In Early August Pam and I traveled to the ruby marsh for some camping, hiking, paddling, and birding. Our truck must have been a strange sight traveling across the middle of the desert with two 17 foot long sea kayaks on top. I've wanted to paddle the marsh for a long time, having flown sailplanes and driven by the place a few times. Pam paddled there a couple of years ago and had a wonderful time.
The day before arriving at the marsh we hiked to liberty pass from the trailhead at Lamoille Canyon, an incredible experience, but that's another story in itself. We drove through Harrison Pass from Lamoille to the campground on the west side of the ruby marsh, pitched our tent then went paddling.
The Ruby Mountains look like a slightly smaller version of the Sierra Nevada and therefore a spectacular sight. Below the tree line the mountains are forested with pine trees and brush, running streams flowing from the snow fields in glacier carved valleys. At the lower elevations there is a transition to more a more typical great basin desert look with junipers and pinon pines.
The Ruby Marsh is fed by the snow melt although there is much less water than in years past. There are about 12,000 acres of marshland administered by the fish and wildlife service with over 200 species of birds.
Toward the south end of the marsh, there are a lot of tall grasses, tall enough to obscure your view from a small boat. It would be easy to get lost there. There are some marker poles there but it would be best to bring a gps as well as a compass in case the gps fails. There were many small birds in the grasses, we really enjoyed the baby coots that swam around the edge of the grass looking at us in our kayaks. Northern harriers were constantly flying above probably looking for baby coots.
The next day we paddled from the brown dike with our friends Mike and Sherry Payne who drove up from Las Vegas with their kayaks to join us. The great part of paddling from the dike is that there's no place for motorboats to launch and we had that part of the marsh to ourselves. If you paddle there between June 15 and the end of July only human powered and electric powered boats are allowed there for a very peaceful experience. The first part of the year boats aren't allowed to protect the nesting birds.
The water on the South side of the brown dike is more open, no boats allowed North of the dike. There were numerous American pelicans, some grebes, egrets, and most fun of all terns. We also paddled near a few muskrats, Mike started to sing the song muskrat love, unfortunately for Pam she couldn't get the song out of her head for a day. It probably didn't help that I kept reminding her about the song every now and then.
The weather was excellent, good to escape the Boulder City/Las Vegas area summer heat, and we all had a great time. We will probably run this trip next June and July through Desert Adventures, www.kayaklasvegas.com
Jim
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