Nevada Adventure: More Than Driving Across the State on the Freeway!

We hiked once again to the top of Thomas Creek above the campground in Lamoille Canyon. It's a tradition for families in the campground to take the 5-10 minute hike to the waterfall. It's steep but the waterfall is spectacular, well worth the effort.

A rocky ledge supporting a twisted Mountain Mahogany tree overlooks the waterfall as Thomas Creek drops straight down rocky granite ledges from high above. It twists through thick vegetation and roars past the ledge where you're standing. It’s breathtakingly beautiful.

The hike was always a Collett family tradition. Summer weekends John’s family, especially his Mother, brought dinner to the Canyon to cook. After hamburgers cooked on the grill and Mother's wonderful homemade cake everyone hiked to the waterfall.

It’s been only the last few years that John and I have continued the hike past the waterfall up the canyon to the wide valley at the top. Tall rocky cliffs surround a valley at the top. Beaver ponds, Corn Lily and Potentilla, and a few Whitebark Pine trees.

Waterfalls tumble down sheer cliffs. This whole valley and canyon was carved out long ago by glaciers. Usually there's noone hiking but us. Sometimes we meet a few people. Often we see deer high on the cliffs ahead.

Right now, though, I’m tired from that five hour hike. I’ll continue with the next installment.

So, bookmark this Blog and join me about Monday for the next installment!

Janice
for Cowboy John tours.

Red Hat Society, Inspired by the Hummingbird?

Scribbled notes, “red head, iridescent purple-blue back, Indian Paint Brush.”

Translated: “Anna’s Hummingbird on an Indian Paintbrush!”

Many folks come here for birds. They check off Audubon bird-counts, hoping to see the PRIZE, the rare and wily Himalayan Partridge. Here’s a picture!
If they can mark that one they’ve made a real score.

This hike we didn’t see the Partridge, but I did spot another bird, a beautiful jewel on an Indian Paintbrush.

Hiking up the stock trail to Lamoille Lake at a particular switchback near a bubbling stream we leave the trail, and head up to a small valley. A glacier gouged out this depression eons ago leaving a lot of small ponds. The wet, mossy ground is carpeted with Elephanthead, Orchid, Shooting Star, Tiny Saxifrage, and Swamp Laurel. Little growing things edge small brooks and moss-covered rocks, everything in miniature.

Reminds me of the delightful ride, “Story Book Land” that used to be in Disneyland. In a rowboat you’d wind in canals through a miniature countryside. Tiny boats tied to little docks, mossy rock cottages, landscaped with very small plants, peopled by characters from the “Mother West Wind Why Stories.” I loved that ride, but that was a few years ago. It’s a roller coaster of some sort now.

This year the valley is wet everywhere. Charming ponds edged with plants that like wet, swampy spots. A few Whitebark Pines are home to Horned Larks and Robins.

And, hummingbirds!

While I’m sitting in the sun an Anna’s Hummingbird whistles by my ear headed for an Indian Paintbrush not far from where I’m sitting.

Hummingbirds are difficult to identify. Every time I hike I hear that hummingbird whistle. When they whiz past your head they’re hard to see, but you can hear the characteristic whistle. And sometimes two males fight directly above you, whistling back and forth, bombing each other, defending a territory only they see.

But this day the tiny bird, a quarter the size of a Robin, hovered with his needle bill in the Mountain Paintbrush not far from where I sat. With jerky movements and blurring wings he remained for a couple of minutes feeding, his purple back flashing in the sun. He’d picked a particularly tall and colorful Paintbrush with bright red bracts.

“When I am an old woman I will wear purple with a red hat!” We’ve taken some of them on tour, too. The Red Hat ladies! Fun group!

Nevada Adventure Hikes Get You Red and Blue!

Red and blue. My fingers, red and blue.

Berry picking.

We sampled as we hiked Sunday up Right Fork Creek above Lions camp. Thimble berries and Servis berries.

The trail goes straight up the mountain. That is, when you finally find it. This year the trail is in the lake, a beaver lake. Beaver are clearing aspen for another dam, so now the little stream is a shallow lake. I shloshed through without getting both boots wet, just the left one.

We hiked straight up through shrubs, Quaking Aspen, and Rose, the sun thankfully hidden behind clouds. A steep hike. Halfway up I remember why I don’t like this part of the hike.

