sorry for similar thread where to go area 51

i've been to the surrounding area 51 location about 12 times now. I usually spend the night on Tikaboo Peak, way too cold now for me. I've been to powerlines outlook a few times. Just wondering if there is some hotspot you'd recommend? I was also think the real ufo stuff occurs to the west near death valley or to the southern part of the NTR(say that right?)

I've had my share of close encounters in Utah, but only once did i ever see anything dramatic at area 51 (I actually crossed the border by accident that night and saw a ufo or a helicopter hovering over a hillside...while being chased by camo)

any suggestions would be great as i'm supposed to meet some buddies in vegas, but i need to get my skywatching fix more than i do the gambling scene.

reply to post by hiii_98


If you have some night vision gear (and it could be even hardware store grade), you can view the NTTR from the west side of the range. Virtually every light you see over the range from that side will be a Nellis related flight (excluding the nearby civilian flights that go over route 95). [Note when you look at the NTTR airspace from the ET HIghway with NV, you are seeing mostly commercial aircraft. Yes, even a hundred miles away.] You could do that car camping from many locations. You could pay for a camp site on Mt. Charleston, and just car camp when it gets cold. You can car camp on the old ruins of the NASA radar site where TD Barnes used to work.

An interesting place to car camp is by Stonewall Mountain, especially with the upcoming Red Flag. The red forces enter the range over Stonewall. There is also a lot of vehicular traffic heading towards the NTTR that way.
stonewall
I can dig up GPS waypoints if you are serious about car camping there. I believe this is the only location where you are allowed to cross on Nellis land. You are not allowed to hangout on their side, but you cross and then park on our side of the border. If you want to hike Stonewall, I have a partial trail. I ran out of time to do the full hike.

Another car camp spot is the late Dave Simms perch. [This is not where they spread his ashes. I have that location too.] This is by the ET HIghway. It is a little known location.
www.inplanesight.org...

You can do the drive to Stonewall in a car. Dave's perch is really 4WD.

I have seen that the Golden Arrow geocache has been visited lately, so the roads to the TTR are probably OK at the moment. The Tonopah airport (TPH) tied a historical high temperature on the Jan 2nd, and the region has had it's driest December on record. For those in Ca, even route 120 is open.

Car camping isn't bad. I've done it in January a few times. I suggest a balaclava, thermal underwear, and gloves. REI has a glove/mitten combo where you can quickly peel back the finger covering part so you can use your camera, scanner, etc. Camp stove of course is a requirement. You don't want to go running to the Little Aleinn for a hot drink.

I have never seen anything around the Nellis range that can't be explained. There is gear I don't recognize, but I assume it was made on earth.

Just a .......... word of advice ........... probably not a good idea to discuss this on here , it takes nothing for them to sit there and wait for you showing up , especially after admitting crossing the border.
Just ...... think about it.

reply to post by SweatyRing


This is a location where you ARE allowed to cross the border. Further, it is the Nellis border you are crossing, not the Groom Lake border.

reply to post by gariac


i think he's reffering to my comment. I'm not worried about it anymore it was years ago and I doubt they are "looking for me". We did do a slight offroad desert chase all the way back to ET highway. I accidently crossed and was parked offroad past the medland ranch (spelled wrong i assume). the camo dudes blew past me and didnt even see me, i then hightailed it out of my hiding hole, and they persued. all the while this was happening something popped up over the hill side had hovered above the hill. a giant glowing ball of light. unfortunately i was dodging bushes and trying to see the road rather than stop to watch. They never did call the police and discontinued the chase once i hit the highway.

my plan would be to car camp and skywatch from the car all night. I'll never forget when i camped on tikaboo in early april and almost froze to death (honestly). What are the desert temps like at night? based on my experiences at other locations it can get uncomfortably cold...

www.wrcc.dri.edu...

Link has current weather conditions. Often at night the hills are warmer than the valley. You can compare locations to see this for yourself. During the day, the high elevations are colder than the valley.

I've found if you camp with a hill towards your back (obviously in a direction you don't want to view) you can capture a bit of the valley heat at night as it rolls up the hill face. The hill towards your back also means you can't scan in that direction well.

