- This time on "Wild Nevada," (lighthearted folk music) we're gonna take a look at the two mountains that bookend the Truckee Meadows.

First, we'll take a look at Mount Rose.

- And then we'll cross the valley to Peavine Peak.

We'll get into the geology, the history, and of course, the beauty of both of these mountains.

All that's coming up right now on "Wild Nevada."

(jaunty orchestral music) - [Announcer 1] Support for PBS Reno and "Wild Nevada" comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

(uplifting pop music) - [Announcer 2] Travel Nevada helps provide travel inspiration and experiences for those interested in creating their own "Wild Nevada" adventures.

For more information, visit travelnevada.com.

And by Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, Charles and Margaret Burback, Sande Family Foundation, Kristine Perry, Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, June S. Wisham Trust, the Hall Family, Dillard and Meg Meyers, Sara and Leonard Lafrance, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by individual members.

(lighthearted folk music) - In Reno, there are a couple of natural landmarks along the western rim of this valley and everybody here knows 'em.

- And they are Mount Rose and Peavine Peak.

And they are popular for recreation but for different reasons.

- Yeah, Mount Rose offers hikers an iconic trail with some stunning valley and lake views.

- And Peavine offers miles and miles of trails, off-road adventure, history, and the views aren't too shabby either.

- That's right, and we're gonna check 'em both out on this episode.

- And I'm going up first to the top of Mount Rose.

From Reno, we take US 395 to the Mount Rose Highway State Route 431.

The Mount Rose Summit parking area is about 30 minutes up the highway and sits at an elevation of 8,990 feet.

Here, I meet James Faulds, the Nevada State geologist.

Jim, thanks for meeting me out here.

- It's a pleasure.

It's a beautiful day.

I thought we'd take a stroll up to the top of Mount Rose.

- I have a feeling I can probably learn something from you along the way.

- [James] We better get going.

There's a lot of miles to cover.

- I'll let you lead.

- All right.

- [Chris] To summit Mount Rose, Jim and I have a 10.7-mile hike ahead of us.

And as we get started, it's not long before Jim is teaching me about some of the fascinating geology that makes up not only Mount Rose, but the surrounding mountains.

- [James] So one thing to mention in here is, well, there's a lot of granite here.

- [Chris] Mm-hmm.

- And this is this 100-million-year-old granite and it's like big old magma chambers.

They were at the roots of huge volcanoes about 100 million years ago.

What we have exposed today are the magma chambers.

Everything on top has been worn away and it eroded away.

- So this is really kind of like, like been weathered into this sandy aspect then.

- Mm-hmm.

- And that's where this decomposed, kinda sandy- - That's right, yup.

- Soil comes in?

- [James] Right, the glaciers, and the rain, and the snow, et cetera, have eaten away at the granite and created all this granite silver roads down into a nice sandy material.

- And that gets into your socks.

- It sure does.

(both laughing) Yeah, yeah.

A classic exposure of the granite is El Capitan at Yosemite.

- Oh, okay.

- So the walls of Yosemite are formed out of the same kind of granite that we have here.

And in fact, it's about the same age.

(wind blowing) - [Chris] It's interesting that an area that is so close is so similar.

- [James] Mm-hmm.

And so you can sort of think of the roots of all these huge magma chambers.

Think about a mountain chain as large as the Andes.

And that's what we had in this region.

It actually went all the way from Mexico all the way up to British Columbia.

- As Chris and Jim begin their epic ascent, I'm just getting started back at the trailhead because my hike for today is a little more modest.

This trailhead already offers an incredible view of Lake Tahoe, so it's appropriate that this is where I meet Scott Tyler, a retired professor of hydrogeology with a passion for these mountains and the way they transport water.

Morning.

- Hi, Dave.

Good to see you.

- Thanks for meeting me out here.

- It's a pleasure.

Looking forward to it.

- So I've always wanted to go further up this trail.

What's in store for me today?

- Well, we're gonna take a hike up the main trail up to the headwaters of the Galena Creek and a really nice waterfall.

- I am always fascinated by the water up here because I don't understand how there's water all the time when it seems like it should dry up in the desert.

- Well, we call these the water towers.

This is where all the water comes from for everything that's out there in Truckee Meadows.

And we'll kinda show you where it comes from.

- Looking forward to it.

Let's go.

- Okay, sounds good.

Off we go.

- It's already beautiful and we just get started.

I love coming up here.

There's not a bad direction to look in when you walk in this trail.

- [Scott] No, not at this time of year, also.

It's perfect temperature.

It's cool.

It's beautiful day.

- [Dave] So when we come out, what are the things that you always make sure you bring?

