Continued...
It was our third day of peakbagging in Nevada and the second doing short hikes
between longish drives in Tom's Jeep. We were tackling a handful of peaks in
the Montezuma and Silver Peak Ranges, most of them found in either Walt
Wheelock's Desert Peaks Guide or Andy Zdon's Desert Summits. The
longest hike was barely 3mi roundtrip but we still managed almost 4,000ft of
gain - it seems the Jeep mostly gets all the easy hiking done, leaving just
the steep stuff at the end.
Montezuma Peak / Carroll Peak
We were camped off Silver Peak Rd, just west of US95, between the towns of
Tonopah and Goldfield. This freshly paved road is a treat in the Nevada
outback, though it ends rather abruptly before reaching the town of Silver
Peak many miles to the west. Long before this, we turned south on Montezuma
Well Rd, a good dirt road suitable for all vehicles that leads to a microwave
relay tower atop Peak 7,790ft. A poorer road forks off this at the base of the
mountain's east side, continuing higher towards Montezuma. The Jeep managed
this nicely, plus a little bit further on the deteriorating road to its end
where we parked of the range highpoint less than a mile away.
took less than half an hour, getting us to the top by 7:15a.
There were the usual pinyons and junipers in the lower reaches, but
is more open with just low scrub for coverage. An older,
tattered register showed the peak was quite popular. Greg
Vernon left in 2010 on his visit. A lower summit to
somehow got named Carroll Peak, giving us a reason to tag it.
between the two took a leisurely ten minutes.
Finding no register, we left one of our own before returning back to the
Jeep. In order to avoid going back over the top of Montezuma, we sidehilled
around its west side, though I'm not sure if that was much of a time-saver.
Peak 7,790ft
Before driving back out to Silver Peak Rd, we paid a visit to the microwave
tower atop Peak 7,790ft. The road leading to the summit is signed for No
Trespassing, owned by the ubiquitous American Tower Co, but there is no gate
and we simply drove to . is conveniently
unfenced, making it easy to tag this one. On our drive back out we stopped at
an interesting stone (of sorts) found just off the road at the
Montezuma site. Someone has improved on the original structure with hours upon
hours of labor moving rocks and carefully fitting them in place.
Mineral Ridge
We spent the next 30 minutes driving to the town of , about
12mi
west on Silver Peak Rd, the last eight miles on an excellent dirt road. Silver
Peak once had enough residents to field a school, playgrounds and lots of mining
jobs dating back to 1864. There are now just over 100 residents, most involved
in the extraction of lithium from the floor of Clayton Valley, a dry lake bed
near which the town lies. This is the only active source of this mineral
within the US though it pales in comparison to other operations in Chile,
Bolivia, Argentina and Australia. The road we traveled goes right through the
middle of the active brine pools from which the lithium salts are extracted,
not a simple operation, but not very high tech either. There are lots of old
machinery, pipes, hoses and other gear left scattered about, discarded - not
the prettiest of places to visit.
Of course we weren't here to visit the town but rather a handful of summits
in the Silver Peak Range that rises above Clayton Valley to the west. We
followed the good (but sometimes surprisingly steep) dirt Coyote Rd out of town
heading west then northwest as it climbs 3,000ft to a saddle at Coyote Summit
before continuing down the other side and into Fish Lake Valley. At the summit
we turned right to follow the road heading to the Oro Monte Mine. We were
less than a mile from the summit of Mineral Ridge when we encountered
at the active mine. Two vehicles were parked outside and no one could be seen,
at first. I figured it was a Sunday and no one would be around and was in
favor of simply going over the fence. Tom decided to try the phone at the gate.
The phone rang without answering, but after about 30sec the gate opened as we
saw someone in a hardhat and orange vest enter a mobile office. We looked
quizzically at each other, shrugged our shoulders and drove in. What we should
have done was simply driven to where we wanted to go and get our hike done
with, but we figured we should stop at the office and ask permission. We were
inside a minute or two before we got someone's attention, a strong-shouldered
young lad in his 20s who gazed at us with a puzzled looked when we asked if
it would be ok to climb the highpoint. "You're with who?" he asked, thinking
we were some subcontractor or government agency. It didn't occur to me at the
time that three guys old enough to be his father would have him assume we were
there on legit business. When he finally understood we were just some morons
from California who wanted to explore his work site, he politely refused our
request. Rats. Mineral Ridge would need to be approached from a different
direction, but that would have to wait for some future mission. Back to the
Jeep we went and left the mine grounds.
