Hiking Thomas Peak – Ruby Mountains, Nevada

Island Lake and Ruby Valley from the summit of Thomas Peak

 The Setup

As we passed our neighbor’s house, he called out to us. Not having anything pressing to get back to, we wandered over to see what was up. What was up is he had climbed quite a number of peaks over the summer. He knew we’d be interested to hear about his travels. He told us about Arc Dome, Deseret, Pilot, Mt. Gilbert, and Thomas Peak. Thomas peak caught our attention, as I did some quick mental math, and the die was cast.

Thomas Peak sits at 11,320’ above mean sea level in the heart of northern Nevada’s Ruby Mountains. It is the second tallest named peak in the Ruby Mountains, 68 feet shorter than Ruby Dome itself. The special thing about Thomas Peak is its accessibility and as we later found out, the views are amazing.

Let’s Go!

The Island Lake trailhead begins at 8,780 feet at the top of Lamoille Canyon at the “turnaround”. This trail is the gateway to Thomas. It is less than an hour to hike the two-mile trail, and you gain about 900 feet to 9,680 feet to get to the lake. We did this in the pre-dawn, with the sun just touching us as we walked the last half-mile into the lake.

Just as we arrived at the lake, we took a hard “right” to the north and climbed another 300 feet to the top of the terrace over the lake. With large pine trees and many flat and grassy areas, we both noticed this might be a great spot to just set up a tent and spend some quiet time away. Most folks stop and enjoy picnics at the lake, but few hike further and this location was very private and pretty. From this area, we did some scouting to pick our best path up the chute to our north. We had read this was the best approach.

View of primary ascent from terrace above Island Lake

Choosing the Approach

The notch in cliffs in the eastern portion of the east-west ridge leading to Thomas Peak was more obvious than I thought it would be. It is located very much due north of the island in Island Lake about a half-mile from the shore. We approached it by climbing on competent rock to a few little pine trees at the base of the rock scree below the notch. There we sipped some water and loaded my lumbar pack with the water and food we wanted for the ascent. We ditched my wife’s lumbar pack in the nearby rocks to retrieve later.

Scree and Chute leading from Island Lake to Thomas Peak

We tried climbing in the small gravelly scree, but that proved slippery. Next we tried the rocks in the bottoms of two small incisions you might be tempted to call draws. It turns out the rocks were a bit like a poorly designed staircase. While they created some difficulty in both picking stable rocks and stride length, they generally provided a secure and welcomed foothold. We trudged up the rockslide from 10,120 feet to the bottom of the chute at 10,550 feet rather easily, if a bit slowly.

We had more difficulty climbing in the chute initially; however, once we realized we could traverse from side to side pretty well, we were able to use the cliffs for handholds. These handholds helped a lot as we continued up the chute without incident. The rocks inside the chute were themselves far more likely to slide out from under us than in the small “draws” below. Once at the top of the chute at about 10,670 feet, we realized we still had a bit of rock scrambling to do. To encourage our hearts for the remainder of the trek, we stopped and sipped some water and ate some nuts and protein bars. Better.

With the Difficult Behind

The next eighth of a mile or so were rock scrambling for us, which brought us to 11,000 feet or so on the long ridge leading to Thomas Peak. We were able to slow-walk pretty well as we found the rocks up here were a lot more stable. We also realized that keeping slightly to the left of the little knobs on the ridge helped us to avoid a bunch of up and down to reach the bare ridge beyond.

My wife and I were so happy to find that the ridge itself was about 400 yards of nearly flat and very stable surface. What a relaxing stroll we had to what to us appeared to be a false summit of Thomas Peak. On the right rose a large anvil-shaped peak and on the left was a little rock pile. Trusting to my maps, I knew Thomas required us to go over the rockpile directly to our west.

Thomas Peak Summit?

As luck would have it, we were being caught along the ridge by a couple of other male hikers. I was starting to worry that perhaps they’d summit before us, something my competitive nature did not accept easily. So my wife and I pushed a little harder, to at least get on the rockpile before them. Hmm…there was a cairn on the rockpile as we neared the top. We reached the cairn together, and realized that rockpile was Thomas Peak, not a false summit at all!