- [Scott] I always bring some water, a little bit of food, usually some bug spray.

- [Dave] Oh, good call.

- [Scott] Just in case, even though this time of year you wouldn't expect it.

And sunscreen for me all the time.

- [Dave] Me, too.

Me, too.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Well, I do see some color, some pretty wildflowers that still seem to be in bloom.

So that tells me that there is water underneath here.

- Oh, yeah.

There's still quite a bit of water left in the soil.

And if we look out, we're looking out onto the Tahoe Meadows out here.

You can see it's quite green.

There's a lot of water running out here.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

So where is all this storing?

- Well, so water science, or hydrology we like to call it, if you wanna be technical about it, basically, the mountains up here in the West, we often will call 'em the water towers of the West 'cause this is where all the water comes from.

It's stored here in the winter with the snow, releases slowly in the summer for agriculture and for use downstream.

So they're pretty amazing.

They're the natural water towers.

And as the snow melts and is used, goes into the soil, some of it runs off, a lot of it goes deep into the soil and then comes out as springs and keeps the creeks running all year round.

Beautiful flows, cold water, happy fish, because it's groundwater.

It's the water that infiltrated and it's coming out.

(gentle piano music) Really, one of the interesting things about this part of the world is a fellow who was a professor at the university here, or turn of the last century, late 1800s, by the name of James Church.

He looked around.

He taught Latin and German.

But he also loved the mountains.

And he came up into the mountains and he said, "I'm gonna study snow."

- Huh.

- Because, again, if you're in the Sierras, it doesn't rain much in the Sierras in the summer.

- Right, that's true.

- Mostly snow.

All the precipitation comes as snow.

- [Dave] Yeah.

- [Scott] So he said, "Well, how much snow is up here?

And where does that snow go?"

And so at the turn of the last century, he hiked up here and started measuring things.

He built an observatory up on the summit of Mount Rose long before there was, long before Nevada Department of Transportation plowed the road.

So think about getting up here in the middle of winter.

- That's a daunting task.

- Yeah.

- [Dave] Wow.

- [Scott] And so what he did was he said, "Well, there's gotta be a relationship between how much snow there is up here and how much runoff or stream flow we get in the summertime."

So he built and invented something called the Mount Rose snow sampler, which is nothing more than a steel tube that you drill into the snow, go all the way down to the bottom of the snow, pick it up, you measure how deep the snow is, but you weigh the snow and see how heavy is it.

- Oh.

- [Scott] And from that, you can figure out how much water there is up here.

So he developed that technique.

No one had done that before.

And then he compared every year how much water there was in various places up here with how much runoff there was in the river, and make a nice plot between more snow, more runoff.

It's intuitive.

- Yeah.

- But back then, it wasn't so intuitive.

- That's right.

Today, it seems fully logical, but no one had ever measured it.

- [Scott] So a really interesting fellow and is considered the father of snow science internationally.

- Thank you for teaching me.

You are a professor.

- Ah.

- I know you're retired, but you're still teaching.

(Scott chuckles) - I do like to talk.

- It's incredible.

(both laughing) - Okay.

- That's fantastic.

Well, let's carry on.

- [Scott] All right.

- [Dave] As you can probably tell, Scott is a fascinating hiking partner.

From here, we have a couple of miles to cover, so we get to it, and I find myself wondering where Chris and Jim are at this point.

(wind blowing) - [James] All right, this is where we turn off the Tahoe Rim Trail and we head up to Mount Rose.

- [Chris] Now we begin our climb, right?

- [James] We do, yes.

(gentle folk music) (water burbling) - So what are we looking at?

- This little cliff here is an old andesite flow.

And by old, not particularly old, geologically speaking, probably around seven to 10 million years old.

And it's really cool when you look at the andesite flow, okay?

It's usually sort of a gray color, not real dark gray, but just sort of a grayish color.

And it's got all of these little white speckles in it.

And those are little crystals that solidified when this lava flow cooled when it came out onto this surface.

And so the different kinds of crystals in the rock can also tell you a lot about its composition and origin.

And so we can look at this rock and look at those crystals and understand sort of where it came from, what kind of environment.

And actually, this is how we date the rock, too, and understand its age.

And there's radiometric dating we can do of those crystals and understand quite precisely what the age of this is.

- It's really interesting because, again, it's just layers of story.

So the mountain has a story.

Each part of the mountain has a story.

So then, in some ways, each rock does.

- It sure does, yup.

And each volcano has a story.

So we're looking at the side of an old volcano here on Mount Rose, and it had an evolution through time, maybe lasted a few 100,000 years, maybe a million years.

