This year was not a good year for spring wildflowers. There was not enough rain this year. The winter and spring rains were barely 2 inches. Yet there were plenty of different wildflowers to be found if you went off the beaten path at the right times.But there were not great numbers of each variety.
We took four daytrips this spring and found plenty to look at during the last three. We knew that the first trip was too early, but it showed us that cacti would bloom fairly well this spring.
The first daytrip was to Eldorado Canyon along Lake Mojave. It was really too early to expect any wildflowers, but wildflowers were only part of the excuse to go.
Nelsons Landing was the first stop. The community there was washed out in the late 70's/early 80's by a flash flood. All that remains is the end of the road. The site yielded a good view of the lake. A pair of walks around the area afforded a good view across Lake Mohave into Arizona. There was even time for contemplation.
Then we took off down Eldorado Canyon. Shortly, along the road, we spotted a wild burro. It was wary, but let us watch it graze as long as we kept our distance. About a mile further along the road, we came to a spot where beavertail cacti grew out of a rocky outcrop. Amazing. Barrel cactus grew nearby and cholla covered the hilltop.
We continued down the canyon to the turnoff into Aztec Wash. There were few wildflowers. The rabbitbrush had already bloomed but nothing else was ready yet. We did enjoy a good picnic lunch at the mouth of the wash and even saw a bald eagle fly into the wash. It flew out as soon as it saw us. On the way back home, we tried to find Forlorn Hope Spring, but couldn't. I think that if we had hiked far enough from the end of the road and the primitive camping area, we would have found it. Our search matched the spring's name. But it was fun traveling a dirt track that had not been used in 20 years trying to find the road to the spring.
About 3 weeks later we took a drive along Lake Mead. At that time, the wildflowers were found either along or above the road. And there were plenty. We started out at the Lake Mead Visitor's Center and drove north. The county is building a desert wetlands park adjacent to the Lake Mead Recreation Area. One trail is ready. It led to the outflow from Las Vegas into the Lake. Because of the amount of runoff water from Las Vegas, a new canyon is being carved pretty rapidly. The channel flows very swiftly and much of the area is left high and dry. The county has hired an expert to build diversion dams to spread the water out. Unfortunately, the cattails are giving away to tamarisk in the area, and most of the wetlands are now dry. The wetlands park is to open in 6 or so months.
From there, we drove to Government Wash. There is a boat launch area and primitive campground there. Also, aside from the brilliant water contrasting with the grey and red rock, there is a lot of trash.
The next leg of the drive took us onto the Bitter Springs "Road". Parts of it are definitely 4WD. My Trails Illustrated map shows that the road meets the State Highway again in about 20 miles. But it didn't. We tried several routes, but all of them were impassable. One of them might have gone through years ago, but erosion has closed in the canyon there. Another took us through a canyon barely wider than the car. Upon comparison later, a friends's Lake Mead map, dated 1995, showed the road not going through. My map was dated 1989.
On the other hand, there was a variety of wildflowers blooming along the Northshore Highway and along the Bitter Springs trail. We capped off the trip with a visit to the Lost City Museum in Overton. It contains, among other things, a reconstruction of an Anasazi pueblo from a site now covered by Lake Mead. There is also a good gem collection and information about later settlers in the Moapa Valley, both Paiute and Mormon.
Lovell and Trout Canyons are on the west side of the Spring Mountains. The road up Lovell Canyon leads to a 4WD road that takes you over the mountains to Red Rock Canyon on the Las Vegas side. However, at the time we could not find that route. So we just went around on the roads, finding more wildflowers.
The road up Lovell Canyon is paved until the turnoff for Lovell Pean and Trout Canyon. It climbs gradually to about 5000 feet. The canyon is always fairly wide, so the views are long. There are a number of side turnoffs that go for a short distance, in most cases. The mountains are to your right, so no road can go very far that way without climbing very quickly. Often, the road to the left drops off quickly into the Pahrump valley. The paved road ends at a private ranch. A dirt road takes you past Lovell Peak and to Trout Canyon.
There were plenty of wildflowers along both roads, so stops were plentiful. The road by Lovell Peak climbed rapidly (to about 7000 feet) and windily. It never got very bad. The view never torned too great, so we continued to drive through the pinyon and juniper forest, passing a few ponderosa pines. Most of the wildflowers were seen on broad, more level places along the road. Once we crossed the pass, more wildflowers appeared. The most interesting home we saw on the trip was a spiders. Trout Canyon provided little to see. It is mostly a little private community and there is very little canyon. So we turned around, drove back across the pass, and down Lovell Canyon road. We tried several roads that might take us to Red Rock, but all petered out soon. We saw one big road, but thought it was to a private location. That was the road we wanted. So we started looking for a side road into the valley. We found a good one.
The road we chose led rapidly down the mountain and into a wash. Once in the wash, the road turned into a track. We found wheelprints to follow, but they were not at all recent. Maybe the last people there were hunters from last fall. But we were rewarded with a big variety of wildflowers of all kinds. The track was hard to follow, and, in some places we had to backtrack in order to refind the road. But eveltually, as was inevitable, the road widened as it returned to the highway. There is noplace else it could have gone to.
As spring ended, the weahter turned hot. Our wildflower trips needed to hit higher elevations. So we turned to the sheep mountains. The roads into the Sheeps rise from around 3000 feet at their turnoffs to 5-8000 feet at their end. AAnd from there you can hike higher. We took the Hidden Forest road because of a late start (I had already done a 10k workout that morning.) The road rises from the valley between the Desert Range and the Sheep range to about 6000 feet. The road is bouncy but easily passable, going alongside a wide, deep wash filled with Joshua trees. There were plenty of wildflowers alsongside the road, but they were beginning to be past their prime. The cholla and desert marigolds were best, but there were also hedgehog and beavertail cactus and globe mallow.
The road ended at the mouth of Deadman Canyon. From there, the old jeep trail is blocked off for hiking only. You can go four miles to Wire Grass Spring or a shorter distance. We went in about 2-1/2 miles, and the trail was still rising. The late start and my earlier workout kept us from going farther, but we passed a pair of guys with backpacks starting even later than us. They were in for the weekend.
As the trail rose, the wildflowers (and vegetation in general) increased. There was plenty of Fremont's penstemon and cliff rose was blooming everywhere. The Sheeps had received a lot more rain than the valley. I could see that from my office window over the course of the spring. There was even snow in the sheeps as late as late April. We started passing pinyon pines and century plant. The canyon narrowed, providing good but short views of the peaks ahead. As the trail rose to about 8000 feet, we thought that every turn in the trail would lead to the pass over the Sheeps, but they didn't. Filally, we became concerned with dark and turned around. It was a lot faster going down than going up. What a surprise!. The views coming back were pleasant. We saw one pine on a tower we had missed going up. A classic view. We came out and followed the road back to Las Vegas.
The Sheeps and Mount Charleston will be our main driving locations as the summer heats up. Southwestern Utah might also provide a source of short trips.
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