Ruby Crest Trail – North to South. Part 1: An Idea

A solid, groomed trail marks the path to North Furlong junction along the Ruby Crest Trail

Ruby Crest Trail Seed is Planted

It all began when my friend Amanda planned her first trek on the Ruby Crest Trail on top of northern Nevada’s Ruby Mountains. She gave me highlights of the planning and we talked about gear and the trail. She provided me with a bunch of post-hike lessons learned. I know it is often lessons from experience that sink the deepest, but the experience of others should be examined. This is true especially when some of the stories are a bit eye-popping!

I firmly attached Ruby Crest Trail to my bucket list in late 2015. My wife and I attacked Ruby Dome the next summer, and as we licked our wounds, we both agreed Ruby Crest was officially on. Last year, the timing never seemed to be quite right and we worried about our fitness as well. This summer, we threw caution to the wind and just set aside the vacation and dates.

Our Approach – Gear

I’m feeling the pull of age and gravity. My back has finally begun to win the war, providing extra incentive to keep my pack light. My wife and I have ultralight Osprey packs and have accumulated a lot of ultralight gear. We tried to minimize. At the end of this three-part article, I’ll provide what I think were our lessons learned regarding this. In short, we thought we’d kept everything to a minimum for a four-day (possibly three) trip.

Packs were 4.4 and 4.6 pounds. Exped UL Synmat7 inflatable insulated lightweight pads (which we LOVE) were 1.4 pounds and our summer down bags were 2.1 and 2.3 pounds. Our Big Agnes UL3 tent was 4.4 pounds and we elected to take the rainfly since we opted out of taking any rain jackets. We debated between the 0.8 pound water filter and the 0.4 pound Steripen, and played safe, taking the filter. I weighed our 1-liter Nalgene bottles at 0.24 pounds each and realized that two stout 0.5 L Dasani™ bottles weighed only 0.06 pounds per pair, saving us 0.18 pounds per liter. Osprey 2.5L water bladders came too, at 0.3 lbs each.

Clothing

I’m not going to lie…I economized even on the number of underwear! We weighed each shirt, pair of socks, jacket, flippies, lightweight shoes, towels, med-packs, dog bed (yep, we packed a pad for our spoiled best pal), sunscreen, beanie, and other thing you can think of. My somewhat nerdy convertible Prana Zion Shorts/Pants were in and I even weighed the pant legs. Dusty pants and shorts did not worry me, so I only took the pair I was wearing.

In went three shirts, one of which never got used. We checked the weather forecast and we both left rain jackets behind. We brought the tent fly instead, which seemed perfectly reasonable! I left my down jacket behind. With a down bag to crawl into, I could stand to shiver a bit for a while, and we’d get hot fast hiking. On this count at least, I was correct. Tammy brought her down jacket and it helped. I splurged and brought three pairs of socks, and the lightest longjohns I could find. But enough about clothes….

Food and Final Steps

Again, maybe overthinking this a bit, we went cold. No jetboil, dehydrated meals-in-a-bag, or fires for us this time. Nuts, dried fruit, granola, more nuts, jerky, protein bars, and a few candy bars. 17,500 calories for two people for 3 or 4 days. More on that later, but once we tallied it all up my pack came in just around 27 pounds with 2L of water on board. Tammy’s was right at 23 pounds. Honestly, we could have dropped each of those by at least two pounds, but live and learn. We saw lots of folks on the trail, and we had likely some of the lighter packs on the trail. Trail runners passed us a number of times with only lightweight water bladder packs supporting them. Does that count?

We shuttled a truck to the trail’s end at Harrison Pass, parking it out of the way under some aspens. We double-checked our keys to that truck worked x 3 and locked her up. I never walk away from a locked truck when I’m outdoors without a serious twinge of anxiety. I check and recheck and triple-check the location of the key and that the locks are secure. Is anything is on, especially lights? Coming back to a truck I cannot get into or cannot start is a particular phobia of mine. I’ve come to this phobia honestly, but that is another few stories…

Final Plan

I’ve read a number of articles and blogs on the Ruby Crest Trail. Most noteworthy for me is Sue Kennedy’s post, which is detailed and provides a significant amount of excellent information. Most folks I think have plagiarized Sue a bit in their justification for doing the trail from south to north. I considered this carefully, and made a different plan. Sue is a local and I know she knows her stuff. I knew that sun angle was irrelevant on the 4^th of July, so that reasoning was out. The engineer in me played the tradeoff study through multiple times. In the end, we opted to go north to south.

