Nevada Winnemucca Humboldt Pershing Toyota Tacoma TRD Sonoma Grass Valley Pumpernickel Golconda

Out and About Near Winnemucca, Nevada:
A Quickie For When You're Bored
A Sonoma Range Circuit

mountain and left little funding for living let alone playing. A new, wide open backyard to explore and I had a chronic case of “empty fuel tank-itis”. My 2002 Toyota Tacoma TRD 4-wheel-drive pickup had been sitting for a long time and spiders had been building webs between the differentials and the ground. And what little use it had seen since the move had been road trips to complete my move from Big Pine or for an errand or two running in and around Winnemucca. It hadn't been in 4-wheel-drive in a long time and it needed a good dose of scenic trails, sagebrush pinstriping and wide open spaces. And so did I. Even if it were for an hour or two.

On October 3^rd, money was tight, gas was still expensive, though over a dollar less than it has been only a few months ago. The news has been bleak with the nation's massing financial woes and unemployment worsening. I was sick of TV and four walls and so was my wife. My little Lhasa Apso dog, Otis was getting cranky because he hadn't been outside for a while either. It was time to do something, anything to go outside and do something different than just run to WalMart.

The clock was approaching 4:30. It was gloomy outside and inside. I was in desperate need of wandering I couldn't go far because darkness would be coming in only two hours. A quick peruse of the map and a loop trip comprising of a 70 mile circuit south, east, north, then back west was quickly plotted. I grabbed my Garmin eTrex GPS and Delphi NAV200 navigator unit, the dog and my wife and hopped into the Tacoma. The gas gage was just under a half tank, so I stopped by the gas station, quickly dispense $15 worth of octane and left town.

Within 10 miles out of Winnemucca, the last of the mini-ranches of Grass Valley was past and soon was the end of the pavement. Nothing but open Great Basin stretched the south, hemmed in by the Sonoma Range on my left, the East Range on my right. The long dirt road ahead beckoned.

Sheep Canyon was the route that I chose to take me over the Sonoma Range and soon the navigator (in map view mode) and my Benchmark Nevada map atlas showed me that I had reached the road that I had selected. A couple of years ago, a buddy of mine from Bishop took this route (or so I thought) to try out his new Jeep Wrangler 4-door and reported it as a good road. Either it was better then, or the interceding winters have done their work. The road wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good. It was sort of good, bad and ugly combined.

My Delphi NAV200 navigator was showing this road at first as Spaulding Canyon Road (the canyon is actually west of Grass Valley in the East Range), then as Sheep Canyon Road as it gets up near the mouth of Sheep Canyon; but it certainly was not maintained by man – only by Mother Nature and livestock. Turning off of Grass Valley Road, I engaged the front axle for the first time in I don’t know how long – it’s just been too long is all I know. It was already nearing 5:30 PM and I was hoping that the crossing would be relatively quick so that darkness would not overtake us. The road ahead into the Sonoma Range appeared to climb up the gentle alluvial slope to the canyon's mouth. The crossing of the range didn't appear to climb steeply nor obtain to any high elevation. Though the Sonoma Range has summits over 9,000 feet farther north near Winnemucca, the range's center section seemed to have high points more in line with 6,500 feet. The Grass Valley floor runs between 4,300 and 4,400 feet for most of its length.

Shortly after turning off onto the road over Sheep Canyon we entered band after band of roaming range cattle. My little dog Otis went ballistic at each and every one of them. For such a little thing, he’s very aggressive and has a loud and deep bark. Sitting on my wife's lap, he'd lunge at the window, rolled most of the way up, and snarl and bark loudly, smearing his nose all over the glass. If my wife or I tried to stop him from barking, he'd try to bite our fingers.

The road – if you could call it that – followed the path that my Delphi was saying it was supposed to, but the surface was pockmarked by deep craters left behind by cows walking it in wet weather; which dried into a rough surface, which resulted in slow line picking and veering to maintain somewhat of an acceptable route. The path was obviously seldom used with sagebrush and rabbitbrush impinging upon its flanks and occasionally its center. The road appeared to be built by a single swipe of a bulldozer blade; the road’s hardpack caliche veneer riddled with holes and deep tire tracks of passersby during muddy weather, now dried to tire grabbing deformations. Otis’ obnoxious bovine hatred and the road's rough surface started working on my nerves, made worse by the fact that all along my sight line up to the canyon’s mouth was clouded by band after band of roving cattle.

