Hidden Places

I want to write about the Reno places I love, but also have a strong desire to keep them hidden. It is such the attraction: I can still escape, despite the jet planes and four-wheelers and general gunfire, to a wonderland where I can be alone. The Painted Hills are such a place. Along the northern side of Pyramid Lake Highway just before arriving at Pyramid Lake with tremendous bands of red and white colored outcrops adorned with minarets and cliff faces. Cutting across roads and picking through the stone gardens of the old ones, I took Imanol out on New Year's Day to share it with him. It is the custom in the Basque Country (at least Imanol's custom) to go for a hike on either the new year's eve or on January 1 to welcome in the beginning of another year and we welcomed it right.

 

Explore, but be careful, nobody's gonna find you for a while.

Coming back, I knew that I should write about this place, and so I remembered my other adventures there, but for some reason I couldn't find the pictures from my first exploration of the Thumb (my name for the area). Eventually, digging deeper and deeper into my backups I came across my first time there. I didn't remember this, but it was right after my dad's funeral. I went with Coco and Luna who was my hiking buddy back then, and we hiked up through blowing snow into the sky.