Hidden in Plain Sight: The West Humboldt Range

Sunset from the western slopes of the West Humboldt Range overlooking the Humboldt Sink.

The West Humboldt Range? You mean East Humboldts right? You know, Angel Lake, beautiful granite, right? No? The West Humboldts? Never heard of them. Oh, you mean those hills behind the Lovelock Prison east of I-80?

Yes, indeed. Nearly every traveler along the western corridor of the Humboldt has beheld the West Humboldts. Now they are mostly ignored, but many cursed them as the rock piles of hell for they overlook the pass from the Humboldt Sink to the Carson Sink and the reaches of the dreaded Forty Mile Desert. But not so for the Saurian Expedition of 1905. They were a group from Berkeley. They searched the area's Triassic Limestone and found twenty-five ichthyosaur skeletons including some of the largest and the most complete taken from their resting places and preserved.

But not all have been travelers passing by the West Humboldts or seekers looking to extract from it. For thousands of years it was just home to generations upon generations of people, an important testimony of which can be visited at Lovelock Caves, on the western slopes of the range and an easy tour route from Lovelock, read an interesting account of the caves via Travel Nevada.

The south end of the range, the Mofung Hills, was the site of a recent excursion/break from the I-80 drive. It is easily accessed via the 95 Fallon exit and good gravel road going north from beyond the railroad tracks and just before the highway goes over the range's last flank. The hills were colorful and interesting. And there is an Earthscope out in the hills! What is an Earthscope, you ask? (As this writer certainly did!)
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The Earthscope is a massive science program:

EarthScope is a program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) that has deployed thousands of seismic, GPS, and other geophysical instruments to study the structure and evolution of the North American continent and the processes that cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It involves collaboration between scientists, educators, policy makers, and the public to learn about and apply exciting scientific discoveries as they are made.

How cool is that!