From Civilization to Isolation

September 25^th  Nevada Basin and Range

Wednesday morning brought clouds, rain and wind for our trek toward Yosemite, through the rest of Utah and into the vast expanse of central Nevada.  Our destination for the day was Baker, Nevada and the Great Basin National Park where the endangered bristlecone pine trees were hanging on. 

When I wrote about the remote area in Colorado around Dinosaur, I had no idea what remote really was until we came to the Basin and Range area of Nevada.

John McPhee wrote an excellent book about this region and Joyce was reading parts of it to me.  He describes this region far better than I but I will try to put it into some perspective. 

We traversed from mountain range to mountain range with huge expanses of flat basin where nothing but sage and scrub plants grew.  There were rarely ever trees and no foothills but the remote feeling was compounded even more by the almost total lack of anything human at all. 

We would go for miles upon miles and never see a car or facilities for gas or food.  This is not a place where you blithely drive along expecting to find gas when you need it.  We had to plan and double check our route, gassing up whenever we came to a station even if the tank was nearly full.  Our travel that day was about 6 hours or so.  We initially had the intent to camp overnight in the park but with the potential for snow (which we drove through that day some) and wind and cold temps we decided to find lodging for the night. 

And what we found was….shall we say, unexpected, quirky and original. 

We were really hoping to arrive in time to do a hike up at the top of a scenic high mountain drive called Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive before dark.  We managed to have enough light for the 15 mile drive up a winding, edge of the mountain road to an elevation of over 10,