The spot at Stonewall has a hill towards your back as you face the range. Tempiute has similar locations. Tempiute has lots of wood to gather or cut. Brings a good lighter and camp fuel since the cut wood is green. R-place in Alamo sells firewood. In the winter, it pays to dig the latrine in the afternoon when the ground isn't frozen. ;-)

Originally posted by gariac
An interesting place to car camp is by Stonewall Mountain, especially with the upcoming Red Flag. The red forces enter the range over Stonewall. There is also a lot of vehicular traffic heading towards the NTTR that way.
stonewall
I can dig up GPS waypoints if you are serious about car camping there. I believe this is the only location where you are allowed to cross on Nellis land. You are not allowed to hangout on their side, but you cross and then park on our side of the border. If you want to hike Stonewall, I have a partial trail. I ran out of time to do the full hike.

The "Instructions" link on your Stonewall page, which links to one of Glens old pages? GE doesn't seem to like the coordinates on there. I am assuming this is Stonewall Spring here?
37°32'25.61"N, 117° 3'55.40"W

Is this the "proper entrance" as pictured on your page?
37°33'27.93"N, 117° 5'48.27"W

Is this somewhat the start of the trail to the "peak"?
37°32'27.93"N, 117° 3'34.28"W

And finally, is this the "peak" as described in the "Instructions"?
37°30'48.88"N, 117° 2'44.20"W

I have vehicle-camped around the range in October and March - and I swore never again. Froze my arse. I did have sleeping bag, etc. but not as prepared as I should have been. And even during the day, it wasn't that warm, especially when the wind was blowing, which was most of the time. Doubt I will ever visit again after September or before May.

reply to post by FosterVS


Actually, it will be less work for me to post the waypoints then look up the ones you listed.

Start here: N37 30 22.4 W117 11 09.3
The road turn to the right a bit here N37 32 33.1 W117 09 30.6
The road forks here N37 33 26.6 W117 06 23.0
You want to go to the right. Going to the left takes you to a locked gate.

According to my map, you are crossing onto the Nellis range on the strip of road between
N37 33 24.1 W117 05 48.2 through N37 32 34.6 W117 03 58.2

It looks like I camped here:
N37 32 30.7 W117 03 54.1
If you are going to camp, don't be in their face. I suggest camping on our side of the border. You don't want to camp next to a watering hole unless you want to watch wildlife, or enjoy horses and coyotes for company.

Heading off again to the right (east), it looks like I abandoned driving around N37 32 45.5 W117 03 12.2

I could have gone further, but the road was deteriorating and I hate getting stuck. Note this is back on Nellis land again, but you are allowed to be on the road. Nothing is fenced here.

At N37 32 33.9 W117 02 49.0 you are off Nellis land again. As far as the hike goes, I went as far as
N37 32 16.5 W117 02 44.8
You are going up a wash. The footing is a bit loose, but nothing like TIkaboo.

I guess for clarity, let me elaborate a it. The time I tried to do the hike, I got confused and went to the locked gate. I drove all the way to Tonopah to get some clarification from the BLM. Fortunately I had my GPS and was able to give them coordinates. [Note the BLM speaks in UTM, not lat/lon.] Once it was clear I was on the wrong road, and that I was allowed to be on the roads that are not fenced even if they were on Nellis land, I went back to Stonewall. Thus when I got around to doing the hike, it wasn't exactly first thing in the morning.

On another trip, I decided to watch the range from the place where I indicated I had camped. The roads are used day and night during the flag and I presume weapons school. Nobody from the base bothered me. It is not like dealing with camo dudes. The base assumes you don't want to be on a range where they fire class 4 lasers. I don't think they bomb this range, but I know over the hill they do drop bombs. I've seen the smoke during the day and the flashes at night.

Looking at the map, I think I took those photographs from N37 32 17.8 W117 02 36.9

Getting back to the hike, my plan was to follow the wash to
N37 31 24.1 W117 02 30.6 . Then proceed up the hill as follows:
N37 31 20.6 W117 02 33.9
N37 31 12.5 W117 02 31.3
N37 31 09.3 W117 02 35.6
N37 31 03.6 W117 02 39.4
N37 30 57.3 W117 02 36.5
N37 30 53.6 W117 02 38.2
N37 30 49.4 W117 02 44.8 which is the peak.

