The northern section of Highway 8A

Signs at the turn-off from westbound 140 to SRs 8A and 34A

Well, I finally did it! I traveled the northern section of Nevada S.R. 8A, which runs from the NV-CA stateline east of Cedarville, CA, to Nevada S.R. 140, the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway. I posted earlier about the west end of northern 8A here, here, and here. The northeast end of northern 8A was covered briefly in this post, which is part of a series about Highway 140. The traverse described in this post was part of a larger loop trip from northern Nevada to northern California, the westbound portion of which is shown in this map (also embedded at the bottom).

Take the left fork to stay on 8A, or the right fork for 34A.

Looking southeast across Echo Creek at Gooch Table.

Volcanic tableland in the foreground. The Pine Forest Range is on the right; the Pueblo Mountains near Denio are on the left.

The sky was overcast for much of the trip, so the photos I got were not as good as they might have been on a bright summer day. Wildflowers were out—not a superbloom but quite persistent and with numerous species—and I saw three pronghorn in the west-central part of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.

One pronghorn barely visible. The south end of Gooch Table is to the left; the hills beyond the pronghorn are northern slopes off Fish Creek Mountain.

As the northern slopes of Fish Creek Mountain came into view, the area started looking familiar, and I wondered if I'd bushwhacked through the mountain mahogany on Fish Creek Mountain during a long-ago deer-hunting adventure. Also, I was now coming into the area where the Stolpas got in trouble in the winter of  '92-93. Beyond the pronghorn in the photo above, more or less just beyond the area between that dark volcanic flow and the mountain-mahogany-covered hills, the land slopes east into the upper drainage of Hell Creek, where Jim and Jennifer took refuge in a small cave approximately two miles east of Blowout Mountain. Hell Creek drains into Virgin Creek, eventually into the area of the Virgin Valley opal mines, where they might have found people, had they been able to continue their long trek through the snow. Instead, Jim walked 40 miles or so to Vya, where he luckily found someone at or near the road maintenance station.

Two pronghorn.

The road, 8A, is wide and graveled, quite smooth over most of its length, though it was decidedly dusty. At the north end, the gravel included oversize rocks that make for a rough ride in places. I had the AC on high and recirculate throughout the dirt portion of my trip (from NV 140  to CA 299) to keep the cabin pressurized; otherwise I was breathing in a lot of dust. Every time I'd stop, the dust would move over me from the rear, and I'd have to wait to take photos. The dust, in the mostly still air, was drafting along with the Jeep in lieu of any wind blowing it to one side or the other. By the way, it's always good to check your air filter after a trip through such volumes of dust, or even during if the silt is particularly nasty.

Mesa at the south end of Fish Creek Table.

And then, having passed from northwestern Humboldt County to northern Washoe County, and having also passed out of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, I finally turned onto a side road for lunch. Lunch was accompanied by a short wildflower walkabout.

Moving on from lunch, I came to the fast, western section of road approaching Vya. Finally, the sun came out.

Looking west toward Vya: The playas of Middle & West Lakes are in the center, with Massacre Lake behind the hill on the right. The dark knob on the left is Painted Point.

The 8A portion of the larger trip, from its junction at the north end with Nevada S.R. 140 to the NV-CA stateline where the road becomes CA 299, took about two and a half hours, including several brief photo stops and a 20-minute lunch stop. Google has one traveling that route (63 miles) at an average speed of 18 mph, whereas my average speed including more than 20 minutes of down time, was 25 mph. Before leaving, I had calculated that Google was giving me a rate of 17 mph just for the 140 to Vya section, but apparently they think the entire 8A section is a drag. In winter, of course, one might not be able to traverse the road at all, what with all that volcanic-derived silt turning to sticky, slippery mud, or the plateau country becoming buried or drifted during any serious snowstorm.

Wildflowers near the junction of 8A and 34 south of Vya.

As mentioned earlier, I've been up in the Sheldon country before, most notably many years ago for black powder deer hunting. We were probably somewhere over in the Fish Creek Mountain – Blowout Mountain area, or perhaps a bit to the south down near Mahogany Mountain.

More about 8A at LFD:

Highway 8A

Highways 8, 8A, and 8B

all posts tagged 8A

Note: a few photos shown on the map didn't make it to this post.

Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 3

Black Rock Desert

Well, here we are again, traveling from Winnemucca, NV, to Highway 395 north of Susanville, CA, and we’ve just made it to the west end of the Jungo Road where it intersects with NV S.R. 447 (formerly S.R. 34) just south of Gerlach. You’ve probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much recently. I'm not really sure why. Sometimes the work I do takes the writing right out of me, partly because I do enough writing many days that I'm totally done with that by the end of the day; also, I don't really have much time after work before I have to do dinner, then get ready for bed—at least if I want to get enough sleep, which I do want (I don't always succeed). Another thing contributing to the recent spate of sparse blogging—besides taking care of personal things that have been taking a lot out of my energy during my days off—is that my writing effort during the fall and winter months has been going toward writing bits of fiction (a novel?), which I've been working on intermittently during the last two years.

Anyway, all of that—work, trying to get enough sleep, personal issues, and writing fictional to non-fictional stories—has placed blogging low on the list.

Now I'll upload the photos for this post, and we'll go from there. Just like a real journey, we’ll see how far we get!

Smoke Creek Desert

At the end of the last post, we'd driven quickly through Gerlach and had reached the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert. I hadn't taken any photos while zipping through Gerlach, but I often stop, and I've even stayed overnight at least twice. So let's backtrack before moving on.

Gerlach is a small town that brags of several mottoes, including "Center of the Known Universe," "Where the Pavement Ends and the West Begins" and "The Time That Town Forgot." More can be seen on the town sign, above, or in this nicely enlarged version of the sign by the RGJ. As indicated by the sign, Gerlach is technically pronounced Grr-lack rather than the Grr-lock one hears so commonly these days. I shot these photos of Gerlach on a trip that FMOH and I took back in the spring of 2014. Like the June, 2018, trip that we—you and I—are reprising, he and I had just come into town from Winnemucca on the Jungo Road. We were bringing the motorcycle back from Nevada, mirroring this trip taking it out to Nevada.

While in town, we did the usual thing of stopping to eat at Bruno's Country Club, probably getting Bruno's Famous Homemade Ravioli. By 2014, Bruno was no longer making his ravs personally, so I don't think they were quite as authentic, nor were they quite as good.

Unlike many trips, this time we stopped at the bar for a couple beers; we weren't driving on that afternoon or evening, but were, rather, staying at Bruno's Motel. Bruno Selmi, the Basque owner of the cafe, bar, motel, and only gas station in town, died in May of 2017—he can be seen in the photo above the bar (the older man on the right).

After checking in to our room at the motel—and after duly going back to the bar to get a second room when the first smelled either of gas or dead mouse—we wandered out onto the far western edge of the Black Rock Desert, where we had a view somewhat atypical of most views of the desert. This section of the Black Rock is a section you don’t want to drive into: it’s usually muddy, and it’s very possible that you’ll get stuck. The getting stuck part typically happens at night when an unsuspecting traveler, one who is already out on the desert somewhere to the east, decides to get off the desert—and instead of driving to the usual take-out spot north of town, sets their sights on the lights of Gerlach and makes a beeline for town. The next thing our unsuspecting—or willfully ignorant—traveler knows, they are stuck, possibly axle deep, in the mud at the west end of the main section of the Black Rock Desert. Fortunately for them, they aren’t far from Bruno’s gas station. Maybe someone will risk a vehicle to come and pull them out!

It’s possible one could wend their way through the merely salty white section of desert to the pavement on the east edge of Gerlach, at least in the drier years, but I don’t recommend trying it. I personally know at least one person who tried this one night back in the 1980s; the getting stuck was epic.

The next morning after breakfast, FMOH and I headed west.

Now let’s get back to my June 2018 trip, which I was taking all by myself (cue pint-sized pity party). I had just made it to the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert and had taken the photo seen earlier and in my last post.

A ways farther down the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert, I pulled over for a quick examination of some tufa. There are many spots to see tufa domes, mounds, and hills along the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert; this mound, Hill 4081, was a new one to me.

I climbed up through the cheatgrass and scattered tansy-mustard tumbleweed and looked around. Here we’re looking off to the northeast, more or less back toward the Junction of C.R. 447 and the Smoke Creek Desert Road. The Granite Range, unsurprisingly underlain by granite, rises steeply beyond the distant Smoke Creek Desert playa. The foreground is green because...water. It’s a wet part of the basin, possibly because of the entry of perennial Smoke Creek into the desert just south of where we’re standing. It’s also more elevated than the playa, and covered with grass (at least cheat grass) and various scrub.