When we have a chance to breathe again I’m amazed at the vegetation. Lush and thick clear up the mountain to my left, perfect Mule Deer and Blue Grouse country. The trail ahead slopes down and we, like Alice, descend into the rabbit hole.

Into a cool jungle of green and shadow. My favorite, Dogwood, is here, white berries catching the light, orange Rose hips, and gray-trunked Alder. There are the seductive red clusters of Baneberry, and Mountain Ash berry bunches turning autumn orange already. Purple gray berries lie against the deep green leaves of Elderberry.

We walk through Aspen, Willow, and Thimbleberry and can’t resist the berries. Wide maple-shaped leaves form a thicket high as my shoulder. Spotted in the green mass are the bright red treats that stain our fingers. Tasty, they remind me of raspberries.

Growing up we had raspberries. Dad and Mom had a very productive garden and the raspberries were one of the favorites.

Later when John and I visited with our three boys Mom held out buckets which they grabbed on the way to the patch. Thimble Berries are much smaller, but they’re just as good, freshly tart.

Even John eats, stopping at each patch.

Our hike will be a long one. We’re not making much progress up the trail. John usually nags me to quit eating everything I see. “You gonna eat or hike?” But today he’s sampling just as I am.

I stop at Servis Bushes to scoop blue-black, plump berries into my mouth. Servis berries aren’t quite as soft and juicy as Thimble berries. A Thimble berry in the mouth dissolves into sweetness the minute it touches your tongue. Tiny seeds with a delicious crunch are all that’s left behind.

Except for red and blue fingers.

This is what you really want to do!

Hike with us in barren (let those who whizz by on the freeway think that!)Nevada!

You Can Wallk in Wagon Ruts of the old California Trail

You can stand in California Trail ruts a half-hour from town and look into the past.
Only ten to thirty minutes from Elko you can see where the wagons rolled over the sage brush in the mid-1800s. The ruts are still there.

Nevada’s so wide open that history is still visible. We’re a high mountain desert, and much of our country is what most of America would call remote, open country, so the Trail itself is easy to see in quite a few places. Not only is it easy to see, but there are more miles of the California Trail in our state than in any other.

From the I-80 freeway going to Reno you can see the cut in the hills where the Donner Party on the infamous Hastings Cutoff emerged from the Ruby Mountains to join the main trail to California. The Hastings Cutoff put them behind schedule, so they were stuck at the base of the Sierra Mt. at first snowfall, and it was too late to go on.

This coming up year, 2006, just off I-80 with a view of the Donner Party’s Cutoff, we’re building a Center for travelers to experience the California Trail as it was in the mid-1800s. Follow the Trail with the Donner Party and others as they met the Indians, crossed the Platte River at flood stage, collected buffalo chips for cooking fuel, crossed the dreaded 40-mile desert, and buried their loved ones dead from cholera. At the California Trail Center you'll not only listen to diaries, walk through vegetative zones on the trail, smell the smells, touch, and live with the pioneers that rough journey, you'll also see the actual land they drove and walked across. It’s going to be spectacular center, well worth a visit.

But you can come NOW. No need to wait for the Trail Center to be built. Cowboy John will show you robin-egg blue sky, that same sky at night filled with stars, and, oh, yes, the Hastings Cutoff and wagon ruts stretching into the sage.

Even Wildflower Hikes Are Not What They Seem!

Things are not what they seem.

Each time at this switchback, wet from springs, I look for them. Slender stems supporting a cluster of six-petaled creamy white stars.

The soil will dry later and support only the low-growing juniper.

Today it’s lush, a skillfully arranged Japanese garden with prostrate juniper, one or two purposefully positioned boulders, and striking white blossoms.

The white clusters caught my eye a few years ago, and I didn’t know what they were. Six-petals and exquisite markings usually point to the Lily family. Petals of the stars are outlined in a fine green line with green dots in a circle around a center greenish-yellow, heart-shaped decoration. The blossoms, keep in mind, are tiny, less than an inch across, and yet their design is intricate.

The sun was shining at my back and I could have taken a picture but didn’t have the camera. That means another hike in the morning.

I’ve seen them other times in the Rubies. The small white clumps make them conspicuous. Beautiful and delicate, but they are not what they seem.

They’re Death Camas. They’re poisonous.

All parts are poisonous. My guidebook says very poisonous, especially the bulb.

I hike and habitually sample berries along the trail: Servis berries, my favorite, Chokecherries, aptly named for their smoky “choking” taste, Currants, Rose hips, with their vitamin C, and prickly Gooseberries. I’m careful to sample only those I know well.

