I'll be leading this trip on November 14. Meet at the Terrible's/McDonalds at the top of the hill on highway 95 through Searchlight. We'll roll out of there are 9:00AM. We'll be taking Route 164 toward Nipton, and leaving this road for the dirt a few miles outside of Searchlight.
The trail heads through a beautiful forest of large Joshua Trees. Part of this forest, though not the part we're going through, is officially called the Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness Area. Wee Thump is Yuman for “ancient ones” , and it refers to the ancient Joshua Trees of the area. We'll take a brief detour from the main trail to see some petroglyphs, and stop to inspect an old cattle corral that has a curious water tank. The trail eventually dips down into a wash that winds its way through the Highland Mountain Range. We'll stop at Cow Spring, where there are some old stone walls/foundations, and a spring that may have a bit of water. We'll also take a side trip up to a very large guzzler maintained for Bighorn Sheep. This site overlooks a rather stunning dropoff. Eventually, we'll end up on a powerline crossroad. Folks can either hoof it from there back to Route 95 north of searchlight, or, continue on the dirt while longer, ending up at Nevada Solar One, the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. This will be a full-day trip. Bring lunch, plenty of water, a camera, yadda yadda yadda. I haven't been on this route in several years, so will be pre-running it at some point to make sure it is still stock-friendly. I'll update this notice if necessary.
Here are a couple of websites that may interest folks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_Onehttp://www.birdandhike.com/Wilderness/W ... eThump.htm
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Rex
. Chris
