Pah Rah Range Ridge Ramble

Saturday, we found another easy, but scenic hike that we can add to our list.  We drove up the rather good dirt road up to Virginia Peak.  The road is much improved over the last time I was there, so a brave passenger car could have made it to the top.  But we parked at a road junction at the 7600' level so we could justify calling it a peak bag.

We climbed the 700' up the road to the summit of VP to claim it.  And then we headed north along the ridge to Pah Rah Mtn.  It was rolling, volcanic terrain, down 200 feet, up 200, down 200, and up 200 again, to reach the peak, about 3 miles N of VP.  Although all cross-country, the route was easy-going.  It quickly became apparent that if we hugged the west flank of the ridgeline, there is almost no vegetation, and the rock is mostly broken, and even sandy along this route.  I guess because this is where the weather is most severe, and probably snow-bound half the year.  We also found a few wild horse trails to follow in places.  So not surprisingly, we saw  about 50 mustangs in two herds, bounding across the high plateaus.

But what made our day is, we spooked a herd of 24 pronghorn antelope when we crested a nob.  50 yards away when we first saw them, but they increased that to a half mile almost faster than people could get cameras  out.  But co-leader Sharon managed to get a couple of good shots; here attached.  The herd seemed to have one "guard buck" with horns who kept himself between us and all the rest who were either females, or too young to have horns.  They stayed on the ridge line, and kept a mile between us; and kept us in their sight the whole time; and circled around behind us, so we saw "buck" again on the way back.

The other interesting sight of the day is, we passed a couple of weather towers that had been erected by the company that is planning a wind farm in the Pah Rah's.  I say "had" because both of them had been collapsed by high winds; we were guessing in that big storm we had last spring.  We examined and took pictures of the wreckage, and wondered about the wisdom of building wind turbines on this windiest of ridges.

We reached Pah Rah Mtn easily in 2 hours, and were a little quicker on the way back. And the weather couldn't have been nicer, temps in the high seventies, and a cool easterly breeze, compared to 101 deg. in Reno that day.  And did I mention the wildflowers?  The place was just lousy with wildflowers ;-)  [Photo by Sharon Marie Wilcox] -- Ed Corbett