And then you have all of these lava flows and whatnot stacked up on one another that tells you about how that particular volcano evolved through time.

(mellow folk music) - [Dave] We have a waterfall.

- [Scott] Yeah, that's the falls on Galena Creek.

- [Dave] That is really pretty.

I love that sound.

(Scott chuckles) (waterfalls rushing) (mellow folk music continues) - All right, so we've made it.

And it's beautiful.

And what strikes me about it is, when we're here, like the time we're shooting this is very late summer, almost early fall time of year, and there's a lot of water coming out of there still.

How is there this much water still coming out?

- Well, we have had a little bit of rain, but this flows all year round.

And essentially, up above us here, as we're heading up toward the headwaters of Galena Creek, there's no lakes, there's no ponds, there's no place, or there's no reservoirs or anything.

- [Dave] Okay.

- [Scott] This is basically water that is in snow and rain that's infiltrated into the rocks and the aquifers here, and then is coming out as springs all up above us in meadows and marshes, a little bit of it behind us here as well.

There's probably some springs there.

And so this water is infiltrated last year, or in the spring, or maybe the spring before.

- [Dave] Mm-hmm.

- And there's a huge reservoir of water up there in the ground.

And it just keeps this stream flowing all year round, as it does quite a few of the streams here.

- Yeah, I think I still am amazed at the amount, just the sheer volume of water that must be still up here for this to be going all the time and then through the winter.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's amazing.

I mean, you think...

I just did a quick calculation.

It's maybe a million or 2 million gallons a day (Dave chuckles) are flowing out this little creek.

And that's from an area up above us here that's not really that big.

Eh, maybe three or four square miles, but serves as the catchment for the aquifers that are above here and keeps these rivers flowing all year round.

- [Dave] The life of water, you know?

It's- - Oh, yeah, it's a big circle.

- Well, Scott, thank you for enlightening me about all of this.

I will now look at these mountains with a different level of respect.

- Well, good.

Well, I appreciate it.

It's really fun.

Keep your eyes open and just sort of follow where the water goes.

- I will.

- [Chris] The waterfall does make a great destination, but we passed that a long time ago.

And we're set now on pairing up to the summit.

So I feel like we've come into a different area.

So what are we looking at here, Jim?

- [James] Yeah, we sure have.

We sort of have transitioned from the east side of Mount Rose where you have lava flows right on top of that old 100-million-year-old granite.

But as we move west, we cross some faults.

The faults are down to the west, and so we have some slightly younger strata, slightly younger volcanic flows.

But the more important thing as we transition to the west, we're getting into what is the center of an old stratovolcano.

- [Chris] A series of switchbacks leads us to a final push above the treeline and to initial views of Lake Tahoe below us.

Loose rocks and scree marked the last portion of the hike, but there's a pretty stable trail through it and we're able to reach our destination, the summit.

(gravel crunching) Well, I think we made it.

- We did.

We're on top of the world here.

- [Chris] (laughs) And the views definitely makes you feel like you're on top of the world.

- [James] Yeah, it is fantastic.

You can see down into the Truckee Meadows on one side, Lake Tahoe on the other side, - [Chris] You know, I always think of Mount Rose as bookending the Truckee Meadows, but it really bookends all kinds of landscapes.

- Another really interesting thing that we can see from the top of Mount Rose here is, as we look off to the east toward the mountain ranges toward let's say Fernley or Fallon, Nevada, is we're looking out toward a system of faults, and it's kinda like a mini San Andreas Fault.

So, and that system of faults accommodates about 25% of the motion between the Pacific and North American Plates.

And that adds up to about one centimeter per year.

So it's kinda cool to look off to the east and realize that Fallon is moving one centimeter to the southeast relative to us.

- Thank you for bringing me up here.

I have learned so much about a mountain I've looked at all the time, and yet I looked at it- - Yeah.

- A whole different way today.

- Oh, it's been a pleasure.

And it's always fun to just talk about the amazing geology.

Nevada is one of the best places on earth for geology in so many different ways.

And yeah, so it's been a lot of fun for me as well.

- [Chris] After a great day and two very full hikes on Mount Rose, it's time to rest and get ready for our second peak tomorrow.

(gentle country music) - [Dave] The next morning, just outside of town in the foothills of Peavine Peak, I meet retired cartographer, Jack Hursh.

Hey, Jack.

- Dave, how's it goin'?

- Great to see you.

- All right.

- Let's hit the road.

- All right.

Well, come on.

- This is cool here.

Jack's a frequent visitor to Peavine who's going to help introduce me to the area.

I see a bunch of peaks here.

- [Jack] Yeah, we got- - Are these all part of Peavine?