As the road approached the mouth of Sheep Canyon, a fence came in from the northwest and bordered one side of the pathway; a trench with occasional plastic paddles bordered the other. Out in the middle of nowhere and we’re running along a gas main. A small meadow with several large and healthy trees along with stone ruins of a former ranch house beckoned me, but it was full of cows. Otis, now getting hoarse but still ballistic, had taken his toll on my patience. I had to do my best Dog Whisperer imitation on him to show him who’s boss. Otis didn’t like that one bit; after a struggle to flip him into a submissive position on his back resulted a few bites on my hands. Clamping down on him with a mild choke holds, he finally submitted to me being “pack leader.” The rest of the trip he laid quietly or slept in my wife's lap.

After getting up into the upper reaches of Sheep Canyon, the cows abated, Otis was passive, and my nerves recuperated. The sun had set and the sky looked more ominous. We had already gone through several large puddles of mud and murky water full of cow prints and worse left over from rains the day previous, which mottled the sides of the truck with dark mud much to my relief. Toyota Tacoma TRD 4x4’s are best viewed dirty. The road turned just steep and rough enough that the truck was happier to be run in low range. I think I heard the Tacoma sigh a sigh of relief when I threw the small shift lever forward – or was it a slight grinding of gears? At any rate, the truck ran easier in 2^nd and 3^rd gear low range than 1^st high.

As we topped the head of Sheep Canyon, at the western summit of the Sonoma Range, elevation given by my Garmin eTrex at 5,373 feet, we entered a shallow basin within the range. With that came another part of the ugly part of the equation – huge girders of 150 feet or more walking in a straight line carrying multiple strands of thick cable at high voltage marching across our sightline. Here I've finally gotten into my element, then run across gas and electricity out in the middle of nowhere.

After we crossed under the mess of man made intrusion, nature's scenic values increased. Soon I noticed what I first thought were more cows – thus the potential for more Otis obnoxiousness – at a distance toward the opposite end of the basin. However, the “cows” started to take off at too high a speed possible for cows. I had happened across a band of about a dozen wild horses. My wife and I noticed three pure white mustangs among the group. And soon, we topped another summit, this one being 5,573 feet as per Garmin in elevation and looked down onto Pumpernickel Valley; which signaled the approach to our route north. The arrow straight gas main road continued to shoot due northeast across the valley, but I could see our intended route cutting across right at the valley center.

My Nevada atlas shows the road north through Pumpernickel Valley, over the highlands between the Sonoma Range and Edna Mountain, and down into the Humboldt River Valley to the small community of Golconda to be a numbered route, so I assumed it was going to be in relatively good shape. That would be good, for it was now solidly dusk and a slow, rough road would be tedious in the dark. I dropped the Tacoma down into Pumpernickel Valley and soon hit the main road north. Stopping at the main road, I flipped on my Hellas and turned my Delphi NAV200 into “tell me how to get home” mode. At first it tried to direct me home via the way we came in. Then it attempted to fool me again by having me take the power line road back over the Sonomas. Fortunately, when it senses that you have passed the turn shown, it recalculates a new route and got my drift from that point on.

The route north into Pumpernickel Valley was a fraction better than the route over the Sonomas, but still fairly slow work. 4-Lo was no longer necessary, but I kept the front axle engaged in case an obstacle popped out at me in the dark. Lots of flour dust filled deep tire tracks were found along the route, remainders from adventurers and ranchers passing by in wet weather.

A twin set of headlights suddenly came into view in my rear view mirrors as I plodded northward through the southern reaches of Pumpernickel Valley; indicating that a couple of other backroad travelers were slowly working their way closer to me. Watching them, I nearly opened a barbed wire backcountry gate with the nose of my Tacoma instead of by hand. I got out, opened the gate and pulled through. To be courteous, I shut down my Hellas and put my headlights back onto low beam so that their glare wouldn't blind them. My fellow travelers caught up to me by then. The first one, driving a muddy Ford Super Duty 4x4 with an ATV in its bed, stopped and greeted me, asking if I was going to close the gate. When I replied in the affirmative, he thanked me and pulled forward. His buddy, also driving a Super Duty, waved in appreciation. I closed the gate. As I was walking back to the Tacoma, I noticed that one of the rear license plate lights was burned out. Getting in, I also noticed that my Tacoma had turned over the 125,000 mile mark a few miles back.

