We arrived in Elko on Thursday 9/3 after a long drive from Vegas to visit the Spring Creek Association HOA office to pick up the key for the Spring Creek Association Campground. To "legally" summit Ruby Dome - and not have a chance at your car being towed - you need to pay $10/person/day to the HOA and also a $25 deposit (if you write a check, they'll offer to shred it for you after they get the key back, either in person or via their 24-hour dropbox) to get the key to the gate to the campground. Worth it, imo, not just for the peace of mind, but also to save yourself an additional 2 mile round-trip and 500-foot gain/loss to the already long and steep hike. I mean, almost 4900' of gain from the trailhead, in approximately 5 miles, is no joke. Anyway - forgot my batteries for my GPS in the hotel, so tracked it on my Garmin fenix. The trail begins relatively easily, but climbs steadily to the lake. After the lake... well, it's a lot more vertical. The trail was decently cairned up to a point, but the ridgeline to the saddle was very poorly cairned. Ken and I spent a lot of time on the way back down building decent cairns and figuring out a safe route using the ridgeline down. A long and tough day, but glad to have gotten #22 on the LVMC Mountaineers Classic 50 list for me. The views were incredible and it is gorgeous country. Also, is alpine beef worth more? Because we saw some pretty high cattle grazing on this - and even higher on the Ruby Crest Trail (which we backpacked/thru-hiked on the next 4 days after Ruby Dome).