Pictures
View from Black Warrior	Black Warrior Saddle
Stopped at Dry Fall	Nightingale South Adit
Ridge Above Nightingale	Nightingale From Ridgetop
Phil at Adit Entrance	Nevada Trekker
Ron in Tufa	Tufa Close Up
Hippo Hiding in Tufa	Hippo Going Up
Hippo Slinging Sand	Hippo Sliding Down
Hippo on Top - 2nd Try	Into Another Wash
Across Another Wash	MGL Tungsten Mill Site
	LR-TRAIL PROVEN

This was not a club event - Just me and my friend Phil doing a bit of geology prospecting and off-roading in the Pyramid Lake, Winnemucca Lake, Truckee Mountains, Selenite Mountains and Nightingale Mountains areas of Nevada. TWO GUYS, ONE VEHICLE - NO HELP IF WE GET IN TROUBLE. But I did try to maintain as much caution as possible:

Saturday on the way to Nightingale we took three different side canyon roads before the Coyote canyon road - We even wound up at the top of Black Warrior peak (6336 feet) - Awesome views! At one point coming down from Black Warrior I decided to follow a wash down instead of the road we had come up. That got a bit exciting. The wash followed down an ever-narrowing canyon until I came to a spot about the width of the truck where I could not see the "road" ahead. I stopped, got out and went to inspect what was ahead. I'm glad I stopped. We were at the top of a 10-foot dry waterfall! We had to back up about 200 yards to a wide enough spot to turn around in the canyon and then return to the proper trail.

Upon reaching the turn off for Coyote Canyon and Nightingale we came to a large red sign stating that the road up the east side of Winnemucca Lake was CLOSED. This is the route I was considering for the next day. We then spent the whole rest of the day down in the digs of Nightingale and Jaybird.

Jaybird is at the very top of the pass on the Nightingale Ridge between the Winnemucca Valley and the Sage Hen Valley. This area was mined for tungsten during WWI and WWII, subsidized by the US government. There are four tungsten mining areas stretching for about ten miles along the Nightingale crest. The tungsten is found in a limestone and marble skarn where a granite batholith intrudes the original Jurassic oceanic reef deposits. The geology is quite interesting. An entry-level geology student could find samples of intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks all within a few yards of each other. Most of the rock formations run north south and are dipped almost 90 degrees to the west leaving the limestones and shales sticking out vertically on top of the ridge. The mines were all closed down around 1956.

The Jaybird did not prove too promising for rock hounding. The few adits were pretty well collapsed and the pits amounted to mostly limestone. The best spot for recovering Garnet, Epidote and Clinozoisite is at the highest pit (South end) at the Nightingale. None of it is gem quality - but still beautiful samples - We probably brought back 40 pounds. The Nightingale mine consisted of about a mile of horizontal shafts interspersed with open pits and vertical shafts connecting the adits. All of the tunneling is very unstable so we did not enter very deep into any of them. While there we did manage to drive to the top of the ridge above the mine and get some good pictures.

Sunday, due to the "Road Closed" sign on the east side of Winnemucca Lake we headed north up the west side on paved highway 447, figuring to get as far as possible just in case we were forced to turn around wherever the road turned out to be impassable. About 2/3 of the way up we went up a side road to some awesome tufa formations - obviously formed below the 1938 level of the lake. The waters from the Truckee River were blocked in '38 to divert all of the flow into Pyramid Lake and keep it near normal levels and sacrificing Winnemucca Lake.

Neatest tufa I've ever seen. The tufa appeared to be mushroom shaped masses originally with about 4 foot diameter stems maybe 8 feet tall surmounted by hollow 8 to 10 foot heads on them. Evidently when the lake level went down the tufa mushrooms could no longer support themselves and most of them collapsed. Presently the springs that had originally formed the tufa formations have moved a bit farther up the beach and become a very lovely meadow.

We continued up the highway until one mile past "Snoopy Rocks" at the north end of the dry lake. We turned right off the highway and headed east across the top of the lake towards Limon Peak. After crossing the head of the lake, we continued south.

Just north of a peak that pushes out towards the lake, the road heads up a canyon that goes all the way over the Nightingale Range into the Sage Hen Valley - About a mile or so up this canyon we took a road south and west again down a wash and comes out at the lake again south of the little peak. We headed out onto a very sandy mogul road atop a plateau that terminated at a bluff shaped like a China mans hat - Didn't stay on that long as the sand was feeling very bottomless and we didn't need to get stuck being a lone vehicle.

We did a one-eighty and headed south again for a couple miles exploring side roads that went up to prospects at the base of the mountain. About the third one of these I did turned into a quad track on top of a brush covered dune with shallow washes (about 10' deep) on both sides - just before reaching the prospect - the Freelander broke through the sand crust, slid sideways halfway into the right hand wash and was sitting on the frame all four wheels buried and off camber about 35 degrees. AW ****! Lone vehicle stuck!

Out came the shovel ­ we freed all the wheels plus dug small trenches in front of the front wheels to guide them. With Phil outside pushing - I managed to drive it the rest of the way into the wash. Shovel out again - Phil pushing again ­ I backed down the wash until the whole truck was level and the frame totally free of the sand. We did not investigate that prospect! Just headed back to the relative safety of the road. I'll bet this would have made for some awesome photographs. We were both a bit concerned about getting unstuck at the time, however, and didn't take any.

Heading south again we started to encounter very deep arroyos where the runoff from the side canyons had cut through the road crossings making them impassable. Typically these impassable crossings were a 10- foot wide notch usually 10 feet deep with vertical banks. At each of these places the quads (who seem to be the only tracks on the roads) had made new crossings (usually upstream). All of them very tricky. At each one we discussed turning back north - Each time we decided to continue south. Each of these decision points amounted to; could we get across? If we did manage to get across, would we be able to return if forced to turn around somewhere ahead?

About halfway down the lake we came to a particularly bad alternate crossing - The easy part was getting across the arroyo - On the far side was a 40 to 50 foot 40 degree climb up the bank in sand! At this point I really thought we were done. But had to give it a shot - Took a run at it and got about 3/4 of the way up and buried in the sand. Backed down and to the edge of the arroyo to get a bit longer run and on a slightly different line (I hadn't aired down - but still had that option). Took the run a bit faster - a bit to the right of the first run - and just barely made it over the crest! Phil was operating the camera. He did manage to get a couple of good shots of the Freelander four wheels spinning in the sand.

Before we reached the mill foundations at the MGL tungsten mine we made three more hairy wash crossings - each time dreading having to turn around and head back north. Each time the two of us deciding that we had a 95% chance of making it successfully and still be able to return in the opposite direction if forced to turn around.

The mill site is really cool. Some intricate concrete foundations built into the mountainside. We had lunch there, did a bit of exploring, then checked the gps and map to try to estimate how much further we had to go and how many more wash crossings to expect - Looked like about eight more miles to the Coyote canyon turn off and maybe four more crossings.

On we went - the rest of the way was challenging but easy compared to what we had already been through. We reached the "Road Closed" sign about 1 1/2 hour later. It had been a real adventure - Not a road I would ever recommend for a LONE vehicle. But I loved it - Hippos RULE!

Sure glad that BLM and USFS require shovel, axe, water, etc.

Total "in the dirt" distance for the weekend = 180 miles. Total all surfaces distance for the weekend = 500 miles.