The “Loneliest Road in America” Is Fine

This refers to Highway 50 going across Nevada. I’ve driven lonelier. On this trip I drove lonelier. That stretch from Elko, Nev. to Snowville, Utah, for instance, much lonelier. And uglier.

Whatever, I guess.

We started this part of the trip in Ely, Nev., which based on my short trip to the one grocery store in town appears to be a mostly meth-based economy. I then made the bad decision to go to some state park rather than go to the railroad museum :(.

I took this picture while at the park and trying to find the trail, which I think the road itself might have been, except for it was supposed to cut uphill to the left somewhere and never did and anyway the dog just kept wanting to sit in the shade and there were way too many patrol cars at the entrance to let her off-leash ‘cuz I sure didn’t want to get stuck in a jail cell with anyone from Ely.

Also, the Carl’s Jr. in Ely was very popular.

Anyway, lonely road:

And then getting close to Fallon NAS, we drove into this dust storm.

And then we drove into another dust storm that was way worse than this one — like, it was a complete white-out where I was stopping the car and hoping whoever was behind me did the same, because there was no way to see anything because of the dust storm. Like, that kind of dust storm. Which is apparently a thing now.

Then we eventually turned off ’50 and headed up to Reno. Loneliness averted.

Nah, this probably didn’t deserve its own post, but it’s kind of too late now.

Summary: If you have to drive across all of Nevada and you can’t cheat and just go through the skinny bottom part, this route is less tedious than I-80.

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From Here to Great Basin

To celebrate the end of the school year I left town, which is kind of counterintuitive from the standpoint that Logan is just a lot nicer when all the students leave and things don’t feel quite as crowded. Except on Saturday when all of Franklin County, Idaho comes to town, which is just kind of sad, irritating, and road-jamming. Gott strafe Franklin County!, etc.

First off, headed to the Frisco ghost town in Utah, which is just north of Milford, Utah, which is a good reminder that there are some tiny little stuggler towns in this state. From a passing through small towns perspective, this part of the trip reminded me of the part of western Pennsylvania that’s not Pittsburgh.

The ghost town, though, was probably not worth driving out of your way for. There’s a cemetery and like three still-standing buildings, although the mining company that owns the property has put up gates and made roads impassible and the dog didn’t feel like going for a walk, so…

You can still drive up to the cemetery. Most of the interred, though, are children, which made this part of the trip, overall, both sad and boring. Although sometimes I think boring is already a subset of sad. Or at least there’s a lot of overlap.

From Frisco, it was on to Baker, Nev., home of Great Basin National Park, which facilitated my checking that park off the list.

The park has some new-style signage, which took a little time to get used to, though I eventually adjusted. I’m not sure anything can ever compare to the stained-wood signs and that peculiar national park almost-handwritten font they use, but if you’re going to replace the signs, these weren’t bad.

This post doesn’t get better from here.

The park itself features Wheeler Peak, the highest point in all of Nevada. The road that takes you to the hiking trails near the peak, though, was closed still due to snow. :(.

That’s Wheeler Peak there in the photo, taken from one of the main roads in Baker, Nev.

I stayed in a hotel in the one hotel in Baker, which has eight rooms. For some reason I liked Baker. Maybe it just gave me a lot to think about with regard to it being a tiny, rural town with a small clutch alt-hipsters who all seem to work at the one restaurant/cafe and a little-known national park and what would it actually be like to live here? That kind of thing*. It’s a town, though, where people’s dogs roam the neighborhoods at will and no one seems to mind. They’re also upset about Las Vegas stealing their water.

That’s the highway that passes through town.

The trails that are in the main part of the park aren’t dog-friendly, but that kind of didn’t matter since they were all still closed for snow anyway. I took a pass on the cave tour, since I figure it’s probably mostly just a cave tour, and it’s probably not as good as Carlsbad Caverns.

We instead went to find a hike on the east side of the park, accessed from within Utah (!), that is dog-friendly and wasn’t under snow (mostly). Lexington Arch I think? Let’s go with it. There’s a dirt road that took us off the highway toward the trailhead.

After a bit, there were a couple of stream crossings that I probably shouldn’t have taken on with the family truckster but did. Then we came to a part in the road where there a couple people in a Toyota Tacoma trying to figure out how to build a bridge out of branches to cross the next stream.

Anyway, they (their names were Ryan and Shannon for some reason) were both nurses up at the U of U medical center. Seemed nice and gave Aela and me a ride another quarter-mile up the road where it then became too washed out even for them. We then all hiked together from there.

