A view into the valley from camp.
Having forgotten ice for our cooler during the last hitch, we find some snow at the end of a work day and bring what we can carry back to camp.
Our summer NCC crew, minus Young and Luke who took their remaining discretionary days before the NCC term ended. We're standing by completed tread (not pictured) in the Mount Rose Wilderness Area.
To lessen our weight burden when hiking miles to our camp location, the NCC managed to get us some pack horses to carry our food and kitchen supplies up the mountain. Unlike our food, we had to walk up the mountain.
The NCC crew meets the pack horses before parting ways up the mountain to our campsite.
After retrieving tools from our tool cache made during the previous hitch, crewmembers continue hiking up the mountain.
Dan, Dylan and Luke look into the valley towards Reno.
NCC members hike to location where they will continue the construction of a trail that connects the Thomas Creek trailhead to the Tahoe Rim Trail.
Dylan Stiegemeier adds wood to a fire at camp.
NCC crews have been working on the Rim to Reno project for months. Because of the now extensive distance between the closest vehicle-accessible location and where we are now working, we are camping back country. Normally, when car camping, we would bring jugs filled with water in our trucks, but as a result of our remote location and the displeasure we experience at the idea of hiking 50-pound water jugs up a mountain four miles, we are instead filtering water from nearby streams. Here, Lucas French maintains the water filters to ensure we're getting a steady availability of water.
NCC crewmembers take a break to eat.
An NCC crewmember slides down a snow-covered area by camp in July. Snow on Mount Rose usually hits a peak at the beginning of April and then starts to melt off. That wasn't the case this year, which has been referred to as the snowiest winter in the last 25 years.
People jump from boulders into Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America. Its surface elevation is 6,225 ft. For comparison back at home, Syracuse, NY has an elevation of 380 ft. Lake Tahoe is also the United States' second deepest lake, the first being Crater Lake, OR.
Visitors at Sand Harbor, on the east coast of Lake Tahoe.
NCC crewmember Trent Lieber jumps into Lake Tahoe.
Beach-goers play in Lake Tahoe in the early evening.
NCC crewmembers in Lake Tahoe. The Sierra Nevada mountain range is the background. The mountains encapsulate the lake. The highest peak in the mountains immediately surrounding Lake Tahoe is Freel Peak at an elevation of 10,891 ft.
We have been working outside of Thomas Creek for the past four weeks, building a trail that will eventually connect to the Tahoe Rim Trail. Having to hike about four miles to our back-country camp location for the hitch, we pass a lot of wildflowers. Below are some of them I've documented using a Sierra Nevada field guide.
Alpine Penstemon | Penstemon davidsonii
Applegate's Paintbrush (orange) | Castilleja applegatei
Applegate's Paintbrush (red) | Castilleja applegatei
Bitterbrush | Purshia tridentata
Checker Bloom | Sidalcea glaucescens
Crimson Columbine | Aquilegia formosa
Dwarf Chamaesaracha | Chamaesaracha nana
Elephant's Head | Pedicularis groenlandica
Giant Mountain Larkspur | Delphinium glaucum
Granite Gilia | Leptodactylon pungens
Hartweg's Iris | Iris hartwegii
Heart-leaved Arnica | Arnica cordifolia
Horsemint | Agastache urticifolia
Peony | Paeonia brownii
Scarlet Gilia |
Ipomopsis aggregata
Showy Penstemon |
Penstemon speciosus
Sierra Nevada Pea |
Lathyrus nevadensis
Sierra Onion |
Allium campanulatum
Sierra Plum |
Prunus subcordata
Sierra Stickseed |
Hackelia nervosa
Snow Plant |
Sarcodes sanguinea
Soft Arnica |
Arnica mollis
Spreading Phlox |
Phlox diffusa
Spur Lupine |
Lupinus arbustus
Woolly Mule's Ears |
Wyethia mollis
Subalpine Shooting Star |
Dodecatheon subalpinum
Sulfur Flower |
Eriogonum umbellatum
Western Blue Flag |
Iris missouriensis
Western Wallflower |
Erysimum capitatum ssp. perenne
White Rein Orchid |
Platanthera leucostachys
The early evening sun lights an alpine meadow in the Mount Rose Wilderness Area outside of Reno, NV. Mount Rose is the leftmost peak in this photo, at an elevation of 10,776 ft, the highest mountain by Reno and in Washoe County.
The crew begins a day of work on the Tahoe Rim Trail by Mount Rose. Snow is still present and several feet deep despite it being mid July. Reno is located in the valley visible in this photo.
Katie, a Harry Potter enthusiast, surprises us all by waking up in costume the morning of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. As we are in the middle of an eight-day hitch and she can't watch the movie until getting back to Reno, Katie is nonetheless excited about the day.
The crew works on building tread as part of the Tahoe Rim connection trail in the Mount Rose Wilderness Area.
I'm a Restoration Biologist at Joshua Tree National Park with the Great Basin Institute. I'm from Syracuse, NY where I went to school for Conservation Biology and Recreation Resource and Protected Area Management at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).
I currently live in Boulder, CO:
Life is pretty cool. I try to document the life I observe with iNaturalist, a citizen science tool that allows users share and map observations of biodiversity across the globe.
Using crowd-sourced data available on iNaturalist, I've learned a lot about the phenological trends and distribution of flora in Joshua Tree NP, assisting with several of our monitoring projects. Come join!
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