Etymology | Story | ||||
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I was in the backwaters of Nevada (ok, to be honest, most of Nevada is in the backwaters), near the CA border east of the White Mountains. I was on my to Reno via a very circuitous route to meet my family for a volleyball tournament over the weekend. I needed to be there by evening and still had a lot of driving to do to get there. I still managed a P2K, a P1K and then a small handful of quick roadside summits. I'd have loved to have at least another week to make a better showing of it, but I suppose it just gives me a good excuse to make another future trip to the area.
I had driven to the TH described by Zdon after a long drive up McAfee Canyon from the west, reaching to 7,500ft where the fair dirt/gravel road goes over a saddle. I had some trouble locating the route he describes and had spent about half an hour the previous evening after the drive trying to locate the "road heading north". The detail missing is that the turnoff for this road is found a short distance east of the saddle, after the main road begins to descend. It was just before 6a when I started out under a predawn sky about 20min before sunrise. Snow could be seen on the White Mtns to the west still hiding in the early morning shadows. Piper's summit is visible from the start but not at all obvious due to its flattened profile against the sky looking north. I followed the road as it wandered north for almost a mile, eventually leading to a ridge where it turns to the left. Desiring a more direct route, I left the road to sidehill across slopes heading more northerly. A considerable amount of elevation was gained before the trees gave way to lower, wind-swept scrub that dominates the highest elevations of the range. This almost turned into a bushwhacking effort but thankfully never got too thick to become problematic. Clouds abutted the summit crest on the NE side, bringing cool air and fog over the ridgeline. They must have come over more heavily during the night because they left a dusting of ice crystals near the summit that still clung to the shadier spots in the early morning.
After a little under an hour and a half I found my way to the summit. It was still pretty cold, probably under 40F. What a contrast to the earlier part of the week when it was 65F at sunrise. Aside from the 1950 benchmark, Gordon (sans Barbara this time) had left a register in 1986 that has proved popular with almost 50 pages of entries. There was an older scrap of paper with it, an envelope with a 1963 postmark from Sacramento, but much of it has deteriorated and been rendered unreadable. For the return route I simply straightened out what I'd done on the ascent, avoiding the upper section of road that jogs west in the wrong direction and reconnecting with the original route lower down at the 7,800-foot level. It wasn't yet 9a by the time I'd returned.
The descent down the main canyon on the return was the most interesting part of the day. The upper part was broad and tame, but this soon narrowed before traveling through a rock garden with some rather large boulders. I kind of suspected there would be dry waterfalls and was not disappointed in this, finding four or five that presented a challenge. The highest one could not be descended (by me) directly, but had a traverse on the west side to get around it. The next one with no bypass looked scary but turned out to be a fun class 3 descent on good rock. The third one encountered had a class 2 scree-filled chute to bypass it to the west. The lowest one had no bypass but also proved class 3. There may have been one or two smaller ones, but these were of no serious consequence. Emerging from the mouth of the canyon I continued south in the wash. I was presented with a view to the west of fresh snow on Boundary Peak at the north end of the White Mtns - seems there was more precipitation up there in the last 24hrs than I saw on the east side of Fish Lake Valley. I was back to the van by 12:30p and had to call a halt to serious peakbagging - I had several hundred road miles to get myself to Reno by evening.
This page last updated: Wed Feb 2 17:50:41 2022
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