Ruby Dome

On to Nevada!  We found a mountain to climb along the way, and it was nice to pause an extra day in the middle of traveling to explore places we haven't seen before.  Ruby Dome looked like a nice start to visiting the Ruby Mountains, easily accessible and good "straight up" training.

Only 4 miles, how hard can that be?  Oh, almost 5K vert?  OK, that could be hard.

This plant was puffing out pollen as we walked past - at least it didn't make me sneeze:

The trail up alongside the drainage, with a nice view of the mountain above:

Hiking with ice axe, in case of snow field:

Starting up the slabby rock, with a view back to the lowlands:

Hulk smash!  John doing his part to clear the trail of snow obstacles:

Gorgeous Griswold Lake, a worthy destination in its own right:

We faffed around a bit with route finding above the lake, finally traversing over to the actual trail.  The basin below the peak is quite stunning, especially with all the snow still hanging out (this was July, mind you).

Initially the snowfields were gentle and easy.  John kicked steps and I followed:

Then... we came to this traverse, where I said "Nope!"  Not without more gear and some steep snow practice.  I could see working up to this with some training, but we haven't done anything along these lines lately.

So we admired the view as we turned around:

We followed the trail better on the way back to the lake, finding a bunch of snow slopes along the way.  Hard to say whether that was an improvement over our ascent.  Good practice, I suppose.

Almost a glissading "action shot", except I seem to remember inching slowly along with a lot of foot braking:

Yep, it's a pretty lake, we should come back sometime to admire it again (and perhaps climb to the top of the mountain):

This mushroom reminds me of a pancake (mmm, pancakes!)

Yay for another fun day in the mountains!

Admiring the view of Ruby Dome as we drove back to Howie to continue our journey west across Nevada: