Galena creek park
By Jessica Groach, Outpost contributor
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A natural beauty |
To look around while at the park, it's hard to believe the desert is so close. Only a couple hundred feet in elevation changes the climate to almost cool and damp, and the smell that pervades is a clean pine combined with fresh air from Galena Creek, which flows through the park's middle.
The nearby highway cannot be heard at all from within the trails, which are only trailheads for wilderness areas. The park is located west of Highway 431, Mt. Rose Highway, seven miles up from the U.S. Highway 395 turn off. It covers 440 acres of forest area as well as the creek. Found within the park is a series of hiking trails considered by hikers to be the best in Western Nevada. The difficulty levels vary greatly, which provides accessibility for most visitors.
"The best trail is the Jones White Creek Trail," says Heather Crawley, a seasonal park aid for the Washoe County Parks Department. She says the trail is set apart by its covering of wildflowers and a variety of trees, mostly pine, ranging from sub-alpine to a riparian area closer to the water and filled with aspens.
The Jones White Creek Trail is a loop of 9.2 miles that winds up to Church's Pond, a historical site, gradually becoming more difficult and involving many switchbacks, or steep zigzags, as the hiker progresses. The entire trail, as a result of its level of difficulty, can take up to six or eight hours to complete.
"It's for people who really like to hike and like to take their time," Crawley says. But at the sides of the trail are signs that route out suitable hikes for those who wish to take it easy. One route climbs 2,000 feet in elevation and can usually be completed in three hours, and another climbs 1,000 feet for a two-hour trip.
Travel writer Deke Castleman, writes in the Nevada Handbook, "The first mile of this trail is a killer, but then it settles down to just plain steep torture."
For a visitor to the park who wants little more than a casual walk and an encounter with the outdoors, a small nature trail, the Bitterbrush trail, is an alternative. This trail is a mile long and only stretches to Galena Creek, ending at a small footbridge. Children from nearby schools make occasional visits in warm weather, as do families hiking together. The 18 signposts along the way correspond to numbers on a brochure that supplies historical and natural facts and make this trail perfect for any nature wanderer.
From the nature trail, Camp We-Che-Me can be seen. The camp was used by girl scouts in the 1940s and included not only the grounds for camping but also a fish hatchery, which is visible from the nature trail as well. Still standing on the old land are huge concrete blocks supporting metal stoves. Campers actually could put pots and pans inside these stoves to cook, and the concrete blocks protected them from rain and rugged ground. We-Che-Me was eventually forced to close because of frequent flash floods.
Obviously, flooding in this area is still a concern, and reminders of the January 1997 flood lie everywhere throughout the trails. Crawley was hired temporarily on a six-month assignment that primarily involved "a lot of repair work."
"The trails were destroyed, the creek totally surrounded the bridge...all the rocks you see on the trails now, they all were washed up from Galena Creek in the flood," she says.
The creek flows into Steamboat Creek to the south, although during the flood the two became one body of water. The cleanup after the flood is just one of many examples of how the area has survived disaster and seems to hold up quite well.
In the 1890s the whole area was clear-cut, and the trees went to the lumbering industry. The Jones White trail still displays these stumps left behind, which gives an observer some indication of their histories.
"You can actually see past snow levels in the trees," Crawley says. The loggers used two-man saws on the trees, which had to be used at waist height. While some of the stumps now appear to be waist height, "some are as tall as a man," because as Crawley describes, they were used at waist height when the snow levels may have been half the height of the men. Through storms, floods, blizzards and climate extremes, the park serves as a mountain getaway full of natural history that is only 30 minutes from Reno.
Because there is so much to see in the park and because it is so accessible, several activities take place here throughout the year to attract visitors. Twice a year in the summer, park rangers take special group hikes in which they provide information about history and archaeological facts. A stage is located in a meadow near which a campfire is usually held on summer Friday nights, and plays and talks are sometimes presented here. For instance, visitors have included a woman who has climbed Mount Everest, a nature photographer, an archaeologist who studies the Paiute people and the park ranger, Deborah Snyder, who spoke about bats.
"One really nice thing about the area is learning about its geology," says Crawley, who discovered that Galena Park is rich in unusual rocks and varied terrain. In fact one large hill in particular serves as entertainment in the winter for local children who take advantage of the park's snow play and sledding hill.
Several features about the park draw outdoorsmen, children or anyone who wants to take an hour lunch from work and read a book by the creek.
"I think as far as the character of the park goes, people like it so much because it's pretty natural-looking -- it's not heavily developed," says Deb Snyder, the park ranger. "It's a good place to walk in the trees."
Very few places anymore provide such a beautiful escape within reach of a city. "It's some of the best hiking in the Sierras," says Snyder, who has hiked in Alaska, Hawaii, and other exceptional areas. For a mountain experience that will take a visitor into the Mount Rose Wilderness, Galena Creek Park is an option that is a lot closer to home.
"There's so much open land here, it's one of the kindest places to hike," Snyder says. "You can rent picnic tables and do barbecues here, but that's not why most people come here. It's for the spirit of Galena."
copyright 11/15/97 Nevada Outpost
http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost
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