Apparently this part of the park burned down some time ago. I probably should have spent more time in the visitor’s center. Anyway, most of the hike was through a burned-out forest.

Good conversations, burnt trees. She used to be a competitive snowboarder who toured the world, he just finished his DNP degree at the U.

After crossing a couple snowfields, we eventually got to a viewpoint for the arch. Some I didn’t take any photos of it that were better than this, but, hey, live in the moment, right?

Then we walked back to the truck, they gave me a ride the quarter-mile back to my car, then we all went and got lunch together in some other really tiny town just on the Nevada side on Highway 50. The ranch chicken bacon wrap was huge and surprisingly good. I can’t remember the name of the town** or the restaurant, but, you know, if you want you can email me and I’ll try harder to come up with it.

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* I’m guessing after the second day it’d be pretty boring. Fortunately I didn’t get to that point on this trip and was therefore left wallowing in my sense of child-like wonder.

** There’s not actually a town. There’s just the restaurant (and gas station and three slot machines). Cross the border from Utah, it’ll be on your left. Chicken bacon ranch wrap. Also, try to pay with cash because their card reader has a hard time.

Friday — Diamond Peak

I wrote all these up on the plane ride home. FYI.

Paid: $49 (Reno Sports Authority)

Quality of Random Lift Strangers: 9/10

Weather: Overcast with some eventual light snowfall.

Would Return?: Definitely

I’m probably just a sucker for ski resorts with lake views, but I loved Diamond Peak, despite its shortcomings and quirks. I liked the laid-back vibe. The unpretentiousness caught me off guard (I figured Incline Village’s hill would be  more uppity), parking was easy, and the random lift strangers were friendly and engaging. The skiing was also pretty good. Spent most of the day on Crystal Express sampling the diamonds with occasional forays on Lakeview. Snow was chopped powder most places, with some fun in-tree, un-tracked around Eagle Bowl and a few other gladey places elsewhere on the mountain

A little fog at the top of the express lift.

Looking up-run (this was “Lightning”, I think).

View from the ridge.

View from the sort-of untracked.

I took these using my goofy video cam:

• Diamond Peak’s biggest shortcoming was pretty obvious: south-facing and with a lower elevation than some of its competitors, there were a lot of bare spots and some closed runs.
• The views of the lake were fantastic; the lake is more than occasional scenery here, it’s a constant companion.
• Visibility was tough up on the ridge before about noon, but got better during the day. Everything coming down off the ridge offered good visibility (even at the top).
• I bought a sandwich at Wal-Mart in Reno on my way up so I have no idea how the Diamond Peak food is. However, I now know that the sandwiches at the Reno Wal-Mart are bland.
• Crystal Express doesn’t ski as weird as it looked like it would from the map.
• I liked that there was always something easy to bail out onto and something harder to bail back into on just about every run and gladed middle-ground.
• The conveyor belt on-loading on Lakeview (and Lodgepole) was a new experience for me.

The place would probably start feeling small after a couple visits in a season, but I liked Diamond a lot.

Wrap-Up (for the Whole Trip I Guess)

The trip turned out to be phenomenal. I like spring skiing days and I liked getting to experience powder conditions that I haven’t seen since I decided to start skiing again last season. At the risk of igniting an east coast-west coast debate, by Monday afternoon I’d decided my next year’s ski trip destination wouldn’t be Vermont again after all. Even if Squaw wasn’t as transcendent as hoped, the trip overall was generally very nearly euphoric. I was mad when the lifts closed down every day and when I skied my last off Diamond on Friday, it felt like I was, I dunno, being sent back into some sort of dungeon or something.

Chained,

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Wednesday — Stormy, with a Chance of National Automobile Museum

The National Weather Service described the winds at and around the Tahoe-area ski resorts on Wednesday as “destructive” and chains were required on every road between Reno and the chairlifts. So, after dropping Argosinu (née Telkontar) off at the airport, going back to the room to sleep another couple hours, showering, packing, finding and using a laundromat, and getting a by-then late lunch at Carl’s Jr., I headed over to the National Automobile Museum in downtown Reno.

I didn’t take a picture of the outside. Also, I’ve gone from having never been to a car museum to having gone to two in two months.