We reasoned that the 8.x mile hike into North Furlong was well within our wheelhouse and would be relatively cool being all above 9,000 feet. We would arrive at the base on Wines peak and summit it at the coolest time of day, hopefully feeling pretty fresh from a short hike on day one. Part of the reasoning also included a downhill-from-there strategy for the hardest leg between North Furlong (Wines Peak really) to Overland Lake. I had fear about the 12-ish miles of up-and-down packing extra water. Finally, we figured we could attack the last two major climbs, out of Overland and Smith Creek in the coolest time of day on days three and four. The plan was set.

Day One – Start

Day one started at a leisurely 9:00 am departure from the Lamoille Canyon turnaround, shuttled by our gracious son Jason. Most locals know well the hike from the turnaround trailhead which is well-maintained and generally cool and easy to Liberty Lake. We met a number of day hikers, some overnighters (there are several beautiful lakes and peaks to enjoy on an overnight), and one pair of through-hikers on our first day.

The easy hike to the first alpine lakes of Dollars and Lamoille was familiar, and is marked by plenty of shade trees. We carried a couple of liters of water, but you can collect water at a number of points along the way for those first couple of miles. The switchbacks out of Lamoille Lake to Liberty Pass are very well constructed and kept us at a decent pace as we encountered our first through-“hikers”.

Reilly enjoys a slide in the snowbank near Liberty Pass!

This team of three riders leading three mules made us envious of the first-class camp meals hinted at by the heavy panniers. These Ruby Crest Trail riders had their own challenges with horses and rocks. They had gear and tack that spoke of northern Nevada buckaroos. Both men and the gal all wore smiles as they passed us going the other way. By the way, everyone but one set of trail runners passed us going the other way. Sue Kennedy’s influence or wisdom?

Liberty to Camp

After we arrived at Liberty Lake, having been passed by a trail-runner, we just kept on toward Lake Favre. For those of you from around the area, you will have heard this pronounced “fav”, even though Brett Favre has mucked that all up. Not sure how the French pronounce it, but don’t get all upset if a local refers to it as Lake Favv in conversation. Anyway, we took off our packs and enjoyed some R&R where the trail crosses the stream below the lake. Nature put on a small show for us, as we watched numerous small trout angle in the current and a weasel ghost by along the streambank.

We shouldered our packs for the last climb of the day into the North Furlong Lake area and our campsite. Along the way, we met some fellas who were on day two of their hike coming north. They had come all the way from Overland Lake that day and gave us a report on other hikers behind them. When I asked if they were camping at Favre, one immediately said “yes” and the other said “maybe”. If the maybe-guy won out, they would have completed the through-hike in two days. We climbed into the Furlong area and thanks again to Sue Kennedy’s nice article, I knew there would be good camping spots at the trail junction with the lake trail. We found a nice private bench and spring trail-right about 100 yards before reaching the junction.

Second Thoughts

As we set up camp, filtered tomorrow’s water, fed ourselves, and cleaned up, I was beginning to have second thoughts. The Ruby Crest Trail was already taking a toll on my psyche as my lower back and left knee were screaming mean things at me. Hmm, if this was to be our easiest day (3-day option), what was coming our way later? By the way, Sue spoke true…there are several great campsites and plenty of water options at the trail junction, at least on the third of July.

I’m almost convinced that if my daughter Amanda’s friend Matt hadn’t evangelized so hard about the miracle of Leukotape we would have been screwed. Both of us found hot spots on our feet when we hit the creek below Favre. I’d weighed the darned Leukotape roll at 0.25 pounds and was going to leave it behind. Luckily my wife’s good sense prevailed and it came along to save us, and save us it did. We taped our feet where it hurt and put our boots back on. The trip to North Furlong camp was comfortable as the tape did its job and protected our vulnerable spots. Hint: BUY SOME LEUKOTAPE AND USE IT!! Thanks Matt!

As I crawled into bed while Tammy enjoyed the rest of her dinner, I was nervous. We committed to summiting Wines Peak whether we turned back or pushed through and finished the Ruby Crest Trail. I popped a couple of naproxen sodium tabs and hit the rack with two hours of sun coming at me through the pine boughs and tent screen.

Part 2 and Part 3 here!