Mt. Lincoln

Here is how your day goes. It starts early; not long after it is light. It is cold in your camp. The cool air has funneled down your canyon from the high country during the night. You went to bed not long after dark because you were tired from the previous day’s hiking. Getting an early start is good because it is going to be a hot day. You make lunch, pack plenty of water, and shoulder your pack for the climb.

Your camp is in an aspen grove in a canyon that is full of aspen groves. There is a creek which looks like it might run in a wet year, but this is a dry year. You are camped in the shade of tall aspen trees at the end of the road. Your camp is also a sheep pasture on public land. The animals have chewed all the vegetation to the ground, and the ground is a mess of pulverized dust. The aspen trees are covered with inscriptions and graffitti, some of it dating back to the 20’s, when hispanic shepherds tended flocks here. The old inscriptions are beautifully carved, as if written with a fountain pen: "Maximino Oryesa de Espana 1930" The newer graffitti looks like it was banged out on a faulty dot matrix printer: "Jeb ‘92".

There is a trail shown on your map, but you cannot find it. Many trails in the outback of Nevada have fallen into disuse and require more work to follow than to just go as you please. This dry watercourse pleases you: non-brushy and not too steep. The forests and mountainsides of Nevada are generally open when they are not cliffed, so picking your own path works fine. As you start to sweat your way up the grade you think about the difference between historical inscriptions and graffitti. Are the more recent ones just defacement? How many years must pass before something is historic? Is Jeb just a redneck hunter while Maximino is a romantic shepherd from another era? You decide that Historic means before WWII. Anything after that is without innocence and therefore vandalism. Maximino, do you agree? Si! Any dissenters? You look around. There is only the sagebrush. You chuckle at your arbitrary assignation and climb on up.

The aspens turn to sagebrush which turns to big Douglas firs. A whole forest of them. And up you go. The spicy scent of sagebrush follows you, some still stuck in your boot laces. You pick a grade of steepness that you can climb without frequent rest stops, and switch back up the mountainside. A trail would be easier, but this climbing isn’t so bad. You look ahead to find faces with enough flatness to keep the climbing from being a scrambling pain in the ankles. And up you go.

You notice that the mix of trees and plants is complex. There are many different species of trees, and likewise for the plants. In Nevada, this is usually not the case. The smaller mountain ranges have a less complex mix of species. The hike you did yesterday was in a smaller mountain range, and there were just a handful of species to be seen. But this is the Snake Range, one of the biggest in the state, with height and bulk and a real massive feel about it. The ranges in Nevada are like islands. When the ice age ended and the Great Basin dried up, the ranges were left floating above the drier, hotter basins below. They might have all started with about the same compliment of species, but over the last 10,000 years or so, only the largest ranges have held on to truly complex ecosystems.

You think of islands in the Pacific. You play a little mind game and take a small atoll like Midway, a medium sized island like Guam, and a large island like Borneo. Borrow Noah’s boat and transport the same full compliment of Pacific island animals to each island, unload them, and set the clock ticking. Midway would immediately loose the big animals, especially the carnivores. There just wouldn’t be enough prey or forage to sustain them. It would also loose most of the plants because there isn’t a diversity of habitat available for all of them. Fresh water is almost nonexistant. The ecosystem of Midway would quickly collapse to a few species adapted to the harsh conditions and simplicity of habitat. Guam would hold on to many more because it has a variety of habitats, water, and considerably more land area. It would still loose a number of species because it’s still not big enough to provide the necessary diversity of habitat. Borneo would likely retain all of the introduced species. It is massive compared to Midway. And so it was with the Nevada ranges. The Snake range is the Borneo of the Sagebrush Sea.

But never mind the mind games, you have climbing to do. The day is quickly warming, so you follow the more shaded timber faces. You come to a ridge, and the trees block a panorama view. There’s no question about route choice, the mountain top is far at the other end of this here ridge. And so you walk, ever climbing. The Douglas fir gives way to White Fir with some Spruce, and thins out. Sagebrush starts to return. The grass has been chewed to the ground by the resident sheep herd. The ground is covered with their tracks. You rest every 45 minutes or so, depending on the steepness of your course. You come upon the sheep herd on a shady mountainside. They are all clustered and dusty, fat like maggots and jumpy as ants. They flush and move off in a cloud of dust and piss shouldered together. You wonder why they are here chewing and trampling the fragile mountainside such.

Finally the true forest ends after a brief reprise from the aspens, and the mountain becomes open with only clusters of dark green Limber Pine spotting the brown mountainside. A plant you don’t recognize is suddenly everywhere and very pungent under your boots. Its smell is a mix of sage and garlic. You think about lunch. You stop for a snack.

Higher, even the Limber Pines give way, and a few Bristlecones form the ragged edge of timberline on this mountain. You still cannot see the peak, but you know it’s around that rounded knob somewhere. Climbing mountains in Nevada is frequently like this. It’s a gift and a scourge. You don’t know how much more climbing there will be so you can’t truly predict your pain, but you also can’t measure how much more you need to give. Of course, you could carefully study the map and count topo lines from your exact GPS coordinates in obsessive scrutiny, but it’s a fine day, and still early, and though tired, your legs are doing fine. Assuming of course that you had a GPS in your pack, which you don’t.

