Crystal Peak

Crystal Peak is maybe 80 or 100 miles southwest of Delta. This is an odd yellowish rock that sticks out alone among other juniper- and sagebrush-spotted mountains in the Wah Wah Range (no, this range was not named after any of Barbara Walters's ancestors).

There's nothing crystal about this peak, unless maybe it appears as crystal when you're looking at it from a distance in the early-morning sun on a clear day. We wouldn't know about that.

Crystal Peak "is a leftover from Tertiary volcanoes that preceded block-faulting in the area." (Utah's Wilderness Areas by Lynnard and Leland Howard) I don't have any idea what that means, but I do know the mountain is a big, rough rock riddled with stones of various types. Apparently this is volcanic ash that has mixed with the other stones and hardened like cheap concrete.

Randy and I went there yesterday, because it was such a fine Spring Saturday.












Crystal Peak is behind me. That's right, you can't see it for the clouds and the ice-snow that is blowing horizontally from west (right) to east.





















The mountain is pretty interesting with its weathered pockets.















This is not "the" peak. This is a short peak in front of the real peak, which we couldn 't get to, because the route we took would have required climbing along a very narrow ledge that was covered in several inches of icy snow, and we didn't feel so much like dying.





















We climbed up as high on this side of this peak as we could without needing Search and Rescue to help us down or pick up the pieces.





















Hey, I think I see a break in the clouds. Oh, never mind.





















Ducking on the east side of a ridge out of the driving wind, we were able to find a nice dry spot to sit and enjoy a pleasant picnic. What we didn't realize until later was that the porous rock had actually trapped a lot of moisture, which wicked nicely into our pants. This made for an uncomfortable drive out of here.















Some interesting plants grow right from the rock, like this little bonsai tree and its red friend.















And this tough tuft of whatever it is.





















And lichens, of course. I thought this looked like a slice of fruit with a green rind.















Oh, look. The clouds cleared a tad as we were leaving.















We drove out of the Crystal Peak area to the west and found Zebra Mountain. Good luck finding that in your guidebook.




Normally we would have taken the Tahoe, but Randy had left his car at the Lexus dealer for some work and they gave him a Toyota Rav4 as a loaner. We decided that was a good choice for driving over 100 miles of rough, sometimes muddy desert roads. It worked very nicely, though with its street tires and front-wheel dirve it was a little squirrelly in some of the bumpier corners, and it tended to get sucked into the muddy ruts. Amzaingly, the muddy roads were the same color as the car (taupe?), so other than wiping the windows a bit, Randy can probably take the Rav4 back to the dealer without worring about washing it.














We found Jared's roots on the way to Ely.














And we saw these sorry-looking elk, who, I suppose, are the lucky ones who survived the winter in the east Nevada desert.

Stay tuned. I'm going back to Crystal Mountain on a day when we can actually see the mountain and hike to the top.