At, 10,778 feet, Mt. Rose is 100' feet shy of being the basin's tallest peak. The most northern of the 7 peaks, Mt. Rose sits in a 30,000 a. wilderness across from Highway 431 in Nevada. On the slopes of Mt. Rose, a snow surveying system was born in 1904 that changed the world and the world's agriculture. A UNReno professor, James Church, scaled Mt. Rose to determine how much water was bound up in the snow on its slopes and how much would be available for farmers in the valley below.
His system proved so accurate, weighing snow core samples, that it remains as the signal estimate of water management in the West. Church Peak(10,661) to the north of Mt. Rose is named for him. Dr Church taught sub-alpine communities from the Andes to the Himalayas what he learned on Mt. Rose.
In winter, the summit of Mt. Rose is a wind-scoured beaten site of vicious gusts of bone rocking force. Not for the faint of heart. Backcountry skiers have been known to explore the bowls found about the shoulders of the peak.
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