Morey and Jefferson, NE of Tonopah (LVMC Trip)

pics by Harlan W. S.
May 23-24, 2009

This was my 2^nd time for both Morey and Jefferson, but in the past I took different routes. The full trip included a hike up Table Mountain on Monday May 25… I opted to sleep in that day. I’ll add a link to a full narrative as time permits

100k map with GPS trace. The blue shows the road we drove Friday night in the dark. We did some minor roadwork to get over one washout. Red shows the hike we took on Saturday.	24k map for the hike. The names are explained in the following pictures.	View E Saturday morn. We got to camp after dark, and set up in the drizzle. The remains of Morey town are in back at L.
Near camp was a field of irises.	The first few miles were on old mining roads, often bounded by purple lupines.	Lupines.
We’ll head for that ridge. This mountain range has very rugged cliffs on the E and W, but the hike from the N is over undulating sage plateaus.	Wild roses.	Joel heads toward a wild horse; this saddle is labeled “horse” on the 24k map.
		View S toward Peak 10127.
View NW from just S of the “peaklet” marked on 24k map. Jefferson is the partly snowy mountain in the center far distance; Table Mt is in the middle distance, with a long white band of snow. I went around the peaklet on the E side, while the rest…	…went over the top. You can just see the folks on top on the upper R part of photo.	José powers up the next saddle.
View NW again, from farther along.	Finally we see Morey.	Now we’re on Morey, looking roughly NNE. The sharp peak at R may actually be ~10’ higher.
The sharp Lichen Peaks are at R.		Arrogance.
We head back N.	Flax.	By now, we were getting hit by graupel.
We decided to run down this slope instead of taking the mining road.	By now, it was raining, and the lupines looked even brighter.	Wet phlox.
Mining detritus.	That evening, we drove down through Tonopah, ate a slow dinner, then drove up through Belmont to the lovely Pine Creek Campground. Here’s the 100k map of the area. The red track shows the hike we took on Sunday, up Pine Creek to Jefferson. The magenta shows the hike I took 2 years before, and blue shows the road 2 years ago.	Here’s the 24k map with our route. There are lots of stream crossings below 9500’.
We start the hike about 6:30 AM, hoping to outrun the thunderstorms.	2^nd water hazard.
View W. The “cirque” in the distance is actually N or the route we will take.		Bluebells.
Susan decides to get wet.	Susan sat on this rock, which proved problematical.	Judy looks SW to our headwall.
Judy and Susan chug up one of the lower-angle snow slopes.	View E, before we start the steep rocky climb.	This was my only picture on top (taken by Susan). We heard thunder and saw lightning close at hand, so we high-tailed it off the peak.
Faintly visible are Kim and Peppe running off the peak.	Susan plunge-steps near the bottom of an incline.	Glad to be back on trail!
Kim heads out by the bounteous yellow composites, which I think are balsam-root arrow-leafs (sunflower-daisy family).	These yellow flowers are everywhere at ~9000’	A crossing over our modified “bridge”. We had different counts for the number of stream crossings, from 14 to 18!
Judy crosses.	Kim, Judy, Joel and Susan. By now Peppe and José were way ahead.	Penstemons.
????	A cryptanth, possibly forget-me-not.

Narrative: