trip. Nothing cheers up a trekker like pudding. (Photo: Kurt enjoying the Mt Moriah Wilderness, made possible by pudding.)

Lastly, the average trekker is tight when it comes to money. Whether this is because they are broke college students paying for college, broke unemployed college grads looking for a job, or extremely frugal individuals supporting gear-head vices; they consider spending too much on trekking food worse than not eating at all. If the total price of the meal for the whole group is more than twice what that group might expect to pay for an at-home hand prepared meal, it’s too much. Tasty and wholesome state-of-the-art dehydrated backpacking meals are available, but they are very expensive and are only consumed regularly by yuppies. These yuppie-space-meals are usually about $9.00 a piece and at least two of them are required for three people. You can then forget about deserts, which are also available, but for another $6-8. A meal of soup, ’taters and pudding, on the other hand, is both filling to the body and easy on the wallet. An eight-serving bag of Bear Creek soup mix (enough for three trekkers) usually runs about $6, while potato flakes and pudding might add at most an additional $2. The money saved on food may filter into other departments of the pack, such as first-aid supplies and a good compass.

There you have it, the perfect meal.

If a time arises when you should find an urge to trek, and you find yourself mulling over the possible food options, I hope the choice is clear for at least one meal. You need a meal that is healthily energized. You need a meal that has a low pack impact and is quick and easy to prepare. You need a meal that is beautiful and cheap. You need Bear Creek Navy Bean soup, mashed potatoes, and pistachio pudding. Frankly, it doesn’t even matter what kind of pudding it is. Any flavor will do, except lemon. Only a fool tries lemon.

I believe it goes without saying, but the meal on that cool Nevada summer evening can only be described as glorious. It is beyond belief to non-trekkers how delicious and fulfilling such a meal can taste. Our energy supplies were replenished, and our taste buds were passed out drunk. Our packs were light with other such ‘smart foots’ and we were not hauling around Betty Crocker’s cabinet. We had no stinky garbage, no more than one dish to clean, and no grim images of hash. We were completely and utterly satisfied, even after we pulled out the maps and looked at what we needed to do the next day. Faced with a daunting twenty mile walk across an uninhabited dry desert valley, we were mentally prepared to enjoy every second of it thanks to soup taters ’n puddn.

Works Cited:

Dixon, Alan. Why Hike Ultra-light? and Backpacking Food. 2006. AdventureAlan.com. 24 Oct. 2006. <http://www.adventurealan.com/>

Nutrition at FAQ’s.org. Sports Nutrition and Vitamins, Water Soluble. 2005. Thompson Corporation. 24 Oct. 2006. <http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/index.html>

For label information of products:

Calorie-Count by About.com. Bear Creek, Navy Bean Soup;, Potatoes, mashed dehydrated flakes; and Pudding, dry mix instant. 2006. New York Times Company. 24 Oct. 2006. <http://www.calorie-count.com/>

Meadow Valley Wilderness

2007-01-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

Southern Nevada is good for more than just nuclear waste. Things live there too!

January 2007

My brother and I ventured relatively unprepared into the Meadow Valley Wilderness (and it's surrounding quasi-wilderness) on the second day of the new year for a four day adventure in the harsh but magnificent landscape of south-eastern Nevada. It's an experience I highly recommend. Enjoy these pictures and be sure to check out the links to learn more about the area and its geology.

Meadow Valley Wilderness description: Click here.

the rugged hills are a lesson in geology

yucca fibers

shell of a consumed Desert Tortoise

positive reflections of industry

Teddy Bear Cholla - Makes you want to hug it

looking east across Meadow Valley Wash at the Mormon Mountains

barrel cactus defense shield

super gnarly canyon we dubbed "Agave Canyon" due to its many Agave plants

Desert National Wildlife Refuge - New backyard of the new biped infection

In this shot, only the lonely highway 93 exists between the foreground hill and background mountains, the Sheep Range in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. However, some nice folks decided that there needed to be more there, so soon the third largest Nevada city will spring up with zit-like speed. As many as 160,000 homes will be built with several golf courses, stores, restaurants, schools and recreational centers. It shall be named Coyote Springs. Don't believe me? Check out the propaganda right here.
And here is a site that seems to understand things better, with good pictures of the confusing contruction: http://www.roamingphotos.com/us/nv/coyotesprings/

The things rich people can get away with in the desert.....

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Another view of Coyote Springs location. Notice the small patch of land in the valley already being developed. It's actually a golf course. You have to build the golf course before you can build the course-front property, right? They have already built artificial lakes to evaporate in the sun; and green grass that they water for no one. Rooted firmly in one spot, these yuccas get to watch the destruction - front seat!

a beautiful power plant west of Moapa grimly reminds the wilderness traveler of his own society's dirty vices

"One of the penalties of having an ecological education is living alone in a world of wounds."
-Aldo Leopold 1947

Arc Dome Wilderness

2007-01-14T23:52:00.001-08:00

Arc Dome Wilderness
July 2005
Central Nevada

The summer of 2005 was a good one for the family. We bagged two beautiful peaks of central Nevada, Arc Dome and Jefferson, on our continuing quest to summit the top 20 Nevada peaks as a fam-dam.

