The High Desert- Page 2

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For an excellent look at all of the places to go in the Great Basin, visit Exploring the Great Basin.

	Bruneau River Country, Idaho - The high desert is often used by the military for target practice. This can be both exhilerating and unnerving for thoise travelling below. Very little can compare to the thrill of having an F-14 or Stealth bomber buzz your vehicle (save for flying one, I guess). This is an example of when it gets unnerving.
	Hot Creek Range - The Hot Creek Range lies smack dab in the center of Nevada. Although US Hwy 50 is often dubbed "the lonliest road in America," I would beg to differ. As paved highways go, US 6 is far lonlier. for a stretch of several hundred miles between Currant and Tonopah, there is nothing. The only signs of civilization off this beaten path are old homesteads like these.
	Notch Peak - Notch Peak (9655 ft) in the House Range is visible for over 50 miles. At nearly 2000 feet, it is the single greatest vertical drop in Utah, and is made of slightly south-dipping Cambrian carbonate rocks of a variety of colors. A quarry to the northeast of the peak contains excellent specimens of trilobites of the species Elrathia kingii preserved in the Wheeler Shale.
	View from near Notch Peak - An old mining road leads nearly to the top of Notch Peak from the northeast. In the vicinity of road's end (or at least the end of the road for my vehicle- you'd need to be 3 feet off the ground to make it any further) lies a contact between the Cambrian Limestones which forn the bulk of the House Range and a medium-sized granite pluton. Contact metamorphism has formed a skarn which is an excellent collecting ground for specimens of garnet, epidote, calcite, malachite, azurite, diopside, and other typical tactite minerals. Here I am sitting on a pinnacle of granite admiring the view off to the west, which includes the Confusion Range, and off in the far distance, the Snake Range and Wheeler Peak. The valley below is about 3000 feet down and perhaps less than a lateral mile away.
	The Alvord Desert - Located in Southeastern Oregon, the Alvord is the most perfectly flat and sharply defined playa in the Great Basin. In springtime (this photo is taken in late May) the desert is surrounded by lush grasslands and blooming fields of wildflowers. The east-facing flanks of Steens Mountain (left of photo) are home to several large streams, and there are freshwater lakes to the north of the valley. The Alvord Desert is accessible via a very well-maintained dirt road.
	Steens Mountain - at 9773 feet, the highest point in the range east of the Alvord Desert, collectively known as "Steens Mountain." Although this side of the range is nearly vertical, the western slope is so imperceptible as to appear almost flat, and the Steens summit is completely hidden from view from the west until one is only a few miles from it. This is a textbook example of a the tilted fault-block ranges so common in the Great Basin.
	Wildhorse Lake - A view south down the Wildhorse cirque towards Wildhorse Lake from the summit of Steens Mountain. A well-maintained road, closed in winter, leads up the gentle western slopes to the summit of Steens Mountain.

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