| SHORTLY AFTER the Mazamas left Nevada's Ruby Mountains, the Elko
Daily Free Press quoted me as saying the Rubies should be known to more
climbers and that I planned for the Mazamas to publish a guide to the range.
I immediately received a letter from a man who said he sympathized with my enthusiasm, but not my discretion, and urged me to abandon the project. After his favorite scenic spots in the Sierra had been "divested of every twig of firewood, inundated with garbage and littered with the omnipresent, indestructible aluminum foil," he said, he switched his climbing activities to the Ruby Mountains and hopes they will not suffer the same fate. I can certainly understand his concern, and I have not taken his request lightly. There are other considerations, however. People will continue to be drawn to the mountains. If the ratio of people to mountains is too great, or if people do not learn to act reasonably while there, we shall fail in the effort to solve the problems of litter and overuse. If this be our fate, we are merely fighting a rear-guard action, and silence about little-known mountain areas can do no more than postpone the inevitable. On the other hand, if the problem can be solved, the solution will include relief of the pressure on the presently popular areas by distributing it among the many little-known areas. The Ruby Mountains and East Humboldt Range are among those areas, and delightful ones. The Ruby Mountains and the East Humboldt Range are geologically a single fault-block range located in northeastern Nevada near Elko. They extend about 100 miles north and south and are about 10 miles in width. Composed of limestone, quartzite, schist and igneous rock, they offer many good climbing routes, most of which are on much better rock than one finds in the Cascades or the Canadian Rockies. The Lamoille Creek Road extends into the heart of the range, passing the Thomas Creek Forest Camp at an elevation of 7,100 feet. Many of the peaks exceed 11,000 feet, and most of the good climbs are accessible from this road.
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A winter's research and correspondence produced relatively little
information about climbing in the range. We were able to correspond with a
number of climbers who had been there, but most of them had been there only on
a Memorial Day weekend and, to a large degree, they had climbed the same
mountains. The similarity in their experiences also included unanimous
enthusiasm. Literature on the Rubies is scarce. Even with a large mountaineering library available, we did not find any published descriptions of climbs in the Ruby or East Humboldt Ranges. Indeed, on Scott Peak and Onthank Peak we found no cairns and no evidence that they had been climbed before. Perhaps they hadn't. Only five of the 22 peaks mentioned in this article are named on the most recent U.S.G.S. quadrangle on which they appear. We found names for 10 more by using the Forest Service's 1968 Humboldt National Forest map, an unedited preliminary U.S.G.S. quadrangle, bench marks, and names used by Polly Connable and Alvin McLane. We felt that the remaining seven peaks deserved more than the ignominy of a number, so we named them ourselves: Mazama Peak, Tibia Dome, Ruby Tower, Middle Peak, Onthank Peak, Scott Peak and Full House Peak. Peaks and routes the Mazamas climbed or descended are marked by an asterisk in our descriptions. Most descriptions are based on the conditions we encountered between June 28 and July 10, 1970, which consisted of a good combination of snow and rock climbing. Conditions might be quite different either earlier or later, although the climbs may be equally enjoyable. Prior to late June the Lamoille Creek Road will not be open all the way to its end. It will probably be open to Thomas Creek Forest Camp on Memorial Day. The 1962 U.S.G.S. 15-minute series Lamoille, Nevada, quadrangle is essential. The route descriptions assume the reader has it before him and uses it to supply information which need not be stated here. The Lamoille map includes all but four of the following peaks and many others. No other maps are necessary except for Pearl Peak, Hole-in-the-Mountain Peak, and the westerly approaches to the Ruby Dome area. RUBY DOME* (11,387 Feet) is the highest peak in the Ruby-East Humboldt Ranges. in addition to the Lamoille quadrangle, one should have the Lee, Nevada, quadrangle which covers most of the approaches. Access to Echo Canyon and the southwest ridge is through the Te-moak Indian Reservation, where locked gates will probably be encountered. Inquiry |
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1970 MAZAMA · 51 |
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