Third state on this road trip was Nevada and Boundary peak. There exists some confusion regarding Nevada's highest mountain/point. The highest freestanding mountain is Mt Wheeler, named the same as the peak in New Mexico. But the highest point is Boundary peak,, named from being close to the boundary of California, and connected to the higher Montgomery peak, so while boundary peak is a isolated topographic high point there is a higher point not much more than a mile away, although that peak is in the state of California.
Enough trivia... I decided to camp at the trail head on about 9000 ft elevation, reason being it is in the middle of nowhere and required a 15mile very slow trip on a gravel road, which at parts was not really worth the title "road". The rental car took a minor beating, but I was mostly happy not to slide off the sides of the roads which whould have ended in a stuck car in the middle of nowhere (or worse). The trail head marks the newly created wilderness area, and it's residents which range from flies and cows to bear (rare sightings though). One note though I arrived in the afternoon to very pleasant and almost overly warm weather, the night proved to be very different though with a couple degrees below freezing indicated by ice on the rain-fly of the tent. It got me so hypothermic that I had to sit in the car and warm up for over an hour to mend the shivering. Once the sun came up the quicksilver jumped upwards for a beautiful morning and day to hike in without any other people around apart from some people fishing in a dam slightly below the trail head.
In the evening I did a minor hike just to check out the terrain for tomorrow. being a more obscure peak there is a number of faint "trails" or routes one might take. The first part follows a lush valley along a small creek, the deep saddle on the right above is then one option to go to and then follow the ridge for over 2000ft elevation. alternatively one aims for the second ridge to the left and then go to the left and find Boundary peak hidden behind the peak on the left.
The zoom above shows one of the 2 main obstacles on this hike: major rock outcroppings which one needs to climb around, navigating them is somewhat tricky though so on the ascent it is common to take a steeper than necessary route to follow the ridge, while form above going down, one can identify that some can be avoided by walking below them on the scree on various sides depending on which is too steep.
The second obstacle can be seen in the picture below. The side of the mountain is compromised of loose scree and gravel at inclinations of 20-25% meaning it's a game of 2 steps forwards three steps back on the way up, and the way down is more of 1 step forward, 10ft of gliding downwards in loose scree. As an illustration it took 4h to the top, and less than 1h 45min down, of which close to an hour was the top scramble, and the rest consisted of the very quick and amusing (as long as the leg muscles keep up) decent. The inclination can also be seen from the starkly dark sky looking upwards at high altitude with less atmosphere to look through.
Getting up to the ridge one can make out Boundary peak on the picture below, some snow is left on the northern sides, but not much considering it was close to desert landscape around the mountains.
The picture above shows some of the magnificent rock formations one found on the mountain slopes. The photo is taken in the direction of Nevada and the valley the trail came from (on the right). The car and tent awaits less than 3 miles away (bird's route). Below one can see Montgomery peak which is in California, the state boundary is actually passing more or less in the middle between the peaks in each state.
The top register actually had a nice flag showing the location and elevation nicely. So that lead to a good Photo opportunity, and a pretty irrefutable sign of being above 4000m elevation again.
Weather was nothing short of fantastic, and the SPF 50 which was reapllied about 5 times saved my fqace and nose from a lot of future pain.
Finally there was a section along the trail which had eerily looking trees which reminded me of the Ents going to war in the Lord of the rings movies. Most of the was quite a bit away from the trail, but below is one nice one that was close to the trail and clinging on to the side of the valley.
Stats:
State: Nevada
High point:Boundary Peak
Elevation: 13 140 ft (4 005 m)
Date: July 13, 2011
Total elevation to date: 135 174 ft (41 201 m)
Access: Hike, class 2, 6h round trip
Difficulty rating (of 10): 5
Potential Difficulties: Loose scree and sand will make ascend hard. Even in July, camping at trail head can lead to hypothermia.
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