Nevada Adventure Tour
Nevada Adventure Tour Saturday and I went with Cowboy John!
I don’t usually take part in these Nevada adventure tours, but this one was to be a hike, and I couldn’t pass that up.
We packed a light lunch into my backpack and John’s and picked our friends up at darling Lamoille Guest House at the base of the mountains.
It was overcast and pleasantly cool, a great day for a hike. The flowers are abundant this year so Joann, a biology teacher, enjoyed checking out them and the geology. She’s a rock hound so stopped to admire striations and U-shaped valleys (geologically speaking, they’re glacier formed, as is most of Thomas Canyon).
We stopped to admire Lamoille Lake, but decided we hadn’t gone far enough to be really tired, so continued on to Liberty Pass, 10,450 feet above sea level.
The ecosystem changes to high alpine, which means, in the Rubies, large jagged granite rock. Tiny plants grow prostrate for protection from winter’s snow and wind. I saw Moss Campion, a mat of low growing green hugging the rock with small bright pink five-petaled flowers, yellow Stonecrop, Rose Root, and Mountain Sorrel. They have barely a month to grow, flower, set seed, and wither before early snow. The few pine trees are twisted, bent, hardy survivors.
Joann asked if the pines were Bristlecone. Not here, although there are Bristlecone at the other end of the Rubies on the way to the Ruby Marshes.
Bristlecone are extremely slow growers, especially when conditions are unusually harsh. In some years they may put on only an inch of new tissue. These sturdy specimens, though, live over 2000 years, the longer life span intimately related to the harshness of conditions.
There’s a stand of them with inspiring Park Service signboards in Great Basin park near Eky, Nevada. Both those and the Bristlecones living in northern Nevada are very old. California Bristlecones don’t reach the great age of Nevada Bristlecones, because conditions are much more favorable in California. That’s right. Harsh conditions actually grow a tougher tree.
Liberty Lake sits in a bowl below the trail, nestled above it is the blue jewel, Castle Lake. But, it’s a steady downhill to the Lake, and a steep climb back up, so I was relieved we decided Liberty Pass was far enough for our hike!
The next Nevada Adventure Hike: Liberty Lake!
I don’t usually take part in these Nevada adventure tours, but this one was to be a hike, and I couldn’t pass that up.
We packed a light lunch into my backpack and John’s and picked our friends up at darling Lamoille Guest House at the base of the mountains.
It was overcast and pleasantly cool, a great day for a hike. The flowers are abundant this year so Joann, a biology teacher, enjoyed checking out them and the geology. She’s a rock hound so stopped to admire striations and U-shaped valleys (geologically speaking, they’re glacier formed, as is most of Thomas Canyon).
We stopped to admire Lamoille Lake, but decided we hadn’t gone far enough to be really tired, so continued on to Liberty Pass, 10,450 feet above sea level.
The ecosystem changes to high alpine, which means, in the Rubies, large jagged granite rock. Tiny plants grow prostrate for protection from winter’s snow and wind. I saw Moss Campion, a mat of low growing green hugging the rock with small bright pink five-petaled flowers, yellow Stonecrop, Rose Root, and Mountain Sorrel. They have barely a month to grow, flower, set seed, and wither before early snow. The few pine trees are twisted, bent, hardy survivors.
Joann asked if the pines were Bristlecone. Not here, although there are Bristlecone at the other end of the Rubies on the way to the Ruby Marshes.
Bristlecone are extremely slow growers, especially when conditions are unusually harsh. In some years they may put on only an inch of new tissue. These sturdy specimens, though, live over 2000 years, the longer life span intimately related to the harshness of conditions.
There’s a stand of them with inspiring Park Service signboards in Great Basin park near Eky, Nevada. Both those and the Bristlecones living in northern Nevada are very old. California Bristlecones don’t reach the great age of Nevada Bristlecones, because conditions are much more favorable in California. That’s right. Harsh conditions actually grow a tougher tree.
Liberty Lake sits in a bowl below the trail, nestled above it is the blue jewel, Castle Lake. But, it’s a steady downhill to the Lake, and a steep climb back up, so I was relieved we decided Liberty Pass was far enough for our hike!
The next Nevada Adventure Hike: Liberty Lake!
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