Geography of the West participants on Nevada's Black Rock Desert playa.

The first annual "Geography of the West Field Camp" focused on the Basin and Range physiographic province of western North America. The field camp was led by Geography professor Karl Lillquist and Resource Management graduate student Damon Roberts. The participants included six CWU students and six students from other universities in North America and Hawaii. The objectives of the course were enhance student knowledge of field research methodologies and understanding of the physical, human, and resource geography of the arid West via field tripping and detailed research in a Nevada basin and range.

We spent much of the first week field-tripping from Ellensburg to central Nevada. Enroute we explored the physical, human, and resource geography of such varied places as Mount Hood, Camp Creek, Newberry Crater, Fort Rock, Black Rock Desert, Pyramid Lake, Sand Mountain, and Austin, Nevada.

Once in central Nevada, we set up a tent-based camp in central Grass Valley where students were introduced to field research and began to work on a variety of research topics. These topics included riparian vegetation, vegetation and soil zonation, geomorphology, wildlife, fire history, land use history, and public vs. private lands issues. In our spare time, we soaked in a nearby hot springs and explored old mining ruins.

Midway through the field session, we drove to Great Basin National Park for a three day visit. During our stay, we studied national park resource issues and alpine geography. All but one of the group also climbed 13,061' Wheeler Peak.

Our "range" research site was located in the Alta Toquima Wilderness in the heart of the Toquima Range of central Nevada. To reach our camp site, we had to backpack all of our personal and field research gear about six miles with a nearly 4000' elevation gain! Students generally studied the same topics in range as they did in the basin. We also had a chance to visit the ancient Alta Toquima Native American village site as well as the site of an 1871 sawmill.

We wrapped up the field camp by examining modern gold mining and reclamation practices on public lands in the Independence Range in northern Nevada. We travelled back to Ellensburg via the Jarbidge Range, Snake River Plain, Blue Mountains, and the Palouse regions of western North America.

Here are some more photographs:

Camp in Grass Valley, Nevada.

Jerry Franklin, CWU geography major, focuses on wildlife, sometimes a bit too close for the rest of us!

Clay dunes on the edge of the Grass Valley playa.

Our bathtub - Waldi Hot Springs in Grass Valley, Nevada.

Our camp near South Fork Pine Creek, Toquima Range, Nevada.

Alta Toquima prehistoric village site.

Cirque, South Fork Pine Creek.