Peak 8,380ft
Not far from the mine we turned right on a poor dirt road and drove about half
a mile north until we were about 3/4mi east of this P1K. We spent about 25min
climbing 600ft over
to reach the with a clear view of the other peaks we
planned to visit - , Red Mtn and
. We found no register here and left none.
Rhyolite Ridge
This was the most interesting peak of the day because it was the only one with
a bit of scrambling, only a very short section, but the ridgeline has an
impressive facing southeast, uncharacteristic of most of the
peaks in the broad area. Once again, the Jeep allowed us to approach
than your standard 4WD vehicle, following a series of poor
dirt roads until we were about a mile east of the summit. A little under 45min
was needed to to the top. We followed a subsidiary
ridgeline northwest and west until at the base of the cliff, finding a 30-foot
followed by a traverse across sandy slopes to
reach a reasonable-looking that we used to gain the
crest. From there it was an easy walk to the highpoint with a delightful
at of the clifftop. Thomas Gossett
of Trona had left a register here , replaced by a newer one
left by John Vitz .
Silver Peak
It was around 1:30p by the time we had driven back to the better Coyote
Rd, with two peaks remaining. The order didn't seem important until well after
we had started the drive to Silver Peak. The road we drove around the north
side of Silver Peak turned out to be the roughest one Tom had driven on yet. He
was still having fun but he admitted small measures of nervousness and perhaps
even terror at the large rocks we bounced our way over. The road was in as poor
of shape as one might imagine while still being driveable. By the time we had
crested a saddle at over 8,000ft, Tom was certain he was not interested in
driving back down the same route, especially after learning there was probably
a better road coming up from the south and west sides. We met this better road
shortly after dropping down the west side of the saddle, then took a rougher
spur road approaching Silver Peak from the northwest. This road has not been
driven in some time and we had to get out to start prunning the trees and brush
that have begun to encroach on the track. After much effort and only a few
hundred yards we gave up the effort, parking the Jeep and starting
,
about a mile and a half from the summit. We followed the continuation of the
road we were driving for less than a mile to a saddle where the road drops to
a high basin west of the summit. We to hike steeply uphill
cross-country for the remaining distance, going over a false summit before
finding the highpoint another 1/3mi behind it. We could see a bright orange
tent set up high in the basin just below a telecom tower to the southwest of the
highpoint. After we reached we heard voices and noted two
people walking down towards the tent from the telecom installation. It seems
they
probably drove to the tower before setting up camp a short distance away. Such
a route to Silver Peak would make for a rather easy half mile walk - still, we
couldn't really complain seeing as our route wasn't all
that hard. Silver
Peak features a MacLeod/Lilley register . The second visitor
was in 2003 and since then only a handful of folks have added entries. It's not
the highest peak in the range (that honor goes to Piper Peak, about 7mi to the
southwest), but it still has more than 1,000ft of prominence. It's also not
the most striking summit - that one goes to Red Mtn, so it's somewhat odd that
the range was named for this peak.
After
to the Jeep via much the same route, we recognized that it
was already 4:30p and too late for Red Mtn. Like Mineral Ridge, it would have
to wait for a future mission. We spent the next hour and
a half driving back out of the range, across
and back to our
other vehicles near US95. We hoped to find dinner in Goldfield to the south,
but the only restaurant in town was closed for the day. Looks like we would
have to settle for the canned and packaged foods we'd brought with us. We
continued south on US95 and then west to Lido Summit on SR266 where we found a
place off the road to make dinner and spend the night.
It was a tight spot but we managed three
relatively flat spots for our vehicles and made due. Blue Dick was on the
agenda for the morning, not far from where we stayed. At over 7,000ft we would
be able to sleep comfortably in the cooler temps the extra elevation provided...
Continued...