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January TD News -- Sunrise Pass

As fall turns into winter, it gets harder to find trails to drive that are passable and where
driving the road doesn’t damage the road itself. So to find a fun and adventurous trail,
we headed east into Nevada’s Pine Nut Mountains. The trail is called Sunrise Pass
Trail.

To get there we drove down to Minden, just south of Carson City, and then headed
east. The trail winds through beautiful valleys with Pinyon and Juniper pines. It was an
easy dirt trail with very few rocks and was not hard to navigate. The trail’s summit was
at 7,100 and it provided us with beautiful views of Smith and Mason Valleys. We also
caught a glimpse of some wild horses grazing in the meadows close by.

Not far from the summit we came to the intersection of another trail called the Como
Ghost Town Trail. We turned left and headed north on that trail. Far different from the
trail we just left, this trail was very rocky and it was very slow going. About a half hour
later we arrived at Como Ghost Town. Not exactly a thriving metropolis! There was
only the remnants of one building still there and lots of tailings from the mining that had
taken place in the area. Hard to believe that in 1860 there were over 400 residents in
Como.

 Continuing down the trail we ran across an old mine site. We could see how the mine
 was designed to divert water and ore into a big wheel used to separate the ore. We
 spent some time there walking around the site and taking pictures.

The trail ended up at Highway 50, and then we took 6 Mile Canyon Road into Virginia
City. We had planned to do some walking around town but it had started to rain very
hard and we decided some spicy Mexican food would be good to warm us up. We had a
very good turnout for the trail run, 13 Jeeps and there were 24 people for dinner.
The Club had its annual Holiday Party early in December as well. We had about 30
folks attend and we brought unwrapped toys for the Community Toy Drive sponsored by
Tahoe Donner. It was a fun evening with a Secret Santa gift exchange and food and
beverages provided by Pizza on The Hill.

 If you would like to join the fun and explore the less traveled back roads of this majestic
 region with us, please see our web site at TD4wheelers.com or send us an email at
 td4wheelers@gmail.com.