Seeking Deep Time
Time travel through reading the mountains
Going back to The Pitch, I promised you the background research and inspiration behind my trips. And so far I have delivered 22 essays of my inspiration that captures my imagination leading up to trips, the hours of mind wandering on my trips, and the post trip pouring over maps planning the next. I’ve tried to keep the essays as generalized as possible in order to have a broader appeal across your choice of adventure travel.
This essay is pure inspiration that leads to a novel trip. It started with a conversation with Colin Robertson, Senior Vice President of Education and Research for the Nevada Museum of Art. He told me about an upcoming exhibit on the ichthyosaur and in particular a discovery in the Augusta Mountains. He knew I had ridden in the area and suggested I go take a look. This conversation was over a year ago so I filed it away as a place to go. The Augusta Mountains didn’t have a place in my cognitive map, the terra incognita of my mind. It is time to fill in the map.
The Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada exhibit opened September, 2024 and will run through January 11, 2026. I visited it with Brandon Anderson, my fishing partner and Art History/ Philosophy graduate at UNR. Our conversations while fishing fill the gamut of topics, current events, craft vs. art, quality, and beauty are included. We both enjoy visiting the museum. But this exhibit made me wonder, what is a natural history exhibit doing in our art museum?
The exhibit does an excellent job of showing how the artist and the scientist work together to tell stories that shape our culture. The Museum hosted Dr. Kiersten Formosa, paleontologist, who gave an excellent talk on the influence of paleontology on science fiction and fantasy. And from her enthusiasm for the books, movies, and video games grounded in her field you can see how the stoke is reciprocal. There is a space for natural history, science, and technology in our museums because none of these cultural forces work in a vacuum. Scientists and artists are both storytellers, they need each other to tell a more compelling story.
Now the exhibit has inspired a third storyteller, me, to tell a new story about a series of dirt roads, in the middle of No Where, NV. After watching the video on Reading the Mountains I was compelled to ride out to the Augusta Mountains to see the final resting place of the Sea Dragons. I should take a look at what inspired Dr. Martin Sander to read the layers in the mountain to look for the bones from Deep Time, 250 million years ago. The film gave me a clue, the band of grey rock in the mountain would be about 240 million years old, the ichthyosaurs should lie just below that.
When mentioning Ichthyosaurs in Nevada it is most common to think about the Berlin-Ichthyosaur Nevada State Park. My first hosted bikepacking trip as a part of Adventure Cycling Association’s Bike Your Park (September 2018) event was to this State Park (I had no participants, I did the trip solo. But I offered it again a few years later, in 2022, and had 8 participants and a great overnight). But the ichthyosaurs are more wide spread than just the southern Shoshone Mountains. The exhibit at the Nevada Museum of Art had examples from the Shoshone, Augusta Mountains, and Humboldt Range.
My first thought was ride through Dixie Valley on Dixie Valley Rd and work my way over to the Augusta Mountains. The route was about 180-190 miles and while I am sure it is wonderful ride, I wasn’t sure I was ready to commit to the project. Continuing along US 50, a jumping off point that gets closer to the Augustas is at the east end of the Clan Alpine Mountains. I have made some day trips into the Clan Alpines and thought, wouldn’t it be great to loop the range? The Alpine E Rd became my starting point, between Edward’s Creek Valley, the New Pass Range, and the Clan Alpines. I chose a clockwise loop around the Augusta Mountains, passing as close as roads would allow, and back to the start through the community at Antelope. All in all it was 105 miles, with wildlife viewing, rugged canyons, hot springs, remote ranches, solitude, and opportunities to view the geology of Deep Time exposed in the Augusta Mountains. Everything I look for in a trip (Route on Ride with GPS).
Every trip inspires the next. What really caught my eye on this trip? The eastern scarp of the Stillwater Range kind of blew me away. What was I looking at? The range reaches 3,500’ of green mountain into the blue sky. There is a road over Fencemaker Pass with a separate spur that climbs to nearly 6,800’. The simplest route through there would be a counterclockwise loop, 50 miles with 5k’ of climbing. I will put that on a fall list of day rides.
Digging deep into Nevada’s geologic history (I just re-read the Roadside Geology of Nevada, DeCourten and Biggar 2017 and Geology of the Great Basin, Fiero 1986), 250 million years ago “Nevada” was on the edge of the continental shelf, mostly as a shallow marine nursery for ichthyosaurs. Then came the continent building of plate tectonics to get us where we are today, a rich collection of fossilized ammonites and other extinct mollusks as well as fantastic examples of ichthyosaurs.
