Description: The Carson-Iceberg Wilderness is a federal wilderness area located 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Stockton, California. It encompasses 160,000 acres (650 km2) and was designated by the California Wilderness Act of 1984. It protects an area of High Sierra landscape with elevations from 4,800 feet (1,500 m) to 11,462 feet (3,494 m) along the Sierra Mountains from Ebbetts Pass to Sonora Pass in the south. The US Forest Service manages the wilderness which is in both the Stanislaus National Forest and the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Located in the wilderness are the headwaters of the Carson River draining the east side of the crest, as well as the North and Middle Forks of the Stanislaus River on the west slopes. The name Carson-Iceberg comes from two prominent geographical features: the Carson River (named for noted scout and explorer Kit Carson) and the distinctive granite formation called "The Iceberg" on the southern boundary near Clark Fork Road. Jedediah Smith crossed the Sierra Nevada Range near Ebbetts Pass sometime in 1827, and the first immigrant party of Bartleson-Bidwell crossed over in 1841 near Sonora Pass. The wilderness supports large herds of mule deer and there is also good habitat for black bear, which have become a problem due to an insatiable appetite for backpackers' food. The forest cover consists of lodgepole pine, Jeffrey pine, aspen, Sierra juniper and curl-leaf mountain mahogany. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson-Iceberg_Wilderness en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

Image by Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA – CC BY-SA 2.0 – Wikimedia

Description: The Pueblo Mountains Wilderness Study Area (WSA) is located 96 miles south of Burns and 5 miles south of Fields, Oregon. Almost all of the WSA is within Harney County, although a small portion crosses the state line into Humboldt County, Nevada. The entire WSA lies to the west of the main north-south county road which runs between Fields and Denio, Nevada. The nearest major highway is Nevada State Highway miles to the south of the WSA. The WSA is an irregularly-shaped area containing 68,710 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in Oregon, plus 600 acres of BLM land in Nevada. In addition, there are 3,380 acres of split-estate lands in Oregon. At the extremes, the WSA is 15 miles long and 11 miles wide. The boundary is formed by a combination of private land, BLM roads, a paved county road (east side only), and legal subdivisions. In addition, 12 low standard dead end dirt roads (totaling 17 miles) enter the WSA from various points around the perimeter and also form part of the boundary. One of the roads ends at a 320 acre parcel of private property, making the parcel a part of the boundary even though it is surrounded by the WSA. The most prominent physical feature of the WSA is the Pueblo Mountains ridgeline which runs north and south along the entire length of the western half of the WSA. This is a tilted fault block mountain range, the eastern side of which has been uplifted along a north-south trending fault. Averaging 7,300 feet in elevation along the crest, the eastern face of this ridge is steep, rugged, and rocky while much of the western slope is like a table top tilted to the west at nearly a 20-25 degree angle. Less than 3 miles east of the western ridge lies a shorter (g-mile-long) north-south ridgeline. Along this ridgeline is Pueblo Mountain. At 8,634 feet, it is the second highest peak in southeastern Oregon and the highest point in the WSA. Two major drainages originating in the central portion of the WSA, Willow Creek and Cottonwood Creek skirt this ridgeline to the north while both Arizona Creek and Van Horn Creek cut through the ridge within rugged canyons. Denio Creek also cuts through the ridge; a portion of this drainage is outside the WSA to the south. Although steep, the east slope of the eastern ridge is much less rugged and rocky than the east slope of the western ridge. The eastern ridge gives way to foothills and lowlands along the eastern boundary as it merges with Pueblo Valley. It is along the eastern boundary that the WSA reaches its lowest elevation (at several points) of just under 4,200 feet. A series of valleys, basins, and meadows lie in the erosional valley between the two ridges. The WSA was initially studied under Section 603 and 202 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). Lands added after the wilderness inventory were studied under Section 202, also of FLPMA. These lands were included in the final Oregon Wilderness Environmental Impact Statement filed in February of 1990. www.blm.gov/programs/national-conservation-lands/oregon-w...

Image by BLM Oregon & Washington – Public domain – Wikimedia