Right, so I didn’t know what to take pictures of inside either. I sort of tried to take “artistic” photos. The lighting was tough, a lot of glare. They had a lot of cars, but almost nothing after 1950. A lot of really old cars. The Ferarri was run during the 1952 through 1955 F1 (or whatever it was called then) seasons. It came in second in the 1955 Argentine Grand Prix. Here are photos of old cars:

Here’s the Ferrari. I think the art shot almost works for it.

Also third in the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix.

So that’s pretty much the museum. They tell some good stories, every car has a detailed description plate on it, there’s some significant automotive history described there. Probably worth going, depending. Took me 2.5 hours. Cheap metered parking is right outside the front door.

Mit herzlichem Glückwunsch,

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Tuesday – Mt. Rose

Paid: $49 (weekday full-time student price at window)

Quality of Random Lift Strangers: N/A

Weather: Sunny with high winds at the top.

Would Return?: Probably

Mt. Rose was exactly as advertised: unpretentious, locals-centric, solid vertical and elevation, and windy (although I think everywhere was probably windy that day). In terms of attitude and vibe, Mt. Rose was night-and-day compared to Heavenly (and Squaw) and, ceteris paribus, I preferred Rose’s relative easy-goingness – not that ceteris ever *is* paribus. Conditions were pretty firm (not icy) on-trail and off-trail was cruddy (this included the tree areas unfortunately). Mogul runs were carved deep with pretty inconsistent snow (thanks to the warm weather, lack of recent significant snowfall, and wind I’m sure). Spent all day on Northwest Magnum 6 (heckuva lift name) after hearing that the east-side runs were more scraped.

It was exciting to be able to see our hotel from the top.

Also:

• Wish they’d had some better snow, obviously. The chutes looked like they’d be fun, but we saw (from a distance) one person who ventured in there all day and, based on his form, he didn’t look too happy.
• Was also sad that the trees down the lift-line weren’t more skiable (I tried twice).
• Didn’t understand why they wouldn’t run the little triple chair off to the right of us. There’s not a ton of skiing at the very top and the triple looked like it would at least be out of the wind. (I’ve been told by a local, however, that it’s not actually any less windy on the triple, just a lot slower.)
• Not very crowded – we didn’t share a lift ride all day.
• I liked that the ticket booth woman barely even blinked when I requested the student rate (I’m 41; yes, I’m a full-time student with the ID to verify it).
• It’s cool that there’s one resort around Tahoe that offers such intense discounts.

Conditions were definitely a little firm that day. That said, it was hilarious listening to locals complain about how terrible the “ice” was. At Blue Knob that’s called straight-up powder.

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Monday – Heavenly

Paid: $93 (bought at Sports Authority in Reno the night before)

Quality of Random Lift Strangers: 5/10

Weather: Absolute Bluebird (my bro’s thermometer read 42 degrees on our way up Sky Express the one time)

Would Return?: Definitely

Given the advice I’d read on EpicSki, we chose a side and ended up spending almost the entire day skiing Dipper Express (we took a couple of runs on the California side since it seemed obligatory). No complaints about traverses. I think they’d had some snow the day before, so things weren’t too scraped and, in the trees at least, conditions could be described as soft. Our favorite run was in the trees alongside Big Dipper and Meteor – left us with a long, blue run-out, but I like hard-packed bombing runs, so all was good by me.

View of the lake from the California side.

This is what the snow looked like in the trees (on the Nevada side).

Other observations:

• The pulled pork sandwich at East Peak Lodge was huge, but otherwise merely okay. Barbecue baked beans were generous, but I would have preferred a sweeter sauce with a little more vinegar and somewhat less chili powder. #yelp
• To me, the oddest thing about the layout was that we were kind of “trapped” on the upper mountain. If any of us had left anything down at the car (we parked at Stagecoach), it would have been a blue square-and-slush hassle trying to retrieve it.
• Stopped at the Red Hut (Kingsbury Grade) on the way up the hill. The bacon there is something to write home about.
• Plenty of people there, but the Nevada side was pretty roomy and lift lines were close to non-existent (things were decidedly more crowded California-side).
• People here had a somewhat disturbing penchant for making high-speed, lane-shifting entries into the lift lines. I imagine they learned that on the 880 somewhere around Hayward.
• The ski patrol dude who rode up the lift with us should probably be friendlier toward people who paid $93 just to be there for the day.

In the net, I loved Heavenly. The price is silly, but the views were awesome, the tree-skiing was fun, and there were plenty of places to roam even without entering California. Just for the price, I can’t imagine going there more than once a year, but next time I’m in Tahoe to ski, it will be on the itinerary.