If you want to view a full-resolution map, click here. Caution - do not use this map or gps track for navigating the route.

Water wheel/Ore Crusher (Click the image for a full-size view)	S.Twin Gorge and basin (Click the image for a full-size view)	Basin and Range, Toiyabe Front (Click the image for a full-size view)
Old tree glphy tr. 2028 (Click the image for a full-size view)	Rob & friend at TH (Click the image for a full-size view)	road to doom (Click the image for a full-size view)
How come it's called the Nautilus Eyebrow (Click the image for a full-size view)	Nautilus Eyebrow Arch (Click the image for a full-size view)	Detrital Arch through Nautilus (Click the image for a full-size view)

      Day 3: Arcdom: Arc Dome; 11 miles, 25 ERM, roll along the crest. The way down is much easier than the up, but not because of elevation gain/loss. It's because I found the whole trail coming down. I started hiking at 7:30 a.m. and returned to camp around 5 p.m.
      The cairn near camp signaled good stuff that almost materialized. I found an old "Trail --->" sign and tried to follow it up. If only I'd looked left as I walked off the brush-choked corner and headed back down, believing this was an alternative route to the spring area. After a half a mile of brushing, I popped up and encountered the end of the trail on the map, sighting by GPS and dead reckoning (on the map, the trail ends about a half a mile after leaving the crest).
      The rest was like a highway as I rolled along the tundra, views opening and ranging into California. I joined the Crest Trail where it loops one of the accesses to Columbine CG and continued to Arc Dome, then left it where the Crest Trail apparently drops briefly on the Stewart Cr. Trail. I was up over 10,000', then lost much in the deep saddle prior to Arc Dome - the reason for the high ERM, besides it being tall. Tundra flowers, warm enough for a t-shirt, no one around. Glorious. I would later see four people, two going to the peak and two looping around from Columbine CG. Only homemade signs, or none at all. Much of the route is open with only cairns to guide you.

Detrital Arch (Click the image for a full-size view)	Another view - water wheel (Click the image for a full-size view)	Getting sranger, then... (Click the image for a full-size view)
Getting there (Click the image for a full-size view)	Almost there (Click the image for a full-size view)	There you are (Click the image for a full-size view)

      Day 4: Loop Knock-Out: (? Mile, probably 8+, ? ERM). (My GPS reports that the total trip mileage is 31, with a total ascent of 9633'. The high point was reported as 11,782' and the TH low was 6263'.)
      Note that, once again and as is typical in all of his work I have encountered, Bruce Grubb's (Hiking Nevada, 1994) mileage estimate of this loop hike is way off (at 8 miles). It's difficult to tell where he gets these highly erronious figures. A bit more reasonable is the 13 and a half (plus another mile of road between the THs) estimate from Michael White's Nevada Wilderness Areas, 1997 - Chapter 10, Arc Dome Wilderness. Neither account for ERM, Energy Required Miles, a concept which all guides should adopt.
      ERM is Energy Required Miles. As initially read in Trails of the Tetons (long out of print) by Paul Petzold, founder of NOLS. It's a wonderfully useful concept and application. When I hiked the Teton Crest, I discovered how useful this methodology is on the ground. Add one mile for each 500' up AND down to distance = ERM. I frequently use ERMs to calculate what the actual day is like, unlike Bruce Grubbs and other writers who may or may not have visited an area they write about.
      My feet are humming as I watch the evening's glow slip up the slopes across the basin. Basin and range, Basin and range, repeat.
      I'm a bit giddy after my 1 and half beer at the South Twin TH. The cooler drains as my stomach churns on chili, crackers, tuna, banana, cherries, watermelon, and of course, beer It's been a long, pounding day, knocking out the remainder of the Twin Rivers Loop.
      I started before 9 a.m., from my Trail 2028 camp and eventually learned where the trail ran (see the north segments of the tiny loops on the GPS route). Then, upon reaching North Twin, I thought the walking would be smooth. Next up, scores of downed Aspen to climb, disappearing trail and such. Up on the pass, I wondered if the route might improve. Hah, it completely disappeared in the sage below the pass and I put back on pants, not because it's cold, but because my legs are getting whipped, cut, shredded, etc.
      After much thrashing on this route (not a trail), I encounter the relative highway of the S Twin Trail, headed for Reese River. Not far and I see an arch, back and forth, across this so-called river tot he water wheel/ore crusher. Lovely darting trout grace the crisp and clear waters of the North and South Twin Rivers. Perhaps they're the fabled Lahontan Trout? The lower South Twin gorge is a deep, dark splendor. It requests further investigation. Up around the narrows and I'm feeling enervated and more. Big gopher snake but no people, even as I write and the light fades. I look out across the purple hills and feel refreshed after my sun shower and beer.

