Day 16
0 miles
We zeroed in Eureka. I ate ice cream twice. We watched Mrs Doubtfire.
Day 17
12.1 miles
We walked out of Eureka almost completely on dirt roads to just below Newark Summit. It is very windy on the ridge, so we found a little protected area in some trees to camp. It was extremely smoky today. At least the sunset was very pretty.
Day 18
11.8 miles
We continued on the Diamond Crest today, summitting Diamond Peak. It is an incredible, vast range, with no trail at all except occasional animal trails from the wild horses. Beautiful, hard hiking.
Day 19
12.4 miles
We woke up and got moving at 8:30. It wasn’t as cold last night as it had been predicted. We continued along the Diamond Crest-pretty quickly we crossed a bowl that had no discernible horse trail and was just a mess of thick weeds and unstable talus. It’s exhausting to side hill traverse/bushwhack on that kind of terrain. It seemed like it would have been much easier to just gain the true Crest in those kinds of places. We kept walking along the Crest, bowl after Peak after bowl. I was still moving just so slowly. I felt frustrated, exhausted, annoyed at things fair and unfair- the lack of Trail, my slow pace, the rash on my back from mahogany, Da Bear’s irascible good mood. At 4:30 pm we were still something like 8 miles from the end of the Crest and the next water source. I had just over a liter of water left-not enough. Da Bear could have blasted out the rest of it on his own, as a night hike-but I am just not strong enough to do that right now. We made the decision to exit the Crest down Water Canyon, which we hoped had…well… water. It was a mess of blow downs and thick weeds, but sure enough at 7:00 we found a really nice flowing spring. We made camp. I passed out wearily at 9:30.
Day 20
25 miles
Da Bear awoke this morning and really felt like going back up to the Crest and finishing the ridge route. We made a plan to meet at Jacobs Well, and I started hiking at 7:30am-down a little farther in the canyon, and I came upon a really spectacular ruin-it was a round stone building with an intricately designed archway at its entrance. The ceiling was caved in, and there clearly had been a fire at some point-but I wasn’t sure if it was a Native American structure or a mining relic.
I continued down the dirt road, which eventually spilled out onto a main dirt road. Two tractor trailer trucks passed me, and a smiling family in a pickup-they rolled down their window-“you good?” It’s pretty strange to see a backpacker on this road-it’s really in the middle of nowhere, just ranches and farmland.
Just after 12 o’clock the weather turned. It had been sunny and pleasant, not too hot-then big thunderclouds rolled in on all sides, settling on the Diamond ridge line above me. Poor Da Bear, that really sucks. He’ll probably have to hunker down for awhile, which will slow him down even more. He had told me “Don’t wait up for me, I probably won’t be there by the time you go to bed.” A few raindrops sprinkled on me, but nothing serious. Thunder rumbled and lightning lit up the Diamond ridge line above me, again and again. I passed a monument for the Pony Express, then turned onto the Pony Express Trail towards Overland Pass. I slowly ascended the pass, then stopped at Corta Spring-a shallow, cow-contaminated pool-I went ahead and got 2 liters in case the next source was dry. I walked down the other side of the Pass. A large jackrabbit gently loped out of the sage into the trail in front of me and blinked at me. He didn’t seem to be too scared of me. Jackrabbits are amazing creatures-everything seems wrong proportionally. Their ears are almost the size of their body, and their feet are massive. I finally wearily arrived at Jacobs Well with the last of the light. Jacobs Well is just a site of old ruins of a Pony Express way station, with a fence and a few interpretative signs. A large owl wordlessly sailed over me and landed on the fence. He swiveled his head every which way when I shone my headlamp at him-I don’t think he sees those too often. I set up my tent, made my dinner of gnocchi and Alfredo sauce, and settled in for the night. The moon rose, full and red behind the lingering smoke that today’s storms didn’t completely clear.
Day 21
18.6 miles
A skunk visited me around 1 am. I could hear him snuffling and scratching near my head-and of course his smell gave him away (and woke me up.). The temperature dropped dramatically in the night-5900’ on the basin floor-and there was condensation. When I woke up at 6:30, Da Bear’s tent was set up about 30’ away-he had come in at 11 pm and had set up far away so as not to wake me. He told me his story of the day before-it was as bad as it looked from the road. He was 2.5 miles from the end of the Crest when the lightning storm settled on top of him-striking again and again the places he was heading on the ridge. He hightailed it down 3 Mile Canyon, which is very steep and cliffy-but it was his only option for safety. He took the road around that I had taken, briefly. He hiked 30.2 miles.
We had a relaxing morning. A slow breakfast, and I took a bath and dried in the desert sun, now warm. We started hiking at 10 am-the first water source was dry, dry, dry, a tank for cattle with a pump and a generator. Those cattle must not be grazing here now. We hiked on to Cherry Spring, which was running beautifully, and had a late lunch. We are both getting pretty short on food-the Diamonds took a lot longer than we expected. I had a few more gnocchi. I started the hike up towards the Rubies-the smoke seemed to clear, or perhaps it is worse at lower elevation. The route went up a canyon, which became choked with underbrush-then ascended a rock dry fall and went cross country through the Sage until it gained the Crest. Da Bear soon caught up with me and we walked on the Crest as the sun set, and it grew dark. We found a camp on the other side of dry Burro Lake.
