In June of 2002 I made a trip towards Reno to spend a few days hiking the highpoints of northwest Nevada with Adam and Edward, climbing buddies of mine from SoCal. I drove up from Arizona by myself and had a few days to pick off some peaks on my own. I had a great day hike of White Mountain Peak in Mono County, California, and the plan was to attempt Middle Sister Peak in the Sweetwater Range the next day. However, as I rolled into Bridgeport (CA), a massive forest fire was burning in the region, filling the sky and valleys with smoke and getting uncomfortably close to the Sweetwaters. This was the Walker Fire, famous for the scene of the massive air-tanker losing its wings in flight and plowing into the ground in a huge fireball. In Bridgeport I stopped in at the Forest Service station south of town to inquire, but the smell of smoke and the fact the fire line was just a few miles west was all the prompting I needed to steer clear this time. Instead, I hiked Freel Peak the following day, and then onto Reno where I hooked up with the guys. As a result, I left this peak unclimbed, and a hole in my Nevada map! For three years other commitments kept me from going back, until I had a somewhat circuitous opportunity arise in 2005.

For a full, boring account of the details leading up to this opportunity, check out my Ibapah Peak report. I had climbed Ibapah two days previously. The next day (or yesterday, relative to my Sweetwater hike day), I spent a couple hours touring the Lehman Caves at the Great Basin National Park. My dad and I were here in 2001 when I hiked Wheeler Peak, but we did not get a chance to go into the caves, which are one of the other 'main' attractions of the park. Tours are guided and I was lucky enough to get the last remaining space for the early tour, lasting 90 minutes. However, my luck faded when I discovered I would be with about 25 boy scouts, all about in the 12-14 age group. Get a whole bunch of guys that age together and doofusness reigns. Everything the tour guide said was turned into some quasi-sexual 'joke' by one of the wags, followed by bouts of giggling. The leaders were resigned to this and seemingly ignored all but the most egregious behavior. One guy had the balls to ask the tour guide when the tour would end because 'it was boring'... this in the Great Room featuring massive spires and amazing cave formations of every kind! Not enough blinking lights, I guess. Even one of the leaders had to step in here and do some minor damage control. Despite this I had a blast in the caves and can't complain at all, and the tour guide did a fine job in my opinion.

So anyway, once out of the caves I got rolling and spent the rest of the day driving west across Nevada, following US-50 for the 250+ miles it takes to get into the Fallon area. This is the "Loneliest Road", purportedly dubbed so by old Life or Look magazine way back when. It's certainly a lonely road, but others are just as lonely, I guess. The few towns strung out across its breadth play up this image when they can. I enjoyed the long, traffic-free drive, passing up and over numerous ranges and viewing peaks that I had climbed back in 2002 - Diamond Peak in Eureka County, Bunker Hill in Lander County and Desatoya Peak in Churchill County - sort of like saying hi to old friends (as corny as that may sound). I stopped in Fallon to get gas and in Yerington to get groceries. From here I traveled southerly along NV-338, racing the remaining daylight with the hopes of getting to a good camp spot before the sun set for the day. Back in 2002 I did actually do some scouting of the roads leading into the range and had an idea where some good spots were. Even so, I zoomed right past the forest road turn-off from the highway (like I had done in 2002). The poorly-marked road has a sign set in about 40 feet. I came back and started in. The road is known as Toiyabe National Forest Road 050, locally signed as Risue Road or something like that. I went northish about 4 miles to a sharp right bend in the road at an incline. Atop this incline the road bends left (north again) and immediately, a side road branches left (west), heading into the heart of the range. This is as far as I'd got in 2002. With about 1% of daylight remaining, I drove in this side road about 50 feet and found a great camp area immediately on my left - big enough for 3-4 vehicles and flat, surrounded by thickets of pinon, juniper and shrub. I had the site - and the mountain it seemed - all to myself. The weather was cool but nice, and a bit windy, but crystal clear. A gibbous moon provided enough light for me to explore my camp area. I had an enjoyable dinner and sat for long spells in my camp chair staring up at the mountain and the stars in the sky. This is my church.

I awoke the next morning and got moving about 6:30 a.m. I drove up the rest of this road, probably no more than a mile and a quarter, as it gained a good 400+ feet into the hills. I had to use 4-wheel drive for the rocks and pass through a couple wire crumple gates along the way, before coming to the road's end at a corral, where there is a large turn-around and room for a few vehicles. A flat raised berm allows for tent camping, and a privy - a single toilet - sits in the woods a few feet back, open to the world. It looks like it was placed there deliberately for use, not just dumped there as trash. Even so, I didn't explore it much. I got my stuff in order and started in up the trail a bit past 7 in cool, wonderful conditions, just as the sun was rising above the mountains to the east.

The trail starts where the road ends, and for the first few hundred feet is wide enough for a jeep or quadrunner to drive on (allowing for tree branches to rub against the vehicle, perhaps). Soon, however, the trail narrows and runs in and out of a rocky creek drainage, sometimes following the creekbed itself and other times parallelling on the bank. The gain is steady but the gradient is consistent and mostly moderate. I was still sore two days after my Ibapah hike but even so I made great time as my legs were primed from the Ibapah hike. The trail curves slightly left along with the drainage, with the thick forest of pinon, juniper and pine quickly giving way to more open slopes of thick sage. After about an hour and a mile of hiking the creekbed itself grows faint as it gains and meets a broad saddle called Little Smith Valley. The trail, still obvious to follow, runs for a few hundred more yards on a near-level gradient. It hangs a slight right to bypass a small bulwark and eventually tops out directly below a rounded hill at 9,040+ feet that's just to the north (my right). Off to the south (my left), the bare mass of Middle Sister finally comes into view, shrouded on its left by East Sister Peak at 10,404 feet. Off on the western horizon stood snow-covered northern Sierras in California. The sun was still behind East Sister's mass and I had lots of shade; whenever I stood still I caught a chill, so I chose to leave the trail and hike cross-country south toward Middle Sister, aiming for the prominent ridge that sits to the right of East Sister's massif. Once in the sun I stopped and took a nice breakfast break. I had covered maybe 1.5 miles with about 1,300 feet of gain. The great sage scent was everywhere!

