Story Pop: Mt Houghton A Journey through a Stratovolcano

Mt. Houghton hides in plain sight above Tahoe — a quiet summit north of Mt. Rose that most hikers pass without ever knowing what they’re walking on. But this mountain is no ordinary Sierra bump. It’s the eastern flank of a stratovolcano whose core sits at Gray Creek, lifted thousands of feet by the rise of the Sierra Nevada and sculpted by ice during the Pleistocene.

In this episode, we explore the layered volcanic anatomy of Houghton: the andesite flanks, the welded‑tuff mid‑sections, the chaotic pyroclastic breccia gullies, and the altered volcanic ridge that forms the summit dome. We connect the mountain to the deep glacial carving at Gray Creek, the microclimate complexity that defines the Carson Range, and the legacy of Dr. John Greenleaf Houghton — the UNR geographer who studied Great Basin microclimates and whose name now rests on this volcanic peak.

This is a story of fire, uplift, ice, and wind — and a mountain that reveals its true identity only when you look closely.

www.blisterpopadventures.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This is Off You Pop, the podcast for hikers and adventurers who want to be epic in just one day. Wind on the ridge, broken volcanic rock under your boots, Tahoe somewhere behind you, Reno somewhere below you, and a mountain that looks simple from a distance, but absolutely isn't once you start paying attention. Mount Houghton is one of those peaks that hides in plain sight, overshadowed by Mount Rose, overlooked by Tahoe Rim trail hikers, one almost never the main character in anyone's Carson Range story. But underneath that modest profile is a strato volcano lifted by the Sierra Nevada, carved by ice and built from fire. This is Mount Houghton, and this is off your pop. Mount Houghton sits on the eastern crest of the Sierra Nevada block, a rising platform of crust that lifted the carstum range thousands of feet into the air. And on that platform sits a volcanic system whose core lies a Grey Creek, with Mount Houghton forming the eastern cone. This is not a granite shoulder. This is not a simple ridge. This is not a passive Sierra bump. This is a layered volcanic mountain shaped by eruptive cycles, uplift, and glaciation. A name for a scientist who studied exactly this kind of complexity. Let's start with the name. Mount Houghton is named for Dr. John Greenlith Houghton, a geographer at the University of Nevada Reno. Houghton's work focused on microclimates of the Great Basin, the way terrain, rock type, slope angle, and surface material create tiny pockets of atmosphere that behave differently from the land around them, exactly the kind of complexity you find on a strato volcano. He studied why one ridge holds snow into June while another melts out in April, while volcanic soil warms differently than granitic ones, why the Carson Range behaves differently from the main Sierra crest, even though they share the same uplift. He was, in other words, exactly the type of person who would have loved this mountain. In 1979, Houghton died in the crash of an Air New Zealand flight 901 on Mount Erebus in Antarctica, another volcanic mountain, another landscape where weather and terrain can erase the horizon. Naming this summit after him wasn't symbolic. It was literal. It was Nevada saying, Your work belongs on a mountain where geology and atmosphere negotiate constantly. Your name belongs on a landscape built from layers uplifted ice. Your legacy belongs here. Mount Houghton is the eastern flank of a strato volcano, whose core sits at Grey Creek, the volcanic engine of the Carson Range. Once you understand that, the entire mountain makes sense. So let's walk through the layers. The lower slopes of Mount Houghton are built from andesite flows, dark, blocky volcanic rock that erupted from vents near Grey Creek. These flows form the broad lower benches, the steep gullies, the rough footing, the volcanic shoulder shape of the mountain. This is the outer cone of the Strato Volcano. Climb higher and the rock changes abruptly. You enter the ignimbrite zone, thick sheets of welded tuff, the fused remains of high-energy pyroclastic flows that blasted out from Grey Creek. These layers form cliffs, smooth little ribs, slavby surfaces, and abrupt changes in footing. These are strato volcanic pyroclastic deposits. This is the midbody of the cone. Above the tuff, you hit the pyroclastic brechia, angular volcanic fragments mixed with ash and cemented by heat. This is the violent interior of the strato volcano. Explosive debris, fractured blocks, loose gullies, unstable shifts, and chaotic layering. This is the inner cone where eruptive violence is recorded, not broken. The summit ridge is the altered volcanic spine of the Strato volcano. The outer edge of the Grey Creek core lifted by Sierra Tectonics and exposed by erosion. It's hydrothermally altered, minerally stained, fractured, wind scowled, and glacially polished. This is the volcanic backbone, not the vent, but the part of the cone that survived uplift and ice. During the Pleistocene, the Castom Range hoisted circuit glaciers, ridge ice, and persistent snowfields. The most severe glaciation occurred at Grey Creek, where a deep circuit glacier carved the volcanic core into a dramatic amphitheater. Fountain, being to the east, experienced lighter circuit glaciation, strong periglacial processes, snowfield erosion, and freeze-force sculpting and smoothing of the summit dome. This is why Grey Creek looks steep, carved, and dramatic, while Fountain looks broad, rounded and layered. The ridge feels wind polished rather than ice-cut. Fire built the mountain, the Sierra lifted it, ice carved it, and wind finished the job. Now let's get on the pop. So Mount Houghton is located in the Mount Rose wilderness, just west of Rena. And to get there you can drive from the city arena or up