Day 22
15ish miles
Today started out one way and then quickly changed gears. I got up before 6 and started hiking at 7-we had 20 miles to Harrison Pass and our food cache, and a lot of it was off-trail, ascending Pearl Peak-I knew I was going to be slow on those parts. We had to get to Harrison Pass today because we were basically out of food. I completed the 2.5 miles to the next listed water source, a small spring and creek, and it was….bone dry. We had anticipated that this source would be good and had unfortunately gambled so far on this that I was completely out of water, using the last of it for breakfast. I knew Da Bear had no water as well. I checked the spring source and looked around a little bit-no water, and the creek bed quickly became a cliff going down towards Ruby Valley. I sat down to wait for Da Bear. He came hiking along a few minutes later. He saw me leaning against the spring tank.
“No water?”
“Nope.”
“Shit.”
There were no more sources for 11 miles along the route, up and over Pearl Peak, and nothing else that was close and probably running up on the ridge.
“I think we gotta drop down. We’re out of options,” I said.
We found a route off the ridge that looked like it would go, and bushwhacked slowly downwards, connecting with some old mining roads. The sun rose in the sky and it got hotter, and I felt my dry mouth and lips. We finally dumped onto Ruby Valley Road and turned down towards a boat dock on Ruby Lake. The Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge is this massive, green valley with a million little connected lakes. I walked out onto the boat ramp and got water from the lake, filtering it and drinking a liter in huge gulps over about 30 seconds. I looked around. There was a large cement pit toilet, the kind the Park Service uses, which provided shade, and a trash can. The boat ramp sat on the sparkling lake, cattails whispering in the breeze. Some black ducks were paddling around, fishing and calling to each other, and everywhere I looked there were swallows-swooping and soaring, crowding each other in a line off the handicap parking sign in the parking lot, chirping and singing. I was filled with a sense of peace and calm-it was just such a different environment than the one we have been in, high Alpine and wind, harsh landscapes. Da Bear found a swallow’s nest in one of the bathrooms-and over the edge of the nest peeped three little baby swallow heads, blinking at us.
We relaxed in the shade, ate lunch, and I took a bath, and Da Bear swam in the lake. I loved it so much.
We started walking the 14 miles towards Harrison Pass along Ruby Valley road, now
really with no food, and we explored an old pioneer log cabin, built in 1860. We kept walking, and a pickup truck slowed and pulled over, towing a trailer full of wood.
“Where are you headed?”
“Up Harrison Pass.”
“That’s where we’re goin’! Hop in the back!”
We happily scrambled over farming equipment and two tires to settle in the bed of the truck and rode on up the Pass. The couple’s names were Theresa and Jason, and they were trappers that lived in Spring Creek, the other side of the Pass. They drove us up to the Pass and then chatted with us for awhile, about the mountains and the animals that live there. I think out of all the places I have visited, Nevada has some of the nicest people I have ever met.
We dug up our cache. We have three days of food for the Ruby Crest Trail and to get to Elko. We set up the tent and made dinner as the sun set. A perfectly happy day, just different from how it started.
Day 23
18.1 miles
We started the Ruby Crest today. The trail started out as a dirt road, climbing upwards-then transitioned into trail. It is still pretty smoky. We camped at Overland Lake, which is an incredible alpine lake with a little rustic cabin on one end. It is such an incredible relief to walk on an actual trail, and the miles come much more easily.
Day 24
15.7 miles
We didn’t sleep well-wind, and cold in the lake basin-and started hiking around 9 am. The Ruby Crest Trail continued to be fantastic all day, staying high, around 10,000 feet, and then summitting Wines Peak. From there the trail dropped down towards Favre Lake. The trail, as it descended, was an incredible bouquet of fall colors. The underbrush has turned flame red in large part, painting the mountainsides scarlet on their flanks. As the sun set, the evening light seemed to make the red leaves glow. I walked slowly, delighted by the exquisite beauty. I once again felt an overwhelming sense of calm-and also I thought “oh no! It can’t be autumn yet! We still have so far to hike…”We saw no one all day. Da Bear was feeling ill today, getting worse as they day progressed-stomach upset, headache, tired. We arrived at beautiful Favre Lake at 6 pm and decided to just call it a day. I made a fire in the large fire pit, and we ate dinner, and he fell asleep in my lap at 8:45pm-definitely not normal, he usually goes to bed around 11. Hopefully he feels better tomorrow.
Day 25
12ish miles
Da Bear was ill in the night. His fever broke, though, and it seems like it was probably some form of bacteria from a water source, likely the Ruby Valley lake that we dropped down to.
We started hiking around 9 am and went up and over Liberty Pass, around a beautiful set of alpine lakes. We dropped down to the Roads End trailhead, which was a massive empty parking lot. The road to this trailhead, normally very popular, is closed because of a landslide about 3 weeks ago. We soon came upon Forest Service workers clearing huge piles of dirt and boulders off the road. We made our way down the road and got a hitch in the back of a pickup truck for a long way, up until 6 miles outside of Elko Nevada-the side of a highway next to a gas station. It wasn’t a good place to try and hitch. We tried unsuccessfully for about half an hour-and a state trooper pulled over and politely let us know that it is illegal to hitchhike in the state of Nevada. Great. We called Elko’s only taxi service for a ride to the motel, and checked in at the Hampton Inn-which felt luxurious. We got a shuttle ride from the motel to a Basque restaurant, and Da Bear managed to bring up the fact that we would need a ride to the trailhead-and the driver incredibly graciously offered to drive us on Saturday. We stuffed ourselves on incredible Basque food, then returned to the motel, did our laundry, and enjoyed a few episodes of Family Feud like 90-year-olds. We passed out around 10 pm.
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