I let the Fords pull ahead a ways to get out of range, then turned all my lights back on. Within a few miles I saw two other sets of headlights coming southbound. Trees and houses with a light or two on in the otherwise increasing darkness indicated a few ranches were scattered about the valley.

After a few miles, I saw the Fords stopped ahead. Another gate had been encountered and it was their turn to be the doorman. The first Ford had continued ahead, the second Ford owner was walking back to shut the gate after my passage. I dropped my window and thanked him as I rolled through.

The road improved immediately upon exiting the gate and soon I wicked up my speedometer to 45. In a short distance, a road speed sign indicating that my speed was the maximum limit was illuminated in my Hellas. Since I was in no hurry and only ambling along, the first Ford had gained appreciable distance ahead of me and was soon only dim taillights in the distance. I appreciated that as I also appreciated the super bright output of my Hellas to light up the night. The second Ford had disappeared from view almost immediately after I went through the gate, so I assumed he lived in one of the nearby ranch houses. An oncoming Ford Super Duty also turned off into a driveway ahead to allow me to go by, then he turned into a drive I had just passed.

My Tacoma is a rare bird out here in the basin and range country of north central Nevada, out here Ford Super Duty and Dodge Ram Cummins diesels rule the dirt road kingdom. Nearly every small town in Nevada with at least 5,000 people has a Ford, General Motors or Chrysler-Dodge dealership; only the the larger cities have dealerships selling Toyotas. However, I've noticed a few Tacoma TRD 4x4 trucks in Winnemucca, including one that looks nearly identical to mine; as well as a few older Toyota 4x4 trucks.

Along the way near the northern end of the valley, I stopped to grab a few last photos of the truck in the valley. I noticed that here my left rear license plate light was burned out.

Pumpernickel Valley lies not north-south, but instead curves northeast. Edna Mountain juts out from the Sonoma Range enough to force Interstate 80 to climb Golconda Summit and our byway to squeeze up and over the highland in between. Our dirt byway climbed up a gulch, across the highland, then down into the valley of the Humboldt River and into Golconda and Interstate 80.

The lights of the small town of Golconda twinkled in the distance, as well as the streaming lights of vehicles along Interstate 80. Golconda was once a major railroad center along the Union Pacific Railroad, but has since shrunken to a semi-ghost town with old and weathered homes scattered amid properties with dilapidated mobile homes and a few nice newer modular ones. The once proud schoolhouse that served the community nearly 100 years sits in scenic forlornness in the town’s center.

It was solidly dark by the time my wife, Otis and myself hit Golconda. The road was dirt until we hit the bridge that crossed over the Interstate, upon which I took the Tacoma out of 4-wheel-drive. We turned onto the Interstate for the swift 16 mile run home at the 75mph speed limit.

It started raining as we hit Winnemucca. I pulled into my driveway at 7:38 PM. We had traveled 71.6 miles as per my Garmin eTrex, at an average speed of 25.3 mph. Not bad considering that average also was made up of long stretches of 45 mph paved and dirt roads through Grass and Pumpernickel Valley’s as well as the 75mph blast along I-80.

There are now no more spider webs under the Tacoma. The transfer case got a good dose of exercise. I got rid of my blues. Otis was sound asleep after his 20 minutes of non-stop barking and then the struggle for superiority. My GPS units got some use. The Tacoma was now dirty again. Life is good.

This morning as I write this, it had been raining all night. I just went outside with Otis so he could go to the bathroom. It’s raining softly and the clouds are low and covering the mountains. The rain washed the flanks of the Tacoma clean. Now I just need to find a another trail and one bad enough so that I can kick in the rear differential locker. It needs exercise too.

©2008, 2009 D.A. Wright
All Rights Reserved

Page Revised: 03/01/2009