I love tufa mounds, so I stood looking around for a few minutes, taking lots of photos. This photo looks off more to the north. The distant bluish hills just right of the tufa dome are part of the Buffalo Hills, which are underlain by a pile of volcanic rocks.

More tufa! More volcanic rocks! The hills in shadow between the tufa masses are some volcanic flows forming the eastern foothills of Burro Mountain.

From this point on Hill 4081, I got back on the Smoke Creek Desert Road, went south a short distance, and then turned west on what Washoe County considers the continuation of the Smoke Creek Desert Road, and what Google Maps refers to as the Smoke Creek Road: a dirt road that heads west up Smoke Creek.

to be continued...

Google Maps location map.

Related Posts:
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 2
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1
Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur
Blue Mountain (2012)
Pulpit Rock (2012)
Smoke in the Black Rock & Smoke Creek Deserts (2102)
Where in the West: Black Rock Desert (2008)
Where in the West - June: A Second Look (2008)
Where in the West - June (2008)
Name That Place (2008)

Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur

I recently drove across northern Nevada from Winnemucca to Gerlach to the NV-CA state line in the upper reaches of Smoke Creek, and while the temperature was holding steady at about 89°F, I stopped at Sulphur to take a few quick pictures. It turns out that Sulphur is a bigger place than I had realized on my several stops through the area, and so I spent a little extra time there.

In the first photo, you can see the roof of a building on the ground—this roof has been photographed many times and is easy to find on the internet—and you can see a well-built cabin. I'm not sure where exactly the cabin came from, because it, and the sign, were not present the last time I drove through the area, which was last May (2017). Although I didn't get photos last year showing this precise area, I do have photos from 2013 without sign or cabin, and Google also currently shows the area without either.

The sign says the town was at least 400 acres in size (about 0.625 square miles), and that claims for sulfur were first filed in 1875.

I wandered over to take a closer look at the "new" cabin, which has bars on doors and windows to deter entry.

An interior shot.

Then, having ventured farther than I expected when I first stopped, I decided to brave the slightly above average temperature to wander around. I used only my out-of-date phone for these shots; the photos turned out better than expected. 

Looking east toward the barely active Hycroft gold mine.

Upside down washer?

Remains of a root cellar.

Looking west toward the Black Rock Desert—not visible for the raised railroad bed—we can see the many remains of Sulphur in the foreground and the Granite Range near Gerlach (left) and the Calico Mountains (right) in the blueish background.

Sulfur at Sulphur!

Old bed springs.

Partly shot up old stove.

And then it was time to move on. I had 44 miles to get to Gerlach, and many more miles beyond that.

Strangely enough, very few of the Nevada or western ghost town sites have any information about the place; those with the most info are (1) the Sulphur and Sulphur Mining District wikis by the Friends of the Black Rock Desert, (2) the Black Rock Explorers Society's page on Sulphur, (3) a blurb at the Winnemucca Convention & Visitor's Authority, and (4) an article at Nevada Magazine. I'm not sure who has added the new sign and moved in the "new" old cabin (actually, the signs there are marked National Conservation Lands, part of BLM, and the sign says "Funded by the Hycroft Mining Corporation") but upon my Google search for new sign at Sulphur Nevada, the 6th hit is Zillow reporting it has 0 homes for sale in Sulphur, NV. I'll henceforth be excluding Sulphur from my new home searches!

More From the Road: The Colorado River Aqueduct

When I drove to the area on the south side of the Whipple Mountains where I ended up camping amidst downpours and nearby lightning, I thought I'd grab a few photos of the Colorado River Aqueduct, which passes through just north of CA Highway 62 on its way to the greater L.A. area, but an RVer was camped just beyond the aqueduct overpass, so I blew it off until I left. (I'm not terribly social while in the field, especially when traveling alone.) On my way in, I took one shot showing the signage and the overpass (first photo). In the Whipples (and elsewhere), the aqueduct goes underground in several places, usually to allow passage of large dry washes. It's at these points that dirt roads can cross. The sign says, "Private Right of Way. Any Person Entering Thereon Does So at His Own Risk. Permission to Pass Revocable at Any Time. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California." It is probably referring to the road paralleling the aqueduct, rather than the road crossing it, but who knows.

