April 9, 2013 -- Wilson Canyon, NV

Wilson Canyon is an ORV area located between Yerington and Wellington NV on Highway 208. This area on the south side of the road is Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and the north side is BLM. We camped beside the West Walker River. We arrived rather late in the day, after spending a lot of time running around trying to find this place.  It was still cold outside; after all it had been snowing on and off all day.

Screen shot of our route

I should have known what kind of day it was going to be by the way it all started.  We headed down the road we were camped on, Copperbelt Rd, only to run into a locked gate with No Trespassing signs.  We couldn’t find a way around it, so we went back to the rig and my Topo program, to find a way to connect with our route farther out.  I didn’t know it then, but today would show us how smart our friend Jim is.  He has just bought the GPS I want, and he said for what he does, carrying a “throw away” laptop with him in his pack is a must.  That way he has the ‘bigger picture’ Topo program with him.  As you will see, we could have used that today.

 

Try 2:  We headed out to the highway and circled around the closed area, joining up with the route on the Delphi Rd headed to Mason Pass. 

 We got fairly close to Highway 95A before swinging west past the Yerington Indian Reservation-Campbell Ranch.

Deserted mine with old windmill

 We followed the sometimes paved road up toward a large mine before heading north to Churchill Canyon.  We popped out onto that road just where I thought we would.  Wayne and I were here last fall.  (See October 2012 post Johnson Lane) we then turned west and went past that horrible rocky road we took last year, and went up and over Sunrise Pass.

We got up into the snow, and the road was very gooey.  We all commented on how bad the traction was; no wonder! Our tires were completely encased in this slimy mud. 

No traction here!

 

 We had to scrape as much as possible off at lunch, for fear that it would dry like concrete and because it weighed a ton!!

Wayne cleaning mud off under his fender 

Bob working on his bike

We stopped for lunch very near where Wayne and I camped last fall. After lunch we headed around the loop and headed southeasterly, at least until we got to another locked gate.  This one was on Indian land. So we headed back to see if we could find a way around. We did manage to find what my topo program would later say was the best route around, so all was good.

 

Once back on track we came to this abandoned home site.  It is currently a registered mining site, so we didn’t stay long.  From there we headed up. 

 Several times our route was clogged with snow.  As we were looking for a route we came across Rd P014, which turned out to be the Lone Pine Canyon Rd.  This is where we could have really used a laptop with the topo software on it.  We kept trying to go down into a valley, to the west that we thought might get us where we wanted to go but didn’t know if any of the roads went through (they didn’t). 

We were trying to get there!

The route I originally created did go through, but it was covered in snow and very steep.  We spent over 2 hours up on top trying to get past the snow. Of course we were at 8700’, what did we expect?  Yes I learned my lesson; I will check elevations when designing routes in the future!  Finally we turned around and back tracked until we could see a town in the distance, and then headed for it and Highway 395. 

If we had that laptop we would have known that Rd P014 would take us down to either Highway 395 or to roads that went over lower passes to get back to camp.  Although it was getting late, so the highway was probably our best bet to get back before dark. We got back around 6:30 PM.  What a ride!

Bob decided to head back to Oregon or at least as far as he could get that night, making it possible for him to be home the next day.  We are back to being just the two of us until we get to his house in a week or so.