Things on the trail and events in my life are not what they seem at first. Traumatic incidents are not what they appear when first you’re rudely slapped ‘longside the head. Often, like death camas, real growth and deep learning is hidden in what seems disastrous.

Death Camas is not what it seems at first glance. Below its obvious beauty lies the sinister.

If all opposites, good and evil, white and black, hot and cold, are no more than gradations on a sliding scale, then are both extremes essential for balance in our universe?

Is Death Camas beautiful because is blended with beauty?

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!

"Hiking on Mount Parnassus"

We hiked most of the morning to the top of Thomas Creek, dawdling to take photos of us, Jazz our dog, the mountain, and wildflowers.

It’s still that bright green of early June up high. The rivulet from a spring on the slope is running cheerily across the trail. We’ve come to the stream after a long and steep hike, just before breaking into the large valley and rocky cliffs at the top.

The creek’s banks are verdant with spongy moss dotted pink and white, overhanging willow, and shooting stars, and a cluster of white Fringed Grass of Parnassus, that catches John’s eye,

“Look at this!”

A mossy shrine: five-petaled blossoms float above emerald, heart-shaped leaves forming a miniature holy place.

“Parnassus,” a mountain in Greece, near the Gulf of Corinth, was sacred to Apollo and the Muses in ancient times. Today "Parnassus"is any center of poetic or artistic activity.

The brooklet singing down the mountain is a "center of artistic activity." Do what you love.

That’s the intention.
To read more about day or half-hay wildflower hikes

These birds are delightful. They come to our house every year in mid summer, never in spring. They flit around, chattering continually. There can’t be that much going on in their world.

Cassin’s Kingbirds are a little smaller than Robins, and gray all over except for soft yellow on the belly. They sit intermittently on the electrical wire going to our house and chatter, sally forth to the TV antenna on the roof chattering and snapping up passing insects all the while, then back to the wire, jabbering the entire day.

My friend Carole’s two little granddaughters play outside all morning at her ranch with a big lawn and huge cottonwood trees. The girls are busy riding scooters back and forth, baking and cooking in pretend kitchens, painting pictures. Chattering Kingbirds!

I spotted two of these birds on my chokecherry bush outside the dining room window this afternoon. Perched on branches already loaded with purple-red cherries they sampled a few, one at a time. They chattered back and forth to each other before flying away.

The chokecherries, I guess, aren’t quite ready yet. Still too bitter. They’ll be back.

I will, too.

Janice

Are You a Parry's Primrose or a Pasqueflower?

I discovered it last year while hiking by myself. Just past “Willow Alley” on the Lamoille Lake trail I was stopped in my tracks by incandescent pink! A glance up the granite slope to the left drew my attention. Splashes of Parry’s Primrose bright pink everywhere on the mountainside. Fuschia against gray. Definitely a “Notice-me statement!”
Some people are like that. Showy, dramatic, they take up a lot of space, make a lot of noise. Parry’s Primrose folks.

On both sides of the creek after the snow melts, a wide blanket of pink fills the gully and sweeps down with the rushing water. Parry’s Primrose. Dramatic, “Watch me!”
Other folks are quieter, take a little more time to be noticed. Their beauty appears only after patient time and diligent listening.

I happened to catch a soft blue bud out of the corner of my eye in the shadow of the boulder below the trail. My mind quickly went through its files, came up with “no-match,” and alerted my conscious mind.

I scrambled down with my faded copy of “A Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers,” by John Craighead.

I’ve hiked these mountains so much I’m familiar with the flowers at every switback. Special gardens have names. On the Island Lake trail there’s the English Garden, Death Switchback, the Rose Garden, and St John’s Pocket. Lamoille Lake trail has Willow Alley, and Primrose Grotto.

But that day I saw a new face, Pasqueflower.

The bud before blooming is a soft blue, which opens to a cup-shaped blossom with no true petals, just blue and violet sepals that look like petals. It blooms quite early—late this year because of all the snow we’ve had–and is usually gone by the time most people start hiking the mountains. I haven’t seen it anywhere else in the Rubies. Doesn’t mean it’s not here, probably means I just haven’t come on it. After blooming the flower surprises by turning to a wispy, feathery “Dr. Seuss” seed pod.

Our world is richer for both Parry’s Primrose and Pasqueflower. We’re richer when we become aware enough to look for the quieter dispositions, too. Many things wait in quiet corners for discovery. It’s a fortunate day when we happen upon them…

Come explore granite boulders, wildflowers, hummingbirds, and pastel-hued snow banks with us! (Why is that snow “pink?”)

I've Seen The Elephant!

Saturday, we led a wildflower/birding hike in the Ruby Mountains with folks from Reno, Nevada. The sun was partially hidden behind low clouds so temperatures were pleasantly cool. Unusual for this time of year. At this altitude it’s usually harshly hot.

Little streams tumbled down mountainsides, with flowers clustered on lushly green banks. That’s where we saw the ELEPHANT, on the creek bank! Not one, but lots of them!

"Seeing the elephant" in the mid 1800s when people moved west on the California Trail came to mean surpassing anything done before, an experience on the trail that was traumatic, terrifying, and life-changing.

The California Trail is fresh in my mind because friends and I presented a talk recently in the City Park, "Women on the California Trail." (Nevada has more miles of the California Trail than any other state.)

So, when I saw the elephant beside the stream I thought of our talk and the California Trail.

The "elephant" is, of course, a wildflower! Did you guess?

Rising out of lush greenery around streams are bright pink flower stalks, 12-18 inches tall, covered in small reddish-purple blossoms. Each tiny blossom looks like an elephant’s head with even a trunk. That’s the real name of the flower, "Elephanthead."

You hardly have to use your imagination. They look just like small heads with trunks! The spike is packed so tight with these little heads it looks like a pink pagoda.

Like Dumbo, I’m seeing pink elephants.

Years ago I remember I loved showing this flower to our boys when we hiked. "What are elephants doing in our mountains?" we’d say. When we got home we hauled out the LP to play Dumbo’s song.

This elephant isn’t traumatic, or terrifying. Seeing these elephants could be life-changing, though; hiking in these mountains often is.

"Pink elephants on parade. Here they come……"

You know you can call for a family wildflower hike. We’ll find those pink elephants, along with birds, trout hiding in high mountain lakes, and lots of fresh air and blue sky.

I saw the Elephant!

Seeing the elephant” was a phrase thrown about during the days of the California Trail migration.

“Seeing the elephant” meant doing something surpassing anything you had done before, experiencing something on the trail that was so big, so terrifying, so huge that it was unheard of, beyond belief.

Well, I saw the elephant!

But it has nothing to do with the California Trail.

By the way, you can still see wagon ruts of the Trail in Elko county, stand in the ruts and look into the past.

But that has nothing to do with MY elephant! More later.
John and I are heading to a touring workshop in Battle Mountain this morning. Talk more later.

Janice

Orchids for the Prom? Maybe a little small!

Most folks don't expect orchids in Nevada. It's a sand-box desert. Right?

Wrong. Not all of Nevada is Las Vegas style, dry and hot.

We live in northern Nevada, over a mile high elevation and hike the Ruby
Mountains, a half hour from our house.

Hiking in the Ruby Mountains in northern Nevada is like being in the Alps,
Tetons, or Rockies.

John and I hiked this morning in July before work up the stock trail to
Lamoille Lake in the Rubies. The sky was gray and cloudy. I'd smelled
smoke the night before and wondered if lightening had started something.
We've had a wet spring, and its' prime fire season now. there could be rain
up high today, and lightening in the valley below.

Grass and flowers are thick and high this year making our hike glorious.
Streams drop down the mountainside along the trail, some merely trickle
through granite crevices while others rush to meet the creek below.
It's a perfect day for a hike. Sometimes at this elevation the sun is relentless;
today the air is soft, temperature, cool.

Along the rills are lush gardens of Ceanothus, Brook Saxifrage, and
Shooting Stars.

Above all are small waxy towers, the Bog Orchid. Orchid bulbs are
eatable, but my Field Guide cautions against eating them because
American orchids are rare, although they seem to be common in our
Ruby Mountains. They're at home in high altitude, boggy situations
along streams.

Creamy white blossoms, thirty or so, wee versions of the cultivated
orchid John gave me for a college dance over forty years ago, are clustered
on stalks rising 1-2 feet above green orchid-like leaves. The plants
resemble exotic "mosque" towers, stately, and elegant, and I can
imagine imams calling the faithful to prayer from "places of adoration."

Appropriate that they be here. I can't walk by one of these brook
sanctuaries without stopping to adore.


Stopping is also an excuse for a drink and snack. Today it's chocolate
almond shortbread.