ADAM HAYDOCK

There are just some places in Nevada that combine everything amazing about the state into a relatively small and concentrated location. 

The Ruby Range is one of those places! 

Above the treeline alpine, beautiful lakes, blooming flower fields, pretty dense forest patches and beautiful all around high desert country. 

I would not just show up to this trail.  You want to come prepared. 

This is quite the serious hike especially if you walk the crest trail to completion. 

Our trip started off Friday after noon, we decided to get the first 5 miles complete and make it to Farve Lake before sunset. 

Before showing up, we parked a shuttle car at the end of the road as far as you can go. 

Thankfully, mark was successfully able to get his jeep up the road and ran back to the highway.  This proved to be the preferable action as this took 2.5 miles out of our hike. This was really nice to have when we got done. 

We drove back around and started our hike up to Liberty pass and to liberty lake.  The hike up to the lakes was beautiful! flowers were blooming, the sun was starting to set, and the amazing lakes provided beautiful scenery.

Hiking over to Farve Lake, we made it in time for the sunset.  We got set up and camped for the night there. 

We got a decently early start and packed our camping kits away.  Our first mistake was not bringing enough water with us to cross the crest.  

We were around 10K of elevation or more for the duration of this hike.  We made it to the first saddle crossing and figured we would fill water in the "last" section where water was located. 

There was no water, we each had around a liter and a half of water to make it over 12 miles to a source of water. 

We were feeling the effects of elevation, direct sun, and rationing water 

It got quite interesting as we continued to push and dig deeper into ourselves for motivation to continue. 

Once we crossed the high crest, we followed the trail down to a meandering section that twisted around chutes, cliff bands, spur, and draws. 

The sun was baking us as we continued to walk through the meanders. 

The temps were reaching 90 degrees. 

Just as when we ran out of water, we came up to a stream of snow melt. 

We jumped into this stream, filtered water, and cooked up some lunch. 

We could feel the life coming back into our bodies as we were having lunch.

two more miles to go and we slowly make it to overland lake. It was a task but we were able to cross the crest and make the lake by the afternoon. 

We decided to stay at the lake for the rest of the day to rest and recover. 

Another group passed through, and they continued from farve lake to the south camp site. That was quite the commitment they took on. 

We got an early start the following morning and headed up overland lake pass and into the last section of the Rubies. 

It was more vegetated and a bit "flatter" I could also feel the trees breathing oxygen, or at least it seems as such, as we would walk through long patches of green forest. 

The terrain changes quite a bit on this trail but now we are heading lower and lower into the valleys to get back to our shuttle. 

The trail meandered through thick bushes and birch forest. 

We made it to the south camp and filled our bottles with more water. 

This last section we found more water sources than the first two thirds of the trip. 

There is one 1500 ft ascent that needed to be made that was in direct sunlight and was quite hot!

A few more saddles and we finally worked our way onto old 4x4 roads and the last segment of the trip. 

This is where it got really hot!

The last few miles were in direct sun, lower elevation so it was in the 90s and we were spent. 

Eventually we wobbled to the car and completed the trip in 45 hours from start to finish. 

We were sooooo grateful to have the car where it was, or we would have had to hike an additional 2.5 miles. 

Our first mistake was not filling up at farve lake. 

Make sure you have enough water to cross the crest, there was no water up there when we crossed. 

Having a shuttle car at the end of the road was sooo helpful. Bring a 4x4 if you have it. 

Also come prepared, a bit acclimated, and pack accordingly for a backpack.

Its the real deal and I recommend taking it seriously. 

This is by far the best hike in Nevada. 

It is also park and go

no permited are needed to visit or to park your cars 

I can see this changing soon so please take this place seriously and make sure you pack any garbage out. 

I do not recommend doing this trip in 45 hours. 

I would ideally like to spend a day at liberty lake, spend a day at overton lake, spend a day at south camp, and hike out on the 4th day. 