There is joy in every footstep now. You are sailing in the atmosphere far above the valley floor below. You are sweating steadily, there’s that wonderful burn in your legs, and you are running cool. You can see forever. Ranges step to the horizon in every direction. The twisted forms of two thousand year old trees watch as you pass. You tip your hat to each and they can see on your face that life is good.

Now you are on the high rounded shoulder of this mountain. The golden grasses crunch under you boots, none more than a few inches high. The wind is picking up and you tie the strap of your hat under your chin to keep it from blowing off over the cliffed eastern face. A few hardy Limber Pines krummholz and hunker in the hollows. You come upon a group of holes in a strange pattern. The holes are shallow, about the size of a garbage can lid, and obviously dug by humans. They are circular and you can see the spread of dug material beside each. Dug years ago. How many years? Hard to say. At least 10 or 15, maybe more. You walk the pattern and think "helix". Like the spiral shape of a sea shell. What the heck are people digging holes in a helix pattern way up here for? A New Age rite of some kind? Scientific research? UFO landing patterns? Military shenanigans? You shrug that "came upon strange relicts in Nevada" shrug and climb on. You are always tripping over such enigmas here in the outback. A curious species is us, you think, yes indeed.

You come around the knob and finally see the peak. A good mile away but only a few hundred feet higher along the connecting ridge. It is rounded on this western face, but looks to drop off steep to the east. The wind is gusting hard now. The grasses grow in rows which point in the direction of the prevailing wind. One clump shelters another in its lee and so on like a line of geese in the sky. The mountainside is striped Zebra-like in earthtones from the grass. The sky is hazy brown. The far ranges you could see this morning are now lost in the fuzz. You faintly smell pine smoke on the air and know why. Somewhere off to the Northwest a big fire is burning. How many ranges over? It could be many. You are standing on the tallest ridge for 200 miles to west. That you can smell the smoke is a testament to the magnitude of the blaze or to the refinement of the sense. It is pleasing, like a campfire scent. You feel a long way from anywhere.

And finally the peak. Lincoln Peak, 11500 and some odd feet. You’ve climbed 3000 feet in 6 or so miles and your feet are tired. The wind is cold on your sweaty back, so you grab the register and climb down the lee side of the peak. You are immediately too hot. The sun is hot, and the rocks under you are hot. Mountains are about extremes. The register shows that mostly National Park Rangers have climbed the peak over the last few years. Off to the north you can see the even higher country of Great Basin National Park: Mt. Washington, Pyramid Peak, and the massive, glaciated Wheeler Peak. You sign the register, eat some lunch, find some shade and nap a bit, and then head back out into the gale that is now blowing. As you work your way around the shoulder again, a line of elk canters off into the trees. The lead animal has a huge rack. What do you know of elk? Was it a bull and a harem? Mating season is months away. You decide you know very little about elk.

You also decide to take a different route down. You pick a side canyon off your main drainage and follow it down. No chance of getting lost. Water always flows downhill, and you’ve got a good map. After an initial getting-going, the side canyon flattens into a perfect high Nevada canyon. Timber on one side, grass in the bottom, and sagebrush up the southern exposure. The canyon narrows. Limstone walls show bare and go to cliffs. There are a few waterfalls to step down but it just makes the hike more interesting. It’s steep for a bit, but there is good vegetation and the footing is fine.

Suddenly you are back in the main canyon bottom under big aspens. The understory is sweet green and yellow ferns. In the open patches are blooming lupine and paintbrush. It is cool and you hear hummingbirds chasing about. This section is everything that your campsite should be, minus the sheep. The grasses are knee high, waist high. No man or beast of man has been here for a long, long time. You smile. The canyon goes like this for miles. In one section an avalanche has scraped a swath of the right mountainside clean and piled the mixed aspen and fir trees like matchsticks in the canyon bottom. When was the last big snow year here? ‘91? The dead trees look about a decade old; that works. You have to climb up and around, strugging over broken trees, but love it because you can sense the power of the snow. Upon reaching the canyon bottom the avalanche turned and followed it for some distance, flattening trees as it went. The downed trees bend around in testament to the path of the fall. Bright green young aspens are already pushing through the rubble all the way up the swath.

Way up this canyon you see a dead aspen with the initials "WRC" and the date 1900. It’s the oldest aspen inscription you have ever found anywhere. Exactly 100 years old. Aspens live about as long as humans do: 80-100 years. This old guy is still standing, though expired. The odds are good, however, that Mr W. R. C. is laying flat in the ground somewhere.

You know you are getting close to camp because the sheep sign reappears. Denuded vegetation, dust, and flies. You frown and trudge through the better part of a mile of it before you reach camp. Why ruin a canyon like this on public land for the benefit of one rancher and a few hired hands? This is the question of the New West. You cannot hike here without asking it. You arrive back at your pasture/camp and spend another evening shooing clouds of flies and tiny biting things that look like beetles. A good climb, but an unsettled camp.