| Cool stuff in Nevada, 2/26 |
On Sunday the 26th we drove from Elko to Squaw Valley, CA, but we took two detours along the way. One detour was planned, one was not.
The first detour was to the Belmont Mill, an old abandoned mill used for processing ore mined from the mountains nearby. Helen had read about it and thought it would be cool, and afford her some picture taking opportunities. It was a pretty big detour, though. Instead of taking I80 West from Elko to Reno we would go South for 3 hours to reach the mill, then take I50 West across Nevada instead, adding 4.5 hours to our driving time that day.
We had a bit of an adventure on the dirt road back from the mill. The short story is that the road conditions were substantially different from when we drove the 9 miles out to the mill from the real road. We came close to getting stuck numerous times. That was a little scary being literally 30 miles from the nearest help. Oh, and I ripped something off the bottom of the car :) See below for the details.
The second detour was very unexpected. We were flying down I50, having seen nothing for miles and miles. We drove past a sign that said "petroglyph site". Having never seen real petroglyphs and assuming they would be pretty cool out in the remote hills of Nevada, we turned around and stopped. This turned out to be a really worth while stop... one of our favorites of the trip actually. See below for more details.
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| Belmont Mill | "Rally Cross" |
Belmont Mill
Helen read about the Belmont Mill online and thought it might be fun for a visit. It was really out of the way, but we decided it would make for a fun trip, and that it had the best chance for an interesting old mining site to visit. We believe that it operated until the early 1920's, but a surprising amount of the mill structures remain. The vast majority of the main building still stands, and we were able to explore all of it except the uppermost floor. There was a tram from the top of the mill out across the mountains to the mine site, and the tram cables and counterweights are still hanging in place. The counterweight boxes are massive, and one can only guess how many tons of rock they hold. There are a number of houses still "standing" around the mill as well, in various states of disrepair. Some were safe to enter, others looked like they would fall over if you leaned on them.
Helen spent a lot of time taking pictures. The ones below are just a small sample and were selected to give an overview of the mill site.
Helen made a great video out of pictures taken at the mill: BelmontMill.wmv (7.3mb)
Helen taking pictures at the Belmont Mill.
The view of the mill as we approached it.
The view of the mill from the back. You can see both massive counterweight boxes here, though the one on the right is more obvious.
Another shot of the back of the mill. You can see the decay of the structure clearly. We didn't dare try to ascend this staircase.
The side of the mill where the trams holding rocks from the mines went in.
Houses just past the base of the mill.
A view of the houses and the mill from the other side.
Old machinery in the mill.
More old machinery in the mill. None of the wheels would turn, of course :)
There were a few wheels that still had belts on them. The belts seemed very similar to fire hoses.
A longer shot of the inside of the mill.
Rally cross too far from civilization
A couple of years ago I actually did a small "rally cross" in my Subaru Outback just for fun. My friend Scott had gotten me to do a few Solo II auto cross events, which is basically just you on a course made of cones which is laid out on a big wide parking lot or old air field. The goal is to get a good time. The rally cross I did was the same thing, but on a big open grass field. (Scott and I co-drove the Subaru... I've got pictures somewhere that I'll dig up when I get home.) The field was instantly torn up, with huge, deep ruts in all the corners and rocks and dirt flying everywhere. That was fun. The road back from the mill really reminded me of that rally cross, only much less fun at the time.
We took I50 to the 9 mile dirt road out to the mill. The road on the way out was in pretty good shape: it was firm dirt, then firm dirt covered with a little snow and ice here and there, then firm dirt completely covered with a few inches of packed snow and ice. No problem at all. That was at around 10am.
We left the mill around noon, two hours later. Two hours of the naked sun beating down on the Nevada desert, warming the road. It turned out that the road was firm on the way out because it was still pretty much frozen. On the way back it had thawed. Driving on the slushy snow wasn't too bad... until we started breaking through to the surprisingly soft dirt below. Once we left the snow it actually got worse. The dirt was so soft and loose the car bottomed out almost instantly, but instead of sliding easily along a bed of snow between the tires, we were sliding along dirt and rocks. We realized very quickly that if we stopped we probably wouldn't get going again, and we were in the middle of nowhere.