from Lake Tahoe from Incline Village to the traditional Mount Rose Trailhead that sits at around 8,600 feet. Now on this day I had intended to meet with a group of local hikers to take a general hike to the Galena Waterfall, which is about two and a half miles from the Mount Rose Trailhead, and on the way to Mount Rose itself. When I arrived at 8 o'clock, I realized that I'd made a little bit of a timing mistake, and the hiking group wasn't going to be meeting until 9 a.m. I decided that I would take on a little bit of a different adventure and climb Mount Houghton, which is one of the peaks that I haven't climbed in the Rose Wilderness. I hadn't planned for this, I was a little bit underdressed, but I felt fairly confident I knew the way, and thought I might be able to reconnect with the group as they were arriving at the Galena waterfall, depending how long it took me to get to the summit. So the Mount Rose trailhead starts behind the bathrooms in the parking lot. And you climb up the trail and there's an intersection. A set of stone steps leads to the right and the trail continues on the left for bikers. You want to go up the stone steps, and then you start climbing gently up an exposed ridge where you see wonderful views of Lake Tahoe spreading out before you. And as you summit out the ridge, you start descending into the forest, just gently, and you come to the first crossroads. For this crossroads, you want to continue straight, and the trail here continues flat and slightly descending through the alpine forest until about two and a half miles in you reach the Galena waterfall. Now here's where I made some navigational errors. The actual Mount Houghton spur can be found by following the trail to the left of the waterfall and up into a little saddle. And as you get up into the forest, you'll find a spur that takes you up a beautifully graded switchback trail right to Mount Houghton. Well, I didn't take this route because I hadn't planned my day. This was a spur of the moment, if you mind the pun, attempt at Mount Houghton. Now I recall a few years ago having attempted to climb Mount Houghton while the Rose Wilderness was still very much covered in snow. And I'd done so by taking a ridge on the other side of the meadow to the north of the waterfall. So I thought I would follow this route again. So I turned right and started heading north across the beautiful meadow that was covered in wildflowers, and I reached a trail that was heading west up into the mountain. I thought I'd previously seen here a signpost up to Mount Howton, but it wasn't signposted at this time. And when I checked my map, I realized it was just a trail that went up behind the waterfall. And so I crossed across the gully and started to make my way across the meadow. And I looked up at the ridgeline of the Castro Range above me, about directly below where Mount Houghton is located. I thought I'd go off trail here and follow a gully that would take me to the top of the ridge. And this would enable me to explore the geology of the Strado volcano. So I found a creek that led up to the base of the ridge and followed the creek up through this very, very thick brush. If you don't follow a creek up through the brush, you're not going to be able to get through it. It's pretty impossible at this time of year. But by following the creek, I was able to bushwhack through and find myself at the base of the gully. And the base of the gully was made up of very loose, degraded volcanic rocks that were very challenging to climb up. It was a matter of making sure you had sure footing and being very careful the route that you chose to take up the gully itself. And about halfway up the gully, you start to see this ignimbrite, these mud flows and volcanic flows that have come out to form the lower part of the Strado volcano. And looking up the ridge, there was a really interesting pyroclastic flow that sort of had a hole in it, almost like a little window. Which was an interesting sight up on this gully. Once I'd navigated around the outcrop, I continued to climb up the gully and eventually started to find myself in some pine forest. And once you get into the pine forest, the debris from the forest sort of consolidates the ground beneath your feet. It's still tremendously steep, you're still not on the ridgeline, but the footing becomes more solid and it becomes much easier to navigate through the rock. And after about half an hour, 40 minutes of climbing, you pop up onto the ridge and you're suddenly in a very, very different environment. The wind is picking up, and you're on this vast plain of the ridge. And the ground is very consolidated and not too rocky. It's sort of been worn down over time into a very easy-to-navigate plane, except for the rows of pines that are acting like barricades between you and Houghton. In fact, where I crested, I was actually unable to see the summit of Houghton. It was actually quite a way off to the south. And so I had to resign to climbing a little bit more, but also navigating through this forest that was determined to try and keep me away from the summit. Now it was a little bit chillier up on the ridgeline, you're a little bit more exposed, and I hadn't come prepared to really get up above 10,000 feet, and so I started to feel the chill a little bit. And the gully had been extremely steep. I climbed about a thousand feet and half a mile, and so my legs were feeling a little bit tired at this point. But I followed the map and followed up in the direction of the peak. And as you're winding your way through the forest, you get a little bit higher and a little bit higher, and eventually you reach a wall of short, scrubby trees that are hanging to the edge of a very steep cliff. And this is where you start to traverse along the spine of the ridge and the glaciation that forms that Grey Creek Anthitheat. On the other side of the