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| Hike Up Ophir Creek Canyon, NV | |
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| | Hike Up Ophir Creek Canyon, NV | | | |
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Hike Up Ophir Creek Canyon, NV
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| Hiking | 4.79 Miles |
1,646 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.79 Miles | 4 Hrs 24 Mns | | 1.14 mph |
| 1,646 ft AEG | 11 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | | Decided to take a short side trip to explore the Ophir Mine and ghost town on my drive through the Big Smoky Valley, Nevada, on my way to Oregon. The mine location, originally called the Murphy Mine, is about 5 miles from state HW376 on the Ophir Canyon Road. The road, which I drove to the mine site, has some rough high clearance 4WD sections with some potential scratching from bushes along the side of the road. After exploring the ghost town with its massive rock wall ruins of the mine stamp mill and the office/mansion building, I chose to hike further up the road to where it crossed a 10,100 ft pass in the Toiyabe Range in 3.2 miles with an elevation gain of about 2360 ft. I would find that the road probably could have been driven all the way to the top in a high clearance 4WD vehicle but I needed the exercise after the previous day of driving from Phoenix. There was one long steep rocky section of the road where I could envision a vehicle starting a backward slide ending up buried in a thicket of Aspen at the bottom of a gully. I ended up running out of time and energy after hiking 2.6 miles and 1640 ft gain in elevation partly due to not yet being acclimated to higher elevations. The views of aspen groves and springtime wild flowers on the hillsides along with the pleasant hiking tread of the 4WD road made this a worthwhile hike. |
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