Ruby Mountains – e.alia.salim

Water Canyon

Enormous black crickets burst out of the grass.

Winnemucca

The singletrack called “Bloody Shins” rides slow waves of sagebrush, to which I’ve only recently realized I am wildly allergic. (Because the plant’s range corresponds almost perfectly with places I’m interested in going, I had previously assumed that vacation itself was making me sick. This was perhaps a capitalist plot.)

Through a stream of snot and tears, I puzzle over the name: out here, no rocks, no exposure, no bad sight lines, nothing technical at all … what gives? It’s the sagebrush, I discover, with my shins, as I gather speed—or rather, that it doesn’t.

The Rubies

I first came to Liberty Lake in the snow and the evening and it felt like a faraway secret. This time I share the hike up with screaming kids and pairs of women in yoga pants, men with speakers in one hand and coffee in the other. I’ll have to work a little harder for some space.

I find it the next day in the talus fields below Snow Lake Peak, pushing past slabs and scree and the usual crescendo chorus—turn back, turn back, turn back, you’ll fall, you’ll fall, you’ll fall—until I can at least and at last peer over the spine into Thomas Canyon on the other side. This moment of unveiling is 90 percent of what I wanted. I will be back one day for the rest.

The only people I encounter up here are a pair of grouse hunters in their 70s. One is in vintage teal Polartec and a deerstalker, the other head-to-toe camo and a Wyatt Earp mustache. His eyes are lost in the somber folds of his face. “See any big birds?” he asks me. I shake my head. “No birds and no friggin’ goats, either.”

He raises one furry eyebrow and I’m immediately ashamed for swearing. I want to move on from this and so I ask the best way down off the ridge. I could retrace my steps but it’s going to scare me. He swaps his rifle to his other shoulder. “Well, it’s hard country,” he says.

Bonneville Flats

I arrive close to midnight, following GPS to a pin dropped in BLM blankness. I pass turnouts occupied by what appear to be semi-permanent family compounds, pavilion tents and rifle stands, big men watching the road from camp chairs. Peering through the dust and dark for another option I nearly dump my little 2WD RAV4 in a three foot-deep pothole the size of a bus. Enough, I think, and pull off into the darkness. Play it where it lies.

When I open the door in the morning it’s into a sandy wash at the base of a mountain I didn’t know was there. I wander the lower slopes and tell myself the summit is choss so that I’ll continue on to Salt Lake City. How is it even now there’s not enough time?

Park City

Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate a Henry Coe bushwhack, our EBRPD fire-break hike-a-bikes, the Sierra suffer-fests and ego-checks, and every minute spent lost in the woods in Santa Cruz. But I’ll admit, every now and then I just want to follow signs to the summit. I want to cruise perfectly buffed and graded traverses, make every effortless switchback like I know what I’m doing, take a roller coaster down, nice surprises only. Eat pizza, take a hot shower, sleep in a bed. For that, Park City and a big bike. Let ‘er rip.

It’s a 12-hour drive from Berkeley to Ketchum, and I’m dreading it. I fantasize about relocating Nevada to the other side of Colorado. I complain the whole state is “in the way of the good stuff.” I say this to people, out loud!

I’ve rarely been so wrong about a place or so glad about it.

The pleasant surprises start the moment I kick open the car door and stumble into the light of Water Canyon. I rolled in late, frazzled by gas-station coffee and hours winnowing through semis on dark desert highway. I didn’t know where I’d landed, but I certainly wasn’t expecting this: a crystalline morning, creekbed aspens rattling and fluttering in a fresh breeze as if animated by spirits à la “Colors of the Wind.” There’s nobody else here and the sky’s enormous. I feel drunk but need to keep driving.

*… things you never knew you never knew.*

In Elko some hours later, I found the Folklife Museum—contrary to its name—rather too slick for my taste. But across the street at J.M. Capriola Co. (“Rancher and Cowboy Headquarters Since 1929”) the same glass cases of bits and spurs are for sale and therefore, in America, real. I have lunch next door, in a dim diner with a low ceiling, between a construction foreman and an old man in baggy fatigues. There is a sweating gray slab of meatloaf behind the counter and this is exactly what I wanted. (For atmosphere, I mean, not to eat.)

I drive to Lamoille Canyon on the recommendation of a photographer who shot it for the cover of Via (of all things): to be clear, I’m saying I literally found this place on Instagram. Despite this, it is so outstanding and so empty that I confess my first impulse—raw hypocrisy—is to keep it a secret. It takes me nearly two hours to cover the 12 miles to the trailhead because I can’t pass a single turnout without stopping to gawk at new iterations of snow and sagebrush and granite and sky.

lamoillecanyon

Consequently it’s late afternoon before I actually start hiking, and I quickly lose the trail in snow. Per usual, I’m solo, map-less, and paranoid; I’ve just given up—in fact, am scouting out a tent spot—when I spot mule tracks switchbacking up the slope. The sun drops below the cirque at the exact moment I glance down at my watch; the chill is immediate. I dither.

But in the end I make a run for it. I crest the pass snotty and wheezing, but the roar in my ears is angels singing, surely, because I am just in time for this:

To pay it forward I will in fact disclose that this is Liberty Lake. However, know that if you go there on my beta and leave trash (I found lots) I will see you in hell.

When I get back to the parking lot the next morning, an older couple is packing up their rental car. They are the first people I’ve seen anywhere in the canyon not wearing head-to-toe camo and they approach me smiling instead of staring. “We saw your California plates,” they say, by way of introduction.”Would you like some pizza?”

Nevada1

Tag: Ruby Mountains

Water Canyon to Park City, 8/29–9/4