Friday June 6, 25.6mi/41.2km
Lime Wash (735.8/6300ft) to Big Smoky Valley (761.4/5490ft) (NV)
It’s daylight so early now, so I was awake at 5:30 and hiking by 6:00. I had a few minutes of hiking up a steep old 4×4 track which got me warmed up pretty quickly.
The rest of the morning was all XC hiking going up and over the San Antonio mountains. It was never steep but it was almost always rocky. Some of the ridgelines even had neat little rock fins.
I could tell this area was recently volcanic due to the rock type, and I had to constantly step over and around them.
The scenery was beautiful though! I just couldn’t look at it while hiking or else I would trip on a rock.
In the distance I could see a Solar Concentrating plant, I had seen one of these before near Vegas and they are a pretty neat idea for generating power.
They’re surrounded by thousands of mirrors which focus the sunlight on a single point in the center. Neat! Since I was up at 8,000 ft I had views in every direction.
Instead of following the guidebook mapped line, I decided to follow my own line for the descent off the ridgeline. It would result in more of a direct descent and less side-hilling across a slope. Ironically when I got to my exit point off the ridgeline, I came across this cool looking rock.
It matches the photo in the guidebook which calls it “Spur Rock”, and says it’s the start of the descent off the ridge. I’m glad my independently created route agreed with the guidebook text, even though the guidebook’s maps don’t match at all. For almost a mile, I descended down a series of steep gullies.
And arrived at the old San Antonio mining area.
There were half a dozen old buildings scattered about, and I didn’t dare walk inside any of them. The floors all looked like they would collapse under my weight.
The rest of the afternoon I hiked on old dirt roads slowly descending down to Big Smoky Valley.
It was of course very easy hiking, and I got to watch the cloud formations grow and shift overhead as they always do in the afternoon.
Looking north, I could see the Toiyabe mountains, where I would be for the next few days.
Also in that photo is a really faint old 2-track road, or “wagon road” as the guidebook calls it. Initially it was difficult to see and follow, but I got the hang of identifying traces of it and connecting to them. After a few more hours of hiking, flat roads like that, sometimes sandy, I arrived at a spot where I could set up my tent. The last few miles of the day were near a ranch, so I couldn’t camp there. And then for a few miles the ground was extremely sandy, which would be impossible to stake in a tent. But I finally found a nice cozy wash to camp in.
I accidentally hiked a bigger day than I intended, especially given that it took me all morning to hike the 10 miles of XC. But the afternoon miles were easy and flew by.