While not often celebrated in a State that has so much to inspire and celebrate, Nevada has an impressive offering of fossils from the microscopic to the gigantic. The Black Rock Desert famously has a mammoth dig site, the White Pine Public Museum offers the Giant Short-Faced cave bear, and the list goes on to include horses, camels, sloths, as well as assemblages of marine invertebrate and plant fossils. A favorite plant fossil is petrified wood - very common. Nevada’s newest State Park is Ice Age Fossils. Just north of Las Vegas, it is open for day visits, and hosts a variety of interpretive events. The park features the Megafauna, Las Vegas Wash, and “Big Dig” Trails to illustrate the remarkable Pleistocene’s lush green habitat and the extinct animals that once thrived there. It too is on my list of stops the next time I am in southern Nevada.
As always, thank you for supporting my storytelling. I am very fortunate to be surrounded by inspiring places to find my next adventure. Check out your local museums and park visitor centers. I am sure the staff can guide you in the right direction. If you are in the Reno area stop in at the Nevada Museum of Art, it is a winning destination. If there is anything I can do to get you out there, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Resources
This month's inspiration came primarily from the Nevada Museum of Art’s exhibit Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada. I set aside a three hour visit to the museum just to focus on this exhibit. This was the first time I explored the Museum’s online resources. Check out their YouTube channel and this playlist for the Deep Time exhibit. I did stop by the bookstore to get a copy of Annie Alexander’s Amazing Adventure: An American Fossil Expedition in Nevada (2024), written by Ann M. Wolfe and illustrated by Kate O’Hara.
From my friends at Friends of Nevada Wilderness: Cain Mountain Wilderness (Augusta Mountains Wilderness Study Area)
June in Review
It has been a really fun month on and off the bike. I started with a long birthday ride to celebrate my friend Jeremy’s Birthday. It was big, back and forth over one of our iconic Sierra passes, Monitor Pass. Then later in the month we went back and forth over Donner Pass. Then Nick Jensen (Manzanita Cycles) invited me to pre-ride the Lost and Found Gravel Race course, around Lake Davis out of Portola, CA. As an aside, my Manzanita turned 6k miles according to STRAVA. It is quickly becoming my highest mileage bike, although it is my newest, a testament to its versatility and fun factor. Then there were two bikepacking trips, the first through High Rock Canyon as a part of my Rides with Friends series. I had 5 participants and we joined a group from Friends of Nevada Wilderness to participate in National Trails Day. Then there was a trip along Desert Creek to Lobdell Lake, with a side trip up Mt Patterson. This was an extension of my Desert Creek Bikefishing Route shared on Bikepacking Roots. Doug got me out for another great Tahoe mountain bike ride. I biked over to Stampede Reservoir for a long (time in the water) open water swim with my pull buoy as a practice for swimpacking. Lesson learned, don’t think you are going to get out of cold water and hop on your bike and pedal away. Stay tuned for my swimpacking debut. Then there was the trip around the Augusta Mountains, dubbed Riding Into Deep Time.
For the last 2 weeks plus I have been on a road trip. First to Lamoille Canyon in the Ruby Mountains then on to Montana and finally will head to the Washington coast for a family get together. I do have my bike and have been getting out on shorter rides. In Lamoille Canyon I was biking to fish Lamoille Creek. I also got some summer reading started. I have been re-reading a couple books on Nevada geology and re-read the volume on Lake Lahontan. I had a handful of Nevada Historical Quarterlies. I read them cover to cover and got something out of each article. I was surprised by how many of the books reviewed were also in my collection. NHQ will definitely fit into my regular reading. I did a few hikes, shorter walks with the dog, and made a point to record as many wildflowers in iNaturalist as I could. I will have a date with the Great Basin flower guidebooks when I get home.
Looking Ahead
July-I will be on the road through Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Nothing is planned as far as Bikepacking Northern Nevada goes. Except I am so far behind on my trip reports. I need to stop saying I am behind and just get them out.
August- The “Dog Days of Summer” are upon us! August 8-10 is the Perseids Meteor Shower Campout with Friends of Black Rock High Rock. I will be hosting a series of rides under Rides with Friends. Late August is Burning Man and Bikepacking Northern Nevada will be back for round three of bike tours and a talk. Between these two events I hope I can get on the water to stay cool.
September- I hope to offer an overnight on the Toiyabe Crest Trail, a challenging but rewarding route. Then I hope to spend a week-plus in Ely riding gravel/bikepacking routes in the area. Everyone is welcome to join in!