Glenn's instructions weren't the greatest. I forgot to mention I had originally wandered onto a different road going up the mountain. In Glenn's defense, GPS was kind of new when he wrote the instructions, and the "selective availability" was still on back then. WAAS wasn't even invented, and nobody had a DGPS pod.

The spring is located at N37 32 22.4 W117 03 54.7. It isn't much water, but you are in the desert ya know!

Planes taking on AR625 enter the range again over Stonewall. You will get your share of overhead flights, but not low level.

The lasers are infrared. They are not visible. Class 4 is a serious laser. That is reason enough not to enter the range.

Originally posted by hiii_98(I actually crossed the border by accident that night and saw a ufo or a helicopter hovering over a hillside...while being chased by camo)

"or a helicopter" that pretty much explains it.
You won't see any (alien, at least) "UFO"'s just by standing "near" Area 51

Originally posted by gariac
Actually, it will be less work for me to post the waypoints then look up the ones you listed.

Lazy

I made a GE KMZ file of your waypoints, your trails are in blue.
The trail that I thought it was is marked in red. Mine looks shorter, however it is almost exactly the same distance. It APPEARS to be an easier way, however that it strictly from what appears on GE, which means nothing.

www.topsecretbases.com...

reply to post by FosterVS


It could be easier. However, most of the distance I cover is terrain without those pesky creosote bushes. There is more growth in your route. If you have to dart around bushes, you double your distance. I try to stay in the wash, then hike ridge lines. I'm not a fan of walking sideways on a mountain. You spend a lot of energy maintaining your balance.

Note the DEMs (digital elevation models) used by GE are not very good, so ridge lines are not accurately represented. Topo maps tend to use contour lines (AKA isolines), stored in vectors. Computers use a grid of elevations, i.e. a matrix. Probably the grid is better overall, but it doesn't seem to be the best way to find a ridge.

Since I didn't do the hike, it's hard to say. I think when I went to the photo spot, I climbed around the back rather than front. All these hikes are really hard to plane on paper due to the lack of documentation. For instance, the BAR (big ass rock) on the way to Tikaboo doesn't even show up on the topo. It is a localized structure that gets lost in the wash.

In many of these Nevada hikes, due to the ruggedness, a few feet here or there can make a big difference.

While I'm at it, I think this hike is still doable, even in January. It has been warm enough that I suspect all the early snow is gone. The state of Nevada issues a fire warning, really unheard of this time of year..You probably never did the drive though the Sierras along route 120 in Ca since you come from the north, but they routing close the road by December. It is still open.

Tonopah has no snow forecast until the 16th. In Alamo, it would only show up as rain. Temperatures are running about 5 deg F above average. That may not sound like much, but in terms of the snowpack, it is huge.

Anyway, if somebody wants to head out to the range, next week is probably your best bet.

Regarding snow, the ET highway doesn't get cleaned very well. Remember this is Nevada. You are free enough to do stuff that can kill you. I always have way more food, water, cooking and driving fuel than I need, plus a satellite messenger. Now the good news is you don't have to drink your own urine. That is a bad survival tip. It is counterproductive, besides being gross. You can buy a copy of the Army survival manual, but it is much easier to pack extra food than to have to hunt and skin rabbits.

I have a few photos around the range taken in the winter time.
www.lazygranch.com...

New imagery added for Stonewall dated 4/24/2011. Still a bit of snow on the ground in April. The imagery is just a patch, about 10x11 miles, but it covers the hike. It doesn't reach the TPECR.

A bit OT, but not worthy of a new thread, you can see Leviathon Cave at
37°49'53.03"N 115°36'26.12"W

It is totally different from the descriptions I read. It looks to me that you can at least walk up to it and take a look, rather than have to rappel down a rope.

A good place to camp with a group of friends is the small hill off groom lake road. about 12 miles into the road, about a couple miles away from the border, there is a place to pull off on the right. in my heyday of camping there from 06-10, i think i camped there roughly 40 times. i havent been able to camp there in about a year. But i plan on going back to my spot this march or april. This spot is nice for a group of campers, i think at most we put up 5 tents with a couple cars parked and still had room for a safe camp fire.... just typing about it makes me miss those fun adventures spending a couple days away from reality