We camped at the trailhead on the west side of the Toiyabe Range and made a nice day hike of the peak. It's beautiful, you should go if you enjoy things.

Please click here if you want to learn about the Arc Dome Wilderness.

Arc Dome from the Toiyabe Crest Trail

Lupine on one of the ranges many flat table-like ridges.

On our trip in July, the alpine wildflowers were incredible.

Aspen illuminated by an evening fire.

All images copyright eco-o unless otherwise noted

Backlog - 2005

2007-01-14T16:41:00.000-08:00

Pictures taken in 2005

Please excuse these unordered pictures while I throw up a few meaningful shots from '05.
Click on any image to see a high quality version, and steal it for your background if you feel so inclined.

Gleason Creek actually flowing - February 2005

Heading for a moonlight ski in the Egan Range - March 2005
Old mine in Sawmill Canyon in the Egan Range - May 2005
Sawmill Canyon - May 2005
The Ruby Marsh - June 2005

All images copyright eco-o unless otherwise noted

Backlog - 2004

2007-01-14T14:59:00.000-08:00

Pictures taken in 2004.

Please excuse these unordered pictureswhile I update the photo album.
Click on any image to see a high quality version.

Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park - August 2004

Steptoe Valley from the Egan Range - September 2004

Limber Pine above Steptoe Valley - September 2004

Turning Aspen in the Duck Creek Range - September 2004

North Fork Berry Creek Trailhead - November 2004

Long Valley Sand Dunes - November 2004

Schell Creek Range behind Steptoe Valley - November 2004

Ferocious winds in the South Fork of Timber Creek - December 2004

All pictures copyright eco-o unless otherwise noted.

Wind Energy and Its Drawbacks

2007-01-10T23:11:00.000-08:00

The Grim of Green

Last night, as I strolled down the hall of my residence hall at the University of Idaho, I saw a cork-board covered with facts. The title of the board was “Are you Eco-Friendly?” Striving to be an eco-conscious citizen, I stopped to examine the display. Among the several dozen tid-bits, one especially caught my eye. It said “Solar panels covering less than half the state of Nevada could supply our entire country with ample power.”

Despite the fact that this statement was relatively shallow, I found it particularly cutting. You see, I have lived my entire life in Nevada. I have ventured into its practically endless beauty countless times in countless ways and have experienced its land more than many Nevadans have had the chance to. I know that the state is one of the largest chunks of undeveloped public land in the country, and that its Great Basin ecosystems are unlike anything in the world. It is also ranked as the nations eleventh most biodiverse state and as the third most at risk. Perhaps now you can understand why using ‘less than half of the state’ for some logically useless statistic was perturbing to me.

Upon reading the statistic, I scurried back to my room and typed up and printed out a well reasoned reply and taped it beside the original. The next morning, my addition was gone, and I was left to wonder why. Although I did not save the file, I remember that its last sentence had read “Let’s solve the obvious problem of energy consumption before we run wild looking for better places to get more.” Ok, so it may have been a bit compassionate, but I feel it was just. Why should we go hog-wild to develop new “green energy” when all we have to do is turn off our lights, computers and televisions when we go to work or school? Why do we feel that wee need to feed this insatiable beast with clean power when the greenest thing we can do is to simply unplug a few things. Coincidentally, this isn’t the first time I’ve asked that question.

In 2004 and 2005, nearly all of the western states made renewable energy portfolio standards that required the development of renewable energy resources within their states. The standard in my home state of Nevada required that at least 20% of all electricity generated in the state must be from renewable resources by 2013. It must be ‘green energy’. That’s great! Unarguably, it’s a step in the right direction. Nevada is rich with such energy, and has almost no industry to collect it.

Possibly prompted by these new portfolio standards, a company named Nevada Wind and various others have decided to harness the power of the wind to create such energy. What better place to develop such an industry than in the eastern part of Nevada, with its dozens of high elevation and windy ridges, most of which are very accessible and uninhabited? In these respects, it’s a great idea. However, this issue is not that simple.

One area that these companies have set their sights on is known as Telegraph Mountain. About 50 miles north of Ely, Nevada, Telegraph Mountain has many large, high elevation tables and flat ridges, and is a popular spot for hunters, hikers and many other outdoorsmen. It has, according to the head game biologist of the Nevada Division of Wildlife (NDOW) Ely Field Office, “Some very important, high quality summer range for sage grouse and mule deer”. Sage grouse, a species of large native ptarmigan, have recently been the center of many recent concerns, due to their low population and the widespread destruction and fragmentation of their fragile habitat. Telegraph Mountain is a key piece of habitat for these birds.