I stopped to take a few more photos on the way out during the early morning of the next day (after having coffee, of course!). These photos can be used to help illustrate a few stories I have about doing recon and exploration in the Whipple Mountains area—stories that date back to 1981, resume in 1983, and continue off and on after that through the late 1980s. (That's really why I went out of my way to drive into the area in the first place.)

The entire aqueduct, where above ground, is surrounded by a fairly hefty chain-link fence and more "No Trespassing" type signage in English and Spanish.

In this second view (above), Savahia Peak and its detachment-tilted Tertiary volcanic rocks, which we saw earlier, is sticking up a little.

View of the aqueduct looking through the chain-link fence.

While working in the area during a misconceived June recon program (June: ugh and yikes!), my field partner and I fantasized about cooling off in the water by tying ourselves off to the fence with ropes. We didn't think we'd want to be sucked downstream into the next underground section of the aqueduct, even though that section is a relatively short one: only 204 feet (61 m). But the rope idea, that might work!

One Year Ago Today: A Short Trip on Highway 8A in northern Washoe County — and Hoodoos!

A year ago, MOH and I were out on a two-day road trip that was designed to take us to the section of old Nevada S.R. 8A that has long been rumored to still be signed, though it is no longer shown on state road maps as 8A, nor has it been since 1981. To accomplish our goal, we drove north out of Gerlach on old S.R. 34 (now Washoe County C.R. 34). It's about 85 miles from Gerlach to Vya, a small outpost consisting mostly of a Washoe County road department building or two and some private ranches.

Strangely enough, Google Maps won't let me make a connection from Gerlach to about 5 miles north of Gerlach on C.R. 34 without routing me either all the way over to Cedarville, CA, or taking me down an obscure and suspiciously narrow-looking dirt road.

The route above doesn't start in Gerlach, because it can't. The route below, starting in Gerlach, won't go exclusively on C.R. 34, because it won't.

After 3 hours of driving (driving and stopping, driving and stopping), we ended up at this junction with old 8A:

The junction of old S.R. 34 and old S.R. 8A in northern Washoe County.

At this point, we turned right to see what we might find.

An 8A sign, up ahead!

This is actually a "To 8A" sign! It's pretty well marked for a road that no longer exists, I'd say!

A little ways on, around a bend taking us back to the north, we came to another junction, one with several signs.

A small sign forest appears at the junction of conjoined 34+8A and 8A, which turns off to the east.

Here's another "To 8A" sign. Turn east just ahead.

Vya is now shown as being a mile to the north on continuing C.R. 34, and the sign says you will reach Denio or Winnemucca in many miles if you turn right.

The rest of the signs at the second junction are the back side of a yield sign, a BLM sign pointing to unreadable destinations, and a "To 34" sign beyond that.

We turn right, of course, so we will be able to say we drove onto the northern leg of old Highway 8A. Now, what do those signs say?

This is 8A. It's signed. The sign doesn't say it's a county road.

"Road not regularly maintained. Travel at your own risk. Closed during winter."

This warning sign was put in place sometime after the infamous Stolpa incident back in late 1992 – early 1993 (some links here).

There's the jeep, barely on 8A, back at the junction with 34. Oh, and look: hoodoos!

We drove north on C.R. 34 to the maintenance station at Vya. Apparently if we had driven a little farther north, we'd have been at the site of the old town of Vya, now a ghost town.

There's a good batch of hoodoos in volcanic rock on the hillside behind the maintenance station. Don't ever plan on getting gas at Vya! There isn't any!!

Having met our defined goal of reaching the northern portion of old Highway 8A, we turned back to the south. From the junction up ahead (the one we turned east on briefly), to the CA state line, we will be on old 8A, and for a short distance, also on old 34. Highway 34 wasn't even a marked road until sometime after 1939, whereas 8A was on maps as early as 1929 (a few maps and links here).

We head south on 34, which will turn into unmarked 8A (combined with 34) at the junction just ahead.

Now we've rounded that first bend and are back at our first junction. We'll head west on unmarked 8A. There may be hints of hoodoos on the far slope.

Now we've crossed over an unnamed pass in the Hays Canyon Range, and are nearing the NV-CA border.

There was a profusion of sign at the border, but no sign marking 8A going back into Nevada.

We stopped at the stateline to see if the sign that had marked 8A would still be there, but it wasn't. Gravel turned to pavement, old 8A became CA 299, and we drove on down into Surprise Valley, which wasn't looking very green a year ago today.