Black Rock Desert

This is not really recommended for just a two day trip from the Central Valley. Most of the day is spent driving, and that doesn't leave much time for hiking and relaxing.

We drove up 395 and tried to cross over to Nevada near Herlong based on a possibly wrong interpretation of a map. It looked like a road led into Gerlach. If there is such a road, we couldn't find it.

We ended up driving to Alturas, then Cedarville. We stopped for a few hours on 8A overlooking Nevada and ate sandwiches and tried to decide if we should camp here or not. Commando and I took a little stroll.

We decided not to camp so headed into the Black Rock Desert, High Rock Canyon, Emigrant Trails area. We camped at Steven's Camp. There's a spring, a cabin, a pit toilet and a trail through a canyon on the Applegate-Lassen cutoff national historic trail. This was one of the gold miner, covered wagon trails out west.

We had a nice camp down near the stream as the cabin was occupied. Commando caught some sleep, but spent a lot of time patrolling the campsite and protecting us from whatever. Strangely, he didn't respond when something in the bushes killed a rabbit (the guess based on the rustling and screaming).

We broke camp very early and headed east on the main "road." We were trying to reach High Rock canyon, but didn't have a very good map and missed it. We spent most of the time on the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge trying to get to Summit Lake. We were stopped at the Summit Lake Indian Reservation...which is perhaps fortunate.

Commando and I did a little hike through a canyon following mustang tracks.

We saw a few pronghorn and several bands of mustangs. We also saw a few coyotes. The most interesting find was a flock of big game birds...grouse?

We drove back to Gerlach and were a little worried about gas. Fortunately, Gerlach was only about 70 miles from us and not the 90 claimed on the sign. We probably had enough gas to go the whole 90, but why risk it. We reached pavement about 20 miles outside of Gerlach and blew out a rear tire going over a cattle guard. Oops.

I was starting to put the spare on when a kind couple stopped...well, the guy did a U-turn to help us...and helped. May they and their descendants people the earth. They had been visiting some friends on one of the ranches.

We'll have to go in the late fall for more than a few days. It's fascinating country and well worth spending time there.