- [Jack] They are.

We're looking at the entirety here is Peavine Mountain.

And these are just subpeaks.

The tall part of Peavine is up above and beyond those.

- [Dave] This is one of those mountains where you think you've reached the top and then you realize that you didn't and you have to keep going.

- [Jack] Have a lot farther to go, yup.

- [Dave] This is really surprisingly beautiful.

I was honestly not sure what it would look like over here.

I've never really walked up on Peavine before.

- It's beautiful all year long and all four seasons.

It's a great place to hike.

You have tremendous views.

We have a beautiful day here with clouds and blue sky.

And in this area, you'll see fields of white lupin, sego lilies, wild onions, and several other different species of wildflowers.

And oftentimes, just thick with them.

Oh, my goodness.

Look at this, a walking stick.

And here, I'll try to give my hand, get it into my hand.

And it's not often that I've seen a walking stick, and so this is quite a treat.

That is so cool to see a walking stick right here on Peavine Mountain.

- It's my first walking stick.

At least the first one with legs.

- It's the first time I've seen in a long time.

Well, we're finished.

We can go home.

(both laughing) - We just started and now we're seeing cool things.

All right, well take me further.

- [Jack] Okay, let's go.

- I begin my day on Peavine just north of Reno, outside the community of Cold Springs.

Here, Jim and I meet up with Marc Leukhardt and some of the gang from the Northern Sierra UTV Club.

Well, Mark, thanks for meeting us up here.

- Nice to meet you.

- So we are really excited to get to go up on Peavine, and thank you for providing some wheels for us to get up there.

- [Marc] Anytime.

- [Chris] So do you spend a lot of time off-roading on Peavine?

- Yeah, Peavine is one of the more popular areas that's nearby where most everyone lives in the Reno area.

And I live up in the North Valley, so it's very convenient for me to come up here and explore.

And it's inducive to my hobbies, which are rock hounding and and whatnot, so.

But it's a very enjoyable place to off-road.

The trails are well-established.

It's easy, you know?

Some areas are a little sketchy, but it's doable for the beginner.

- So when you talk about off-roading, you've brought out some of your friends.

We're gonna off-road together as a OHV club, right?

- [Marc] Yes, exactly.

We have people here from the Northern Sierra UTV Club, and then my club, Del Fuegos, which is the oldest club in Nevada.

- [Chris] And so what is the point of coming out with a club or coming out with friends?

Why is that a good thing to do when you're off-roading?

- The main reason is you don't wanna ride alone.

You wanna have some people with you.

It's no different than people that bike, or ATV, or the side-by-sides.

It's always good to do it in a group.

You have some security if there's a breakdown or if you get lost, so.

(Chris chuckles) - Yeah, we're not gonna get lost today, right?

- No, we're not.

No, we're not.

(Chris laughs) - I was gonna... Well, we got Jim, who has mapped some of Peavine, so hopefully we won't get lost today.

- [James] Thanks to the geology, I will always know where I am out there, so.

- Mm-hmm.

(Chris and James laughing) - Well, I'm excited to get to take a look at it from a little different perspective.

- Mm-hmm.

- So should we get in and start riding?

- Sure, let's go.

- Yeah, lots of great scenery and lots of great geology.

(lighthearted folk music) (vehicles rumbling) - So Jim, as we head up here a little bit from the group, what is it you wanted to show me up here?

- Well, this is a really fantastic view, the big fault that is on the north side of Peavine Mountain.

What has really formed Peavine Mountain is all of the faults that bound Peavine mountain, and they have sort of accommodated uplift of this little block of crust.

- [Chris] So where is the fault here as we look?

- [James] So the fault line is sort of marked by where the change in slope occurs, or the break in slope.

So you have these gently sloping surfaces down below, and they're coming up to Peavine Mountain, and then Peavine sorta pops up.

- Right.

- And so that change or that break in slope is where the fault line is.

And it's actually marked by several sort of clumps of trees.

And those are springs that are right along the fault line.

- So, and one of the things I think, a lot of times, people underestimate is how tall Peavine is.

- Mm, yes.

- So what is our elevation?

- It's about 8700 feet at the top.

It's over 4,000 feet above the base of the valley floor in Reno, so.

- So I guess we've got a little more elevation to climb, right?

- [James] We do, yeah.

We better get to it.

(lighthearted folk music) (motors whirring) - So if you were to describe an age of a mountain, is Peavine old?

- The rocks on Peavine are old, but the mountain itself is relatively young, geologically speaking.

- So it's still changing.

- It is still changing.

And these faults that bound Peavine Mountain are relatively active.

They have ruptured in earthquakes, some of them in the past 10,000 years or so.