We kept the car going at a decent clip of around 20-25mph, alternately bouncing in and out of old ruts too wide for our car and bottoming out as we dug deeper ones. There was really only one point where I seriously thought we might be screwed... there was a bend in the road, with a steep drop of about 20ft to the left and big rocks to the right, and a rise. The car got dangerously close to sideways and I thought we were headed off the drop. I think Helen finally knew I was nervous when the cursing started :)
We stopped on I50 when we got back to pavement and I used my ice scraper to dig the mud out of the wheel wells so the scraping noises would stop. When we got to Eureka, NV, we stopped for gas and I inspected the car more closely. It turns out we cracked the large plastic guard under the front bumper and engine, and left half of it back on the dirt road somewhere. And the undercarriage was covered in a surprising amount of mud. The car drives just fine, though. We carried most of that mud all the way to Reno before we finally got some rain to wash most of it off.
Firm dirt on the way out to the mill.
Firm dirt and snow on the way out to the mill.
Firm snow on the way out to the mill.
Slush on the way back... notice how nice and sunny it is on the snow now?
Snow and soft dirt on the way back. Notice the mud spatter on the wind shield? How do you get that if you're not following someone??
Soft dirt with a little water in old ruts now. See the bit of dirt that's lighter in the distance on the left? Looks drier and firmer doesn't it? Well... it isn't...
That's not the natural color of the bottom half of my car :)
You're not supposed to be able to see any part of the engine, the oil filter, or those hoses from here. You can see the edge of the remaining half of the guard in the center of the picture, and the jagged bits of it on the right. The water on the ground is from a clump of muddy snow melting in the shadows on the back part of the remaining guard. Thankfully the burning smell was sagebrush stuck up under there.
If you look closely you can see where the half of the guard on the left is missing, and the broken bits in the middle where it was sheared off.
The muddy undercarriage.
In retrospect it was fun :)
Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area
As we were driving along I50 headed west we passed a sign that said something about petroglyphs and a visitor site. We were ahead of schedule and needed to stretch out legs anyway, so we turned around and drove the short distance out to the site. We arrived at the Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area, which has a small parking lot, a pretty nice picnic area, and a small building with restrooms. There is a half mile loop through the surrounding hillside that takes you past five sites with ancient petroglyphs carved into the stone.
Helen and I spent some time looking at the petroglyphs, but we spent more time exploring the rocks on the hill above them. The hillside had a very sparse covering of very low Pinyon Pine that were short and windswept. There were lots of outcroppings of sandstone that had been shaped by the wind and rain over time into really unique shapes. We'd never seen anything like them. Helen spent probably 45min photographing them, and I had fun climbing them :) The view from the area was fantastic, too. We were at the summit of a small ridge, and you could see for at least 25 miles through the next valley to the next mountain range beyond.
But what was really different about this site was the sound. The wind was blowing constantly, but not steadily. It swirled through the rocks and the low trees, but was only really strong when you were unprotected on top of the rocks. It sounded much like waves breaking over themselves and crashing on the rocks on a very windy day, but not quite the same.
When all was said and done, between the views, the fascinating rocks, and the sound, this was one of the more enjoyable stops we had made. We've never seen any place like that before, and it was so very different from the surrounding geography.
Ancient petroglyphs.
The view from the site.
The snow gives you and idea how cold it was.
Another view from the site.
Interesting rock formations.
This is what the hill side looked like around and above the petroglyphs.
More interesting rock formations.
There were trees growing out of the rock in amazing places.
You could really see the layers of sediment in some places.
These rocks reminded us of a tortoise shell.
Can you see the Sinclair dinosaur in this one? (There are gas stations out here called Sinclair, and they have a small green brontosaurus on their logo.)