We sat down and sipped water while we waited for the first of the fellows to reach our summit. He exclaimed an excited “Are you peak-baggers?!” in greeting. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I sort of caught his gist and just told him we weren’t. We just wanted to come up here, so I’m not sure yet if I was telling the truth. It is true that the allure of the second-highest named peak in the Rubies brought us, but somehow the term “peak-bagger” just didn’t seem to fit at the moment. We’ll see…

Turns out that first gentleman had hiked to Wines Peak the day before and was heading to the Jarbidge Wilderness in northern Elko County to bag the Matterhorn the next day. Holy jeez. His partner was also a confirmed peak-bagger and had flown up from So Cal to do a few peaks while his buddy did the Dome. He’d already bagged the Dome and so was busy working on new peaks.

Smelling the Roses

We hung out and signed the log book while those two cats took off for the anvil-shaped pinnacle a few hundred yards north of Thomas. If I remember correctly, we were the fourth group of the season and there was only one entry in 2016! We’d just finished 2,540 vertical feet, with my wife’s fit-bit logging about 3.2 miles. I’m not sure if that was accurate, but close enough to give you an idea. The whole thing for us took about four hours and 10 minutes. The two peak-baggers I think may have shaved about 45 minutes off of our time, as they had started up the scree as we were halfway up the chute.

My favorite view from Thomas Peak!

The views from Thomas are breathtaking. These are the real prize. You can see most of the big peaks in the Rubies. We were close to Full House, Snowwater, and Mount Fitzgerald. We were pretty sure we could see Ruby Dome peeking at us, and we could clearly see Wines and Mount Gilbert and what I tend to call Liberty. The view into Thomas Canyon and even the South Fork of Lamoille Creek were simply spectacular. We spent nearly 30 minutes just enjoying this part of our trip, as the views are worth every bit of the climb. Ruby Valley and Spruce Mountain were hazy, but it was fun to see them anyway. We could see most of our little community of Spring Creek as well.

Lessons Learned

My wife and I took our time picking our way back down the chute and scree. We did have one pretty bad near miss however. As we hiked down, the two chaps caught us, with the older gentleman fairly scorching past us arms flailing and wind-milling as he slid down the slope. As his buddy caught us, we heard him yell. Just then a rock about twice the size of a coffee cup went screaming by me at breathtaking speed. He apologized and I thought nothing more about it.

Later, as my wife and I were resting and finishing our water, I asked her if she saw how close the rock came to me. She said it had shot through the gap between my right-hand trekking pole and my right knee! I’ll never know, but I suspect that rock connecting with my leg would have broken it, and I shudder to think what might have happened if it hit me above the waist anywhere. It also went by my wife nearly as close.

We learned a valuable lesson in that. We are always careful about keeping out of harm’s way together, but we failed to recognize the other climbers as a threat. From now on, we will be careful to stay out of others’ fall lines and also to make sure we don’t endanger others in a similar way.

The whole trip including rests and views ran 7.5 hours round trip (half what our 4960 foot day-trip to the Dome took), putting us back to the truck at 1:30. We were so exhilarated after summiting this peak!

Some quick notes from the trip, to help you do this yourself:

1. If you want the views from an 11,300 foot peak, Thomas is a decent choice. It isn’t that bad except for the scree and boulders in the chute;
2. I wore stiff Kenetrek boots. My wife wore lighter La Sportivas. Hers were better for 80 percent of the trip, but were a bit less helpful coming down the scree. The goofy speed-demon passing us in the scree wore Merril Moabs, which wouldn’t have given nearly the support of the La Sportiva’s, so who knows. The Kenetreks were no fun on the trail back from the lake.
3. We packed 2.5 liters of water in my lumbar pack and 2.1 in my wifes. It was barely enough on a 80 degree August day with some cloud cover;
4. We started at 6:00 am. I’d have started 30 minutes earlier if I had it to do over;
5. Watch for unique animals like pica, mountain goat, and Himalayan Snow Partridge. We saw picas and partridge poop, and some animal I’ve never seen before shooting across the scree. I only saw it for a second or two and I couldn’t explain the animal that was bigger than a badger and smaller than a deer. Weird;
6. Pants worked well for us. Shorts are an option on this hike as there is very little brush to scratch at you; and
7. We used trekking poles. They came in very handy on the scree but alternated between useful and liability in the boulder patches. Overall, they saved our ass on numerous occasions coming down the chute and scree.

That’s it. I’d highly recommend you take this hike. Just be careful of the loose rocks and any injury that might come from traversing and climbing boulder fields!

Update: My daughter did this trip later this summer. She had great success going up the left chute directly to Thomas Peak. The route she used went up that one and down the eastern route we describe here. She attests that the more direct route was quite a bit better. Try them both!!