Anthitheater, you can see this very dramatic, very much banded and colorful rock that is forming the edge of the inner core of the strata volcano. So if you follow the ridge, you will eventually see Mount Helton. And there's a bit of more of a defined trail, and it's pretty easy to navigate up to the peak itself. When you get to the peak, there's a little bit of a cairn, and you look westward. And when you work westwards, you see this dramatic amphitheater of volcanic rock. You are pretty close to the core of the Strato Volcano, but the glaciation is carved out these very steep cliffs in front of you. And then beyond that, you see the Sierra Nevada wilderness stretching out towards California. And if you turn back and look the other way, you're looking back at the Great Basin and Range, back towards Slide Mountain and Tamarack. And the interesting thing to think about about the geology here is that the geology has become very sharply tilted by a fault zone that runs right on the border of Reno. And when you look at Slide Mountain, that's actually the magma chamber that fed the Strado volcano that you're now standing on. So if you imagine sort of taking Mount Houghton and standing it upwards, so now it's parallel to the ground as it originally was, Slide would be at the bottom, and then Tamarack is in the middle, and then up above it is the Strado Volcano, which is Hounton and Grey's Creek. And then off to your right, slightly up towards the north, you see Mount Rose. And Mount Rose, contrary to everybody's belief, is not a volcano. It's actually just the remnants of the spewing of this strato volcano that's been uplifted a little bit more than Houghton and Tamarack just because the way that the tilting has occurred. So it's actually just a little bit higher. It doesn't mean it was higher than the strato volcano itself. And in the core of that volcano, the strato volcano at Houghton has sort of been carved out by glaciation. So you're missing a big chunk of the volcano. And so when I got to the top of Houghton, I could see the very well maintained and very well created trail that would take you back, either following the Carson Ridge over to Relay Peak, or there's a little bit of a turn off that will take you back to the Glena waterfall. So I started back down the well-defined trail in the switchbacks. And it certainly switched back a lot and covered a lot of distance, but it took you down the mountain in this very smooth, gradual incline. And so I was able to pick up some speed and actually run down the trail most of the way. It's about a mile and a half to get back to the Galena waterfall. So as you're switchbacking, you can you're then going back down through time, back through the lower layers of the Strado volcano. And eventually you end up in the forest, sort of at the base of Tamarak, and you reconnect with the Tahoe Rim Trail. And here you turn left and head back behind effectively the Glena waterfall. And you pop up on the top of the Glena waterfall. So you can see it sort of falling over the edge. And as I come up to the very edge of the Glena waterfall, I look down, and there is a whole bunch of people there. And a lot of hikers have come up for the morning and a gathering at the waterfall. They certainly weren't there when I arrived in the morning. And there's a little bit of a switchback that you need to get down to get to the actual waterfall. And on the way down there, I passed a group of hikers that I think was the group I was supposed to be meeting, but I was pretty tired at that point. I had just ran about half an hour, 40 minutes down from Mount Houghton after climbing up that really gnarly gully. I just caught my breath at the bottom of the waterfall, but didn't really feel like hanging around very much. So I made the trail back to the parking lot. And there were a lot of people coming down to the waterfall that day. People walking their dogs, people taking their kids. Now it's a slight incline to get out of the Galena waterfall and relatively flat before you get out of the forest again. You get on that exposed little part where you can see Lake Tahoe, and then it dips back through this very soft, sandy, desiccated material that's really nice on the feet. You can sort of jog down back to the parking lot. As I'm coming out of the forest, I begin to realize that my hands feel stiff. And I look down at them and I can see they are swollen. The type of swelling that comes from going up to altitude and your body reacting to it. And I hadn't been up above 10,000 feet in a few months, and so this was a little bit alarming to me. But I knew that the only thing to resolve this was just to get off of the mountain. When I got to the parking lot, it was it was full, and there were more people preparing to take the little hike up to the Galena Waterfall. It took me about three hours and 10 minutes to do about a nine mile and some change circuit. But a really interesting sort of trip through time from the volcanic source, the magma chamber that sits below the earth, up through the volcanic eruption, the Strado volcano that sits way out there just beyond the peak of Houghton. Really interesting step through the geology of a volcano. And certainly it's a it's a hike that's actually not too challenging if you take that well-maintained trail. But I think it's one that most people ignore. A lot of folks will end at the waterfall and then head back. More adventurous folks will go up the more famous and slightly higher Mount Rose. And Houghton often only gets summited as part of a circuit where you go up to Relay and then come across to Houghton and over to Rose or various combinations thereof. But as a single hike, I think it's well worth traveling from the Rose Trailhead, which really sits just by Slide Mountain, and making that tour up to Houghton and summiting the second highest peak in the Rose Wilderness. Now, off you pop.