Great Basin National Park

Map that shows The Great Basin

We traveled to Great Basin National Park yesterday even though when we started out on the 65 mile journey to get to the visitor's center, we had fog and could barely see across the valley to the peaks of the ranges on either side of us and the temp was just a mere 60 degrees.  I did not know much about Great Basin or what it meant. We were this close (ha!) to a national park, why not go?   Now I understand  - basin, range, basin, range, basin, range.  Most of Nevada, parts of western Utah, southern portion of Idaho and the eastern part of California makes up this basin, range, basin, range geological landscape.  This means - see a range of mountains, then see a basin (or valley) below it with dry arid desert climate with no trees but covered in sagebrush, where the drainage of the snow melt from the range comes down into the basin and does not drain to the ocean.  Then the next narrow range of mountains and down to a basin, then across to the next range, then down to the next basin and so on.


 No wonder we have had to cross summits (passes) over mountain ranges.  And these ranges are not small!  Great Basin National Park was founded in 1986 to preserve and educate people on the geology of this area of the planet.  The visitor's center sits at the base of Wheeler Peak, the same peak (or mountain) we saw as we came north from Las Vegas the other day, and had it in our view for over 60 miles.  Wheeler Peak is 13,065 tall.

Pretty mountain spring

Also within this park is the Lehman Cave which is another underground cave that is under the protection of the national parks.  We toured the cave, was okay, but we have seen spectacular caves over the years.  Some of the folks on our tour were blown away with what they saw and we surmised that they had not been in a cave.

After the tour we took the scenic drive up to the summit of Wheeler's Peak.  A drive that started out at 6200 feet and by the time we parked the truck and began the Summit Walk to Stella Lake, we were at 9,960 feet.  Big warnings about taking care not to get mountain sickness which we suffered from when we hiked on the Continental Divide while in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Too much snow!

Did not have to worry about the sickness - there was too much snow still on the ground and we could not see the trail to follow.  Every now and then we would have to cross a snow pack and we sunk to our knees in it, decided after hiking about 1/4 mile to stop - was getting too dangerous and difficult to go on.  We could have gotten lost without any problem - we lost our way coming back down and if it wasn't for the fast flowing stream we saw and still could hear, we might still be up there wandering around!

Sad that we didn't make it to Stella Lake but did get a chance to talk to a ranger who was just coming back from garbage duty at the campground right near the Summit walk, and she said that the park had just opened up this Summit area the day before.  Talk about timing!  She said that it had snowed just a day or so ago, and snow was predicted for tonight also.