Semper on the Fly: Lahontan Cutt Adventure -- no Cutts!

Sitting at McCarran Airport in January my eyes found snow topped the Mt. Charleston sitting high in the Spring Mountains overlooking the Vegas Valley.

Mt. Charleston from SW Las Vegas

Not having anything better to do I GOOGLED it and found that it’s rather unusual in that it has 6 distinct climatic zones from arid desert at its base (think Death Valley on the West) to arctic atop its windswept, rocky peak.

Heading into the Spring Mountains the snowline was at 5800"

Between the arid desert and the frozen top there’s a zone of bristle-cone pines and several springs that form a small stream at about 7000’.

There are higher peaks obscured by the snow

Shade + year round cold water often equals trout habitat so I GOOGLED further and found a BLOG reference from Oak Creek Angler check out his adventure...at least you'll see trout describing a trout-hike into and up what I soon learned to be Carpenter Canyon on the west face of Mt Charleston.

Heading up Carpenter Canyon Road it looked good ....at first

More research indicated that decades earlier Nevada Fish and Wildlife had stocked this small section of the stream with Lahontan Cutthroat, a species native to the lakes and mountain streams in the high mountains of the West.

A splash of red in a sea of gray

Lahontan cutthroat at one time were in Alpha species in Pyramid Lake, NV and routinely pushed 35+lbs! In the mountain streams where they’ve been stocked intermittently and in this stream they seem to be in the 7-9” range.

Snow clouds begin to close us out

Armed with a few tips from the author of Oak Creek Angler, a likeminded fishing adventurer I decided to make a trip my next trip to Vegas. I persuaded my office-mate Jeff Horton to adventure with me and we left northern Virginia before dawn and arrived in Vegas at 0940 PCT where we rented an SUV and headed south around the Spring Mountains to Carpenter Canyon Road in the vicinity of Pahrump, NV.

I had to stop here as the road and snow got worse uphill

Our first mile up the 14 mile road was easy-grade, but the road soon turned into a rutted trail as we crept uphill. Like the Shenandoah, the mountains look like a solid front, but really have lots of depth to them. At about mile 5 it started spitting snow as we gained elevation and the vegetation got worn wind-worn and swept.

Jeff smiles in the desert blizzard

At mile 7 the ruts and rocks in the road gave us pause and the snow began to obscure the torn trail.

At mile 9 a near blinding mountain blizzard closed in and we didn’t dare push our pal-to-pavement 4x2 SUV any further and admitted defeat.

This was the "road" ahead that protected those cutt-throat...to much for my little SUV

We had another 4 miles to go and had climbed to around 6400 feet on the mountain.

Prickly beauty

We took some pictures, resolved to creep back down the mountain and live to fight another day. I’ll be back with a jeep and I will find these trout…anybody want to come?