The plans for development of this ‘green energy’ suggest as many as 150 turbines within about fifteen square miles, placing one tower about every 1,000ft. Telegraph, as of now, is only accessible by means of one scarcely used craggy, 4-wheel drive road. Upon development, a vast network of maintained roads and other structures will need to accompany the 150 units. This added infrastructure will fragment the sage grouse and mule deer habitat. Sage grouse, unfortunately, have a very low tolerance of man made structures, regularly used roads, and power lines. NDOW fears that “all of the sage grouse could abandon the habitat.” Even if all the birds don’t leave, the usage of the site will certainly decrease, which works against the Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Plan for Nevada and California - a state government work in progress that took nearly four years to draft. This massive plan is aimed to maintain and protect sage grouse habitat, so it seems strange for the state’s own renewable energy plan to work against it. Mule deer use will also decrease dramatically, which in turn decreases the value of the site as a healthy hunting area.

In addition to habitat fragmentation and destruction, ‘wind farms’ have a tendency to kill many bats, raptors, and other birds. A major raptor migration route leads birds right through this part of the state. When 150 towers - each about 200ft tall with 160ft diameter spinning blades - are put in their way, many of them may likely be killed. According to studies conducted by the American Bird Conservancy in their Wind Energy Policy, mortality rates can exceed 7 birds per turbine per year. This figure doesn’t even include birds eliminated through habitat loss and fragmentation.

In short, development of this industry at Telegraph Mountain will turn this high quality habitat into another “poor quality” piece of developed land; and another dead zone along migratory routes. “Among the sites they are considering, Telegraph is the worst place they could do this” concludes NDOW.

When suggested of other, better sites for their industry - sites that have less habitat value and would have less ecological impacts - the companies agreed, saying that ‘those could be additional sites’. The companies are reluctant to consider sites that are less cost efficient even though they may have less environmental impacts. It would be nice to think that the main driver behind the renewable energy industry is the preservation of the environment and our natural resources, but, sadly, like any other industry, maximizing profit seems to take front seat.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against green energy. I want to see more of it. That’s why this issue continues to fester in my mind as some annoying mind puzzle. Along with using less power, I believe that green energy is the right solution for today’s energy and pollution problems. But, on the other hand, what good is green energy when we need to destroy green to get it? Is a bit of energy worth losing key pieces of habitat? Before you think about answering that question, allow me to add yet another angle to this particular issue, because it’s not that simple.

There is, in fact, another side to this Telegraph Mountain wind energy issue. Since 1992, there have been plans for a large power-line corridor to run north-south through Steptoe Valley - the valley immediately east of Telegraph - which would strongly connect some of the main power-grids in the western states. This corridor, known as the Southwest Intertie Project (SWIP), has never been built, due to a lack of sufficient reason. Another pending (near certain) plan would place one or two 1600kw coal-fire power plant a mere five miles north east of Telegraph. If the wind-power plans develop, then the coal-power plans are more likely to go through. With these, the SWIP line will finally have the prerogative it needs and will almost certainly be built. This massive transmission line would run from southern Idaho to Las Vegas, Nevada; some 390 miles. It would also have major impacts on sage grouse habitat, as well as the ecosystems and precious aesthetic beauty of the valleys it would run through. To add insult to injury, even though there is already a major highway along this exact route, the power line would make its own corridor, zigzagging through countless roadless areas in attempt to minimize its ‘visual impacts’ on residential and high traffic areas. Since the majority of eastern Nevada is virtually uninhabited, the only ‘high traffic’ areas are the highways, and are therefore avoided by the SWIP corridor. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a highway spider-webbed by power lines than a handful of wildernesses thinly strangled by them.

Each one of these components - the wind power, the coal power, and the SWIP line - facilitates the other; and as of now, the local public is relatively uninformed and unconcerned. I am concerned, and anyone who truly knows much about the area and its value is concerned as well.

In my mind, I can see skeptics saying “It’s green energy, why on earth would those concerned about the environment oppose it?” For many people, renewable energy symbolizes our generation’s movement to better the environment; and in many ways it does. However, to assume that all green energy is ‘eco-friendly’ is false. In fact, much of it isn’t. Hydroelectricity projects destroy river ecosystems while solar panels are extremely resource intensive. Green energy is really merely a moderate (and respectable) improvement over fossil fuels. None of them are perfect and none of them are simple.

It seems very critical of me to protest the location and finer points of this opportunity for new renewable energy, and I feel a sense of hypocrisy within me for doing so. Nonetheless, it seems illogical to let this happen. Of course, until the 450 shiny blades are chopping hawks and kestrels in half where the sage grouse and mule deer once lived, the people wont see what they gave up for some green juice.

Tonight I will tape my response to the eco-friendly board once again, because if there is only one thing that I have learned about being a conservationist, it is to never give up. This one will be a little nicer, but its message will not change. I will suggest that our society open its eyes and accept what really is. Green energy is the lesser of two evils, but no one can argue with using less power. Plus, everyone can participate.

So, what are you waiting for? Stop staring into this bum-fuzzled box of glowing glass and plastic and go for a walk, a run, or dig into a good book. May I suggest John McPhee’s Basin and Range?

For more information on the impact of wind turbines and birds, see the American Bird Conservancy Wind Energy Policy at http://www.abcbirds.org/policy/windpolicy.htm