Ruby Mountains Wilderness

Located in the Humboldt National Forest in Nevada.

The Ruby Mountains Wilderness, comprising more than 90,000 acres, sits astride a high ridgeline of mountains running south from Elko, Nevada. The area was added to the Wilderness preservation system in the 1989 Nevada Wilderness Act.

The northern end of the Rubies was vigorously scoured by alpine glaciers during the Ice Age. Lamoille Canyon, a u-shaped canyon in the heart of the Rubles, is known as "Nevada's Yosemite" because of the hanging valleys, towering peaks and year-round snowfields above it. The region starting south of Lamoille Canyon contains lake basins and meadows for seven miles then turns into a narrow, grassy ridge south of Furlong Lake running 20 miles to the Overland Lake basin. The Rubies include ten peaks above 10,000 feet including 11,387-foot Ruby Dome, and more than two dozen alpine lakes. The area is home to one of the largest mule deer herds in Nevada. It also supports a herd of mountain goats, Big Horn sheep, sage grouse, chukar, blue grouse, the Himalayan snow cock, and Hungarian partridge. Streams and lakes support Brook, Rainbow and the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout.

Prehistoric bighorn sheep hunting blinds on high elevation ridges as well as hunting camps and inhabited caves, mines and other mining structures and carvings on aspen trees from Basque sheepherders make this area rich in cultural history.

For further information contact:

Humboldt National Forest
976 Mountain City Highway
Elko, NV 89801
(702) 738-5171

Topo maps covering the wilderness: