View of the Dry Lakes Plateau from the west. Bald Peak is the pale one on the left and Beauty Peak is the darker peak to its right. Beauty Peak has a classic stratovolcano shape.

View of Bald and Beauty Peaks from the California side of the Dry Lakes Plateau. The state boundary crosses over the top of Beauty Peak from the left side of the photo to the right side. Bald Peak is in Nevada just over the border.

View of Bald Peak from the CA-NV border.

View of Beauty Peak (on the left) and Bald Peak (on the right) from the east side of the Dry Lakes Plateau from Sawtooth Ridge. Bodie Creek and Del Monte Canyon separate Sawtooth Ridge from the Dry Lakes Plateau.

Map of the proposed Bald Peak gold exploration drill sites. There are 11 sites. There are no official roads to Bald Peak. The project will access the area by helicopter. 

The planned helicopter staging area is between Beauty and Bald Peaks, in front of Beauty Peak in this photo.

View of drill site 1 in the foreground with Bodie Peak in the distance. The CA-NV border is about where the road ends in this photo.

Drill sites 2 and 3 are at the end of the point. Rough Creek is directly below.

Drill sites 4-7 are along the darker ridge to the right of the point. Sugarloaf peak is in the middle ground in the shadow. Rough Creek runs between the drill sites and Sugarloaf.

View of drill sites 8-11. They are right on the CA-NV border.  Bodie Mountain WSA is on the California side up to the border. Bodie and Potato Peaks are in the distance.

One of many pronghorn trails that crisscross Bald Peak. Pronghorn summer in the Bodie Hills and winter in Nevada near Mt. Grant. Fletcher Valley and the Wassuk Range are in the distance.

Pronghorn scat along one of the game trails. The scat is in a bedding depression where a pronghorn rested.

Bald Peak is on the Dry Lakes Plateau which is the heart of the Bodie Hills. The two ephemeral lakes that fill with snowmelt that can last into the summer. Bodie Creek cut a canyon on the south side of the plateau, Atastra Creek flows in the canyon on the west side  (in front of the plateau in this photo) and Rough Creek cut the canyon on the north side. 

This is a view of the northern end of the Lodestar claim area. The photo was taken from the Lucky Boy Pass Road.

Looking down the powerline road from the northern end of the Lodestar project area next to the Lodestar sinter target area.  The powerline road cuts through the Lodestar project area.

View of the Lodestar project area from the southern end. The Lodestar gold exploration area includes the east slope of the Aurora Crater (on the left), the sagebrush valley (in the middle), and the north slope of Mt. Hicks (on the right). Corey Peak in the Wassuk Range is in the distance. Much of the area covered in pinyon trees is in USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas. Part of the sagebrush area is too.  Headwater Gold is planning to drill at 43 sites in this area under a categorical exclusion. The NEPA scoping notice is expected to be released in November 2024.

This is a view of the Lodestar claim area from the middle of the claim area looking southwest towards Mt. Hicks. The claim area does not extend past the pinyon woodland.

The area is densely covered in old pinyon trees. The view is looking into the Inventoried Roadless Area.

The pinyon trees are ladened with pinyon pine cones, a food source for wildlife and the Tribes. This area is an old pinyon woodland. Pinyons came to the Bodie Hills, expanding from south to north, about 5,000 years ago.

The Lodestar claim area extends to the south end of the Aurora Crater, to the right of the burned area of the Lucky Fire. The Lucky Fire was a human-caused wildfire on the southwest slopes of the Aurora Crater above the Aurora/Esmeralda Mine in July 2023. Photo was taken from an old cyanide heap-leached tailings pile that was reclaimed. It seems to have been seeded primarily with Great Basin wildrye.

This hill is the primary target area for the Lodestar project. It is a sinter which is where there was an ancient hot spring that brought microscopic gold to the surface from a possible gold vein down below. 

Mud Spring along Mud Creek is near the Lodestar project area. It is a pretty area with willows and greasewood shrubs. The greasewood indicates a high water table. 

The cliff runs along Mud Creek and makes a striking and lovely landscape. The bright yellow-green shrubs are greasewood. The plateau on top of the cliff is the northern end of the Lodestar project area. The sinter target area is about 1.5 miles from the spring..