Saturday June 14, 26.7mi/43.0km
Toquima Ridge (881.4/6850ft) to Faulkner Creek (908.1/7400ft) (NV)
It was a great spot in the wash amongst the trees, and I noticed after hiking only a few minutes this morning the trees disappeared as I went downhill.
I finished off the last bit of XC hiking through some sparse sagebrush.
I arrived at Monitor well #3, which the guidebook says is a water source.
However, the windmill was missing most of its parts, and it appeared the well pump had been converted to run on electric. But there was no source of electricity nearby.
It appeared to be wired to run on a generator, which is a very odd setup indeed for a livestock water source. I climbed up on the metal tank and looked inside, only to find it empty of water but did contain two resident birds.
So I continued on across the Monitor valley, the next water source was 8 miles away on easy dirt roads. Thankfully it was a slightly cloudy morning which kept the temperatures nice and cool.
Apparently I had passed by the geographical center of Nevada. I looked for a sign but there was none. Now I kinda want to find the geographical center of all the states (except Hawaii, because it’s probably in the ocean). When I got to Wallace Canyon, I started hearing a lot of hoofbeats, and pretty soon I saw the culprits.
A few minutes later I started seeing riparian vegetation, some willows and cottonwood trees, and found the little side trail through the water source.
The guidebook calls it a springbox, but really it’s just a white PVC pipe. It was only 11am, but I had an early lunch and drank a ton of water since I knew the next water was up and over the Monitor mountain range. So I wouldn’t be seeing water again until tomorrow. The quiet dirt road climbed nice and gradually.
And as I got a little higher, the Aspen trees started to appear again.
After an hour of that nice road I turned onto a steeper 4wd track, which took me up to the top of the mountain range.
It was pretty amazing hiking through a sea of purple flowers for like a quarter mile.
Every time a breeze came, the whole field would shift and sway in vibrant colors. The 4wd track was decidedly inefficient, whoever built it was probably drunk as it went steeply uphill but then also sometimes back down half the gain. Ugh.
Finally after climbing 2,000 feet to gain only 1,200 feet overall, I cruised along the top of the ridgeline for a couple hours. There were lots of horses up here as well, though not all of them were alive.
Another strange sight was the last little bit of lingering snowpack.
After the nice traverse of the ridgeline on old 4wd drive roads, I had a couple miles of XC hiking. About half of the time I was able to follow horse trails to traverse the mountain.
I was pretty amazed to find three different colors of the paintbrush flowers!
Technically I walked on snow today, for all of 4 feet!
After hiking around Summit Mountain (a ridiculous name), I came to the little pass between it and Antelope Peak, so I knew I was almost done with the XC hiking.
Frustratingly, I couldn’t camp at this pass since it was far too windy and there were no trees, even though there had been trees all day at this elevation. So I descended into Faulkner Creek valley.
The guidebook suggested following patchy game trails, which was certainly a successful strategy, there was a very well-used braided web of game trails to link together and follow. I tried to stay away from the creek and it’s thicker vegetation, and pretty soon I was down at an old grassy two-track road. The guidebook full of lies also said there’s a campsite here but there was none to be found, just slope-y overgrown ground. So I followed the grassy two-track road another mile before I found a flat little spot under some pines right next to the road. It appears no one has driven this road in years so I’m not worried about a vehicle coming by. It was such a beautiful day of hiking but I definitely earned it with calories burned, and a few extra unplanned miles at the end of the day. Gonna sleep good tonight!