It's MY-na, Not ME-na Has Dark Skies.

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

It's MY-na, Not ME-na Has Dark Skies.

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.“
— Vincent Van Gogh

October 2025

MY-na. Don't worry, I wasn't sure how to say it either.

Since the Great Basin’s Edge bikepacking trip was shorter than expected I still had a little left in tank. An increasingly rare phenomena but one I happily embrace. I perused through my adventure backlog and found one that looked perfect. New to me territory and a cool looking ghost town that I have been wanting to visit. I cleaned up my bike but hadn’t yet done a more permanent repair to the tire I cut on the previous trip so I changed out the front tire on my Binary Bicycles, Kinetik bike. In looking at the terrain on Google Earth I suspected that I might be better off with something even fatter. In retrospect this would have been a perfect route for my Binary fat bike running the 27.5 wheel set and 4” tires on the I45 rims. No matter, my plus tires worked fine.

I started out just outside of Mina Nevada after noon but managed to get up to the old mining camp of Simon that evening. An old silver - lead mining camp, Simon is an interesting site with lots of remains. One deteriorating building held hundreds of core samples.

I found a perfect campsite overlooking the valley below. Later I went out to look for the comet but couldn’t see it despite perfect dark skies. Still, I spent some time practicing a little cell phone astrophotography. I knew approximately where the comet should be and managed to capture it in a shot. Like I always say: You don’t have to be good if you’re lucky. Ok full disclosure. I didn’t even know I got it until I got home and examined the photos more closely.

Early the next day it was up and over the Cedar Hills and a drop into Big Smokey Valley.

As I climbed back up into the Royston Hills there were clear views of Crescent Dunes Solar Plant (The Eye Of Mordor) and Tonopah beyond.

Much of the climbing was in washes on soft surfaces and somewhat slow. There seems to still be some small scale mining activity out here with lots of more modern equipment and vehicles about but I didn’t see anyone working any claims.

I made camp at Crow Springs which had served as a stage stop between Sodaville and Tonopah and had plenty of attainable water. A good thing after being unable to get any water at Black Springs which was a huge surprise! I say attainable and it was. There was plenty of water but all in shallow rivulets. I got water out of a tire rut because that way I didn’t have to try to find a deeper spot. I always carry a dip bag to dip water out of shallow pools to load my ‘dirty’ water bag for filtering vs trying to dig something out and wait for the water to settle. It’s a step up from my mountaineering days when I used to carry a straw to suck snow melt water from melting snow banks. Man I ate a lot of gravel that way!

Day 3, well really day 2.5 (but who’s counting?) felt long due to soft surfaces riding. Along the way I passed through the remains of Gilbert mining camp, a gold discovery made by the Gilbert brothers. So much horse sign! But I saw no horses. A few more riding hours and I camped less than half a mile from Blue Link Spring as I had been seeing a few cattle and surmised that maybe the spring area was full of cattle. Got a little more astrophotography practice that night.

In the morning the quick jaunt to the spring proved it wasn’t full of cattle. It was however full of small minnow like fish. A google search has informed me that these are apparently Hiko White River Springfish and Blue Link Spring was selected by federal and state agencies to serve as a refuge for this endangered subspecies. I didn’t need anymore water here and the low angle light prevented any decent photos of the fish so after sinking in the mud crossing the spring outflow I made my way up into the Pilot mountains climbing another soft-ish wash topping out at 8000 ft. A fast 10 mile descent through an awesome desert canyon with more springs took me back to my starting point and after packing away my gear and bike, a burrito at La Casita in Mina.