      Day 5: Driver: I crawl through the terrorist junction known as Hoover Dam, noting huge arching spans to nowhere cluttering the sky, ending abruptly hundreds of feet above. I guess a new highway is under construction over the dam.
      I stop and walk up to the Nautilus Eyebrow Arch. Las Vegas, another sprawl that has no compelling reason to exist, where a green belt is a republican developer's money belt, where rare desert water is sprayed into the air like so much pyrite (fool's gold) thrown into the air by early Nevada prospectors, where the a church has a firm hold on ecological suicide via overpopulation. A place to avoid. But not the Toiyabes, a place of intrigue and mystery. Anyway, the "trails" could use a tiny bit more traffic.

      Edward Abbey once wrote: "Wild country has the power to remind civilized people that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men."

      South Twin Rivers Rock Shelter arch, Nevada - directions:
      See these features marked on the GPS track below Day 1 above.
      The name for this arch was derived from where it is and that there is what appears to be a rock shelter below the arch. Drive about 65 miles North of Tonopah, Nevada, on Nevada Highway 376. Take Forest Road 080 West to the South Twin Rivers Trailhead, which is about 3 miles off the highway. Approximate coordinates for the TH are: UTM 11 S 479150E 4304413N (WGS84). Hike up the South Twin River Trail that goes steeply up the side hill East of where South Twin emerges from the narrow canyon for approximately 5.5 miles. Do not begin by hiking up the river. You will be a few hundred yards NE of the junction of the South Twin and North Twin River trails. (Caution, the North Twin River Trail exists mostly on the map, not the ground.) The arch is NW of and near the trail, at about 7900'. The approximate gps coordinates for the arch are: UTM 11 S 474660E 4300431N (WGS84).
      Of interest to some hikers, is an old water wheel and ore crusher about 3 miles up the South Twin River trail, just downstream of the confluence of South Fork Twin and South Twin River. The wheel still turns! The wheel is approximately at: UTM 11 S 476524E 4301252N (WGS 84) and 7300' in elevation.

     Nautilus Eyebrow Arch, Arizona - directions:
      Bonus - Detrital Arch, Tres Compadres Arches
      This arch can be viewed from mile post 21.6 on Hwy 93 about 50 miles North of Kingman, Arizona. The mile posts are numbered from the Northern border with Nevada, near Hoover Dam. The coordinates from which to view the arch to the West are at approximately UTM 11 S 723623E 3963505N (WGS84).
      The Nautilus was the fabled submarine from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. This arch looks like the 'eye' of the Nautilus, thus the name. On the slope below Nautilus, one might see Tres Compadres, a series of three tiny arches.
      Detrital Arch: Driving North about a quarter of a mile, another arch is visible in a protrusion about a mile to the West. This arch can be seen in the photo looking through Nautilus Eyebrow, and was dubbed Detrital Arch because of the wash near it. Detrital refers to particles of rock derived from the mechanical breakdown of preexisting rocks by weathering and erosion.

Map - NV: Toiyabe: North-South Twin Rivers Loop - plus Arc Dome; 30 miles (Click the image to see the map)

If you want to view a full-resolution map, click here. Caution - do not use this map or gps track for navigating the route.

Friends of Nevada Wilderness

Arc Dome Wilderness from Wilderness.net

Austin Ranger District - Toiyabe NF

Wild Vagabond Main	Trip Report Index	Caveat

---