And that, of course, is very young, geologically speaking.

So it's faults that we sort of do keep an eye on.

We wanna map them out carefully, understand where the actual sort of traces or where those faults sort of come to the surface, and sort of factor that into understanding the earthquake hazards of the region.

- It's a beautiful place just to visit, but it's fascinating when you start talking about its structure and its geology.

So not only a beautiful day for a ride, but a great day to learn about it.

(gentle folk music) (motor whirring) (upbeat folk music) - The wind Chris and Jim are feeling on the north side is bringing changing weather on the south side of Peavine.

(hawk screeching) It blows in some rain and forces us to take cover under some rocks.

All right, we're getting some drops.

We're just trying to hide a little bit from the rain and Jack has something that he brought along that I thought was pretty interesting.

- Oh, I wanna share this reference book.

It's called "Mentzelia," and it was published in 1992 by "The Journal of the Northern Nevada Native Plant Society."

I want to read a couple quick paragraphs that beautifully describe the botany of Peavine Mountain.

"The plants on Peavine Mountain do not occur randomly.

Rather, they occur in fairly predictable groupings called plant communities.

A plant community is an abstract concept used by ecologists to describe repeatable groupings of plants that have a uniform outward appearance and are found in characteristic habitats.

Many of Peavine's communities are easy to distinguish from one another, but others differ only in subtle ways.

All plant communities are determined by their environment, by the climate, soils, and topography, by the interactions between plants and animals, and by natural or human-caused disturbances."

- So that's the whole story of this area.

- Back up north, we made it.

Well, we made it to the summit of Peavine, so we've made it to the top.

It's a little windy up here, but the views are amazing.

- [James] Boy, the views are amazing.

So we have a beautiful view kinda looking south, down into the Truckee River Canyon as it comes out of the canyon, sort of in the Verdi area, and then starts flowing east toward Reno.

And we can see Mount Rose also to the south in the distance.

- We were right up on the top of that.

- We were.

(Chris laughs) Yup, sure were.

A little easier getting up on top of Peavine today.

- (laughs) Yeah.

- But, and then in between is where they've got the Truckee River and then Peavine here.

And so it's really interesting story here where that river is found, kind of a low spot between two areas, two big fault blocks that have been kinda uplifted, thanks to the faults that are bounding them.

And then there's sort of a lull in offset along those faults about where the Truckee River is.

And then the river naturally found that and comes out of the Sierras and found that low spot and flowing off to the east toward the Great Basin.

- [Chris] So really, in a lot of ways, you do have the two ranges really bookending what we call the Truckee Meadows now, right?

- [James] Yeah.

- [Chris] That river corridor.

- [James] Yup, they sure do.

- It's been a really fun ride and a fun day.

- Yes.

- Thank you- - Yeah.

- For bringing me up here and experiencing Peavine with me and telling me all about it.

- Oh, it's been my pleasure.

It's always great to talk about the amazing geology that is right in our own backyard.

- Well, thanks for going to another mountaintop with me.

- Very welcome, yeah.

(chuckles) (Chris laughs) (lighthearted folk music) - In the last couple of days, we got to see both Mount Rose and Peavine and see how much they have to offer as great escapes into the outdoors without being that far out of town.

If you want more information on this episode or any of the "Wild Nevada" shows, visit our website at pbsreno.org or use the PBS app.

- Until our next "Wild Nevada" adventure, here's hoping you can have some adventure of your own.

We'll see you next time.

(lighthearted folk music) Chris: Im doing this ‘cause otherwise Alex is gonna yell at me.

Hell be like, “you didnt get anything from the inside for me.

” Chris: Alex, you just walked right in my shot!

Alex: All right, now you know how I feel!

(laughs) Dave: Takes two people to zip my zipper My packpack is so complicated, apparently, that 2 people needed Jack: We did it!

Conquered!

Dave: (Laughs) Alex: Three...two...one... Group: Wild Nevada!

(jaunty orchestral music) - [Announcer 1] Support for PBS Reno and "Wild Nevada" comes in part from the William N. Pennington Foundation.

Bill Pennington was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and gaming pioneer who built a legacy of community service in Nevada.

(uplifting pop music) - [Announcer 2] Travel Nevada helps provide travel inspiration and experiences for those interested in creating their own "Wild Nevada" adventures.

For more information, visit travelnevada.com And by Millie Hopper and Millard Reed, Charles and Margaret Burback, Sande Family Foundation, Kristine Perry, Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation, June S. Wisham Trust, the Hall Family, Dillard and Meg Myers, Sara and Leonard Lafrance, in memory of Sue McDowell, and by individual members.