Once rested I started again. I could see my route pretty much: a gully/ridge system that needed to be upclimbed about 1,000 feet to a prominent meadow at about 9,700 feet. I could see mostly bare slopes and some sections of forest, and it seemed logical to gain the summit from its north, via the saddle that connects East and Middle Sister Peaks. Figuring staying low in the gully would mean lots of brush, I wormed my way up the ridge into the trees, and did alright for awhile until I found myself in a thicket of brush. After some dead ends I backtracked a bit, then bulldozed my way through some thick scratchy brush to get back onto more open terrain, lower toward the gully. Here I found a faint use path, which I followed (when I could) up to the high meadow. Navigation was very simple as by this time the thick forest cover was long gone. I aimed leftward toward an open scree slope ringed by gnarled bristlecone (?) pine. Once high on the meadow and below the scree I took another break, another hour in and a bit less than 1,000 more feet of gain. The conditions were spectacular.

I began the final push to the summit. I started up the scree slopes, which in places was quite loose and somewhat difficult to keep from sliding backwards, not to mention the millions of little pebbles that fell into my boot! Even so it wasn't too nasty and there was enough foliage and rock sections to keep from having to step on scree the whole time. I gained the high saddle and climbed up moderate-sized talus, which glinted white in the sun and looked like snow from below. After gaining a bit of elevation I could start to assess the final approach. I sort of traversed a bit along Middle Sister's north and northeast flanks across scree and talus until I spied a large cairn topped by a somewhat measly-looking stick. I beelined to it, and once there, dropped the pack to rest and see what I had found. A register was inside, even though the cairn was still well short of the summit. So now I need to explain some things here. Middle Sister's summit, at 10,854 feet, lies inside California, while the Lyon County highpoint is on its north ridge, at roughly 10,580 feet, right where the California-Nevada state line runs across. What I had found was the cairn for the Von Schmidt boundary, in which an early surveyor (Von Schmidt, presumably) had erroneously put the state line a bit west of where it should have been. So the register at this cairn held a few names, some of who signed in thinking they were at the real Lyon County highpoint, while a few others signed in and made it clear this wasn't the real county highpoint. I signed in, too. What the hey.

I decided to drop my pack and make a quick dash up the final 150 feet or so to the real summit, which I did in about 10 minutes round trip, sticking around long enough for a quick photo; I could not find a register here but I didn't look very hard either. Back at the Von Schmidt marker, I could look down and see another large cairn, this one topped by a good-sized post, signifying the real, actual, honest-to-gosh state boundary. Just a few feet north of the cairn/stateline was a rock outcrop, the Lyon County highpoint. I hiked down to it in no time and scrambled up the 15 feet to the top, which was nice, making the Lyon highpoint a real and obvious point instead of an invisible line on the side of a slope. I stayed here awhile and enjoyed the overall scenery and weather. From my truck to the summit was about 3 miles and about 3,300 feet of gain, and it had taken me right about 3 hours including breaks. I stayed at the highpoint for maybe 20 minutes, the started down.

Going down was a breeze! The scree that had been so aggravating going up made up to me going down; I would take a step and it would let me slide 5 more feet each time, sort of like skiing! The scree itself was just the right size and the slopes just right, so that I was down to the high meadow in 15 minutes, no lie (for me, that's fast!). I continued on, finding the use path which I followed all the way down in the gully, which suggests that I should have followed it up in the first place. Sure, in places I had to avoid branches but wasn't as nearly as thick as I had feared. I was back to the Little Smith Valley (saddle) within an hour from the highpoint. Once back on the actual trail I decided that the weather was just too damn nice to rush out of here so I stopped and took a long, 30 minute rest where I just sat there and stared at the peaks and the blue sky, all the while wallowing in the scent of sage and pine in utter silence. Amazing!

Soon, I was moving again, and I made the final bit down to my truck in about 40 minutes, for a downclimb time of 2 hours. I drove out the bumpy road and back onto pavement, where I stopped for one last photo and a friendly salute to the range. I drove about 15 more miles into Bridgeport, California, where I planned to while away my day and attempt Sonora Peak, the Alpine County (CA) highpoint, the next day. I stuck around for a few hours in town, and even drove the highways up and over Sonora Pass to find a good camp spot, but the weather started to deteriorate, and frankly, I had lost my mojo to hike the peak. I'd been on the road now from home for almost 3 solid weeks (counting my trips to my sister's wedding and to Virginia), and I missed my wife and I was just wanting to go home, nothing else. I had climbed two awesome peaks in the last three days and felt that I had got what I came for. And I wanted to bring my wife Beth with me to hike Sonora Peak some time in the future. So I nixed my stay and started the long drive home. I passed south through Bridgeport at dusk and got as far as Lee Vining on US-395 in the dark, eventually camping in the desert south of Mono Lake. The next day was a long drive to Henderson, Nevada, and a day with my folks, then on home the day after.

This hike puts me within one county of completing all seventeen Nevada County highpoints. I plan to visit Elko County's Ruby Dome in 2006, be sure to check back!