Eldorado Canyon is located about three miles southeast of Dayton, Nevada in the Pine Nut Mountains. It is a desert canyon with a meandering creek, willow trees, cottonwoods, sagebrush, and a wide variety of high desert vegetation. It is walled on both sides by rocky slopes, punctuated with unusual formations and weird shaped volcanic mud flows. Deer, wild horses, coyotes, cougars, and many varieties of small wild animals and birds call the canyon home. The many year round springs and the year round creek make it an oasis in the desert mountains, and a prime location for the occasional flash flood.

"Smoke drifts up from the wood stove at our cozy camp in Eldorado Canyon.

Early spring in Nevada is a time of unsettled weather conditions. Camping in the backcountry can set the scene for an unexpected adventure!

Happy Campers ready to ride! Susan, Cindy, Carolyn, Maya and Annalisa don't let a little wet weather dampen their spirits.

On Sunday, March 22, Dennis and Michaele Tristram, owners and operators of Tin Cup Adventures, met five eager campers at the mouth of Eldorado Canyon for a four day horse packing trip. Tin Cup Adventures is a horse and mule packing outfit operating in the Mt. Rose Wilderness and the Pine Nut Mountains.

Even though the weather was supposed to be wet off and on the next few days, the campers would be provided with tents and a warm wood stove for their stay.

The campers were four students from Danville, California, Annalisa, Cindy, Maya, and Susan and their teacher Carolyn. All were on their term break from the Athenian School in Danville. A horse packing trip was a welcome break from their studies.

"Camping in the backcountry can set the scene for an unexpected adventure!"

Dennis and Michaele were assisted by wrangler Josh Morrow. Eight packers and campers and eleven horses and mules and one large black dog named Spike loaded up and headed down into the wild and beautiful Eldorado Canyon. Camp was set up on a sandy clearing a good distance from the creek on high ground. Tents were quickly erected and the cooking areas organized, and the picket lines were set up for the horses. The camp was organized for the possibility of bad weather, but the evening was clear and calm. Everyone spent the first night around a cozy outside camp fire.

By Monday, the wind was whipping the tents around. In Fact, one of the tents blew down during the night, but the hardy campers just kept sleeping, and put it back up in the morning. Nothing short of a hurricane could keep the girls from going for a ride up the canyon on Monday. In spite of the wind, it was a nice ride. The riders made it all the way to the "Arch", a hidden arch of rock tall enough to ride a horse through. They stopped there for lunch. While exploring the area, Annalisa found a deer skull and part of it's skeleton. The parts were carefully wrapped and placed on the pack mule. The nice day evaporated into a deluge of rain just as they returned to camp. Horses were unsaddled, gear was stowed under cover, the wood stove was lit, and everyone dove into the main tent to escape the downpour! That night, dinner was cooked on the wood stove. As much of a pain as the rain was, it solved a problem. We were running short of drinking water, the creek was too muddy for our water filter to clean, and boiling the water was just going to produce boiled mud. But, the rain water was pure, all we had to do was figure out to catch it! Every bucket, pan, and even the gold pan was put outside to catch water. The best water catcher proved to be a waterproof tarp stretched between two trees. In a short time we had plenty of fresh water!

Lunch Break on Monday, Dennis, Josh, Annalisa, Cindy, Maya, Carolyn and Susan enjoy a picnic.

But the rain could have stopped then, but of course, it didn't. In the middle of the night, we all became aware of a continuous roar coming from the creek. Every once in a while there was the crashing sound of boulders being swept down the creek. We all hoped that our happy home was as "high and dry" as we thought it was!

By Tuesday morning, the peaceful little creek was a raging torrent! Fortunately it was not raging through our camp. This was an interesting lesson in the potential for flash floods in the desert canyons. The ride for that day was confined to the "island" that we were camped on, we rode from "shore to shore". The rain wasn't finished with us, we got very wet while riding. The question for the day was, will the creek go down enough by tomorrow so we can ride out of here?

No problem, by Wednesday, the creek was a little smaller, so we picked up our feet and rode across! But one of the pack mules had other ideas. He had to throw a fit and drag the whole pack string back across the creed! His tantrum got him nowhere, however, we re-organized the outfit and dragged his sorry hide back across the creek again. Other than this Mule Mutiny and some wet feet in the many creek crossings, the ride out went smoothly.

But, nobody expected the scene we found back at the trailhead. The rental van that the girls drove there was mired in the gooey mud! Fortunately, Josh had a truck with 4-whell drive, because our trucks were all 2-wheel drive hooked up to the horse trailers. They weren't going anywhere! Josh was able to tow the van out of the muck backwards to the harder ground of the road, and then drove out with them to the pavement to make sure they made it.

After the campers left, the three of us had to ride back to the camp to pack it up and bring it out. We decided to stay overnight and bring it out the next day. Hopefully the ground would be drier by then, and our trucks would drive out okay.

Of course, the sun came out the next day! It took all day to dry everything out as much as we could and pack it all out to the trailhead. But the black cloud wasn't done with us. As soon as it got dark the lights on the one truck started blinking on and off! There is no fun like driving down the road with blinking headlights, now you see the road, now you don't! Finally, we unplugged the horse trailer lights and that sort of solved the problem, at least there were truck lights to get home. It was a long day!

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