Alta Toquima Wilderness

Alta Toquima Wilderness, designated in 1989 and managed by the Forest Service as part of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, protects a stellar example of Nevada's Basin-and-Range high country. It covers much of the Toquima Range, bound on the west by the Big Smoky Valley and on the east by the Monitor Valley, where ridges and deep canyons tumble thousands of feet from the crest toward the surrounding basins. The range tops out at the Wilderness high point: 11,949-foot Mount Jefferson, a magnificent massif that ranks among Nevada's most topographically prominent mountains and the loftiest in the central part of the state. It boasts three peaks — the South Summit is the highest — rising from a broad summit table eight miles long and three miles wide, edged by grand cirques carved by Pleistocene glaciers. Most of the Wilderness is quite rugged apart from that plateau and the lower foothills. Vegetation is sparse and layered by elevation: sagebrush steppe on the lower slopes, mid-elevation pinyon-juniper woodland, high-elevation quaking-aspen groves and timberline stands of limber pine, and alpine tundra atop Mount Jefferson, where the Forest Service has established a Research Natural Area. Coyotes, mule deer, sage grouse, and chukar roam the sagebrush and scrub, bighorn sheep can be spotted in the high country, and Pine Creek supports a native population of trout. Developed trails reach the northern, eastern, and southern portions of the Wilderness, while the more remote western side beckons experienced cross-country trekkers. From Mount Jefferson, hikers can survey a tremendous panorama stretching beyond the near basins and the Toiyabe and Monitor ranges to distant highlands of California and Utah. John Muir rambled these heights in 1878 and traced the effects of Ice Age glaciers on the landscape.