Enjoy this absolutely beautiful wilderness!

Sheep Creek Cave is a Utah classic cave that is found in the northeastern portion of Utah.  

It is quite a remote place but rather easy to get to once you are in the region. 

The cave itself is not very decorated but rather featureless in terms of formations.  Rather you will find almost a mile of passage that you walk, crawl, stoop walk, and climb through.

 It gets sporty in a few sections and there is a vertical component to the cave as well. 

The Big room is a section where you have to rappel and ascend back up to continue into the cave.

 

There is a sump at the terminal end of the cave and ever since the cave was discovered, questions have been asked as to what is beyond the sump. 

Recently some of the passages opened back up above the sump and people are able to travel deeper into the cave. 

There is one section called the PM passage that goes higher and continues into some difficult to reach areas which might be a bypass but has not been fully explored. 

The cave itself seems to be either an overcharge relief or the water use to come in from higher and now has a lower water level for one reason or another. 

We got a decent start as to allow all of the participants to sleep in and rest up for the day's activities. 

We sorted out our gear and assigned packs to people for the day.  We found that on the return trip to leave the cave, the packs were scattered and ended up leaving a pack at the middle of the cave.  noted for the future to assign a pack to each person. 

We entered the cave and started our way towards the sump. 

There were large breakdown boulders to negotiate around so we had to pass packs back and forth in order to continue the transportation. 

The passage is typical borebole breakdown with some climbing and scrambling around rocks until you get to the big room. 

This room is quite large in size and has some impressive dynamic to it. There is a sandy beach and the river cuts around the corner of the passage. the floor is covered in sand telling me that water has been carving and depositing itself into the room at one time. 

Paul and Barry set up a high line to trolly gear across the big room to make the transportation of the gear, more efficient. This also help so that people wouldn't have to climb back up with scuba tanks. 

After descending 40 ft and ascending 60 feet back up, we continued deeper into the cave to work around an arch and a handline assisted traverse. 

once we got past this, we entered a phreatic passage with chert in the walls and the final beach section with the sump at the shoreline. We finally made it to the sump. 

The team caught up with the sump and Astro and I started to Don our diving gear. Driving 12 hours, waking up to get into a mile long cave, while photographing as we go, and efficinizing the safety of the team, while supporting 10K on diving equipment to reach the sump in working condition is not an easy task. With that mentality, you have to prepare for a dive in 47-degree water with restrictive heavy undergarments, restricting equipment and the unknown.  It becomes real at that point. 

After a couple hours of showing up at the sump, Astro and I are getting ready to dive. Astro has an issue with one of his first stages with a leak.  He has to replace the leak, while 

Report:  We had 20 people assist in this dive effort to push the sump at the back of sheep creek cave. We set up a high line to trolly gear across the big room inside the cave as well as set up rope traverse for fall restraint and arrest. Once we got to the sump Astro and I donned our diving gear.  Astro has a leak in his first stage, and I had a leak in my SPG.  We swapped out O-rings and the spg for everything to start working again. Astros primary light stopped working and the problems stacked too much for Astro to dive.  I had some leaks in my drysuit and it was a matter of time until my undergarment would get saturated and would be too heavy and cold to dive. I continued to enter the cave with the assist of Barry and Paul.   I made the initial push into the cave and laid line and surfaced in the PM passage. The viz was around 7 ft and the temp was 47 degrees F. I was able to get to a gauge depth of 16 ft and surfaced once more, I was laying line while I was continuing the dive. I continued into the water and after 120 ft of laid line counting knots at 10 ft intervals, discounting the line used to tie off, I found the passage to break left and right. With surfacing passage, solo diving, cold conditions, leaky dry suit, and passage breaking left and right, I decided to end the dive at this point. I left a cookie and line for a return dive. We packed the gear away and proceeded to leave the cave without incident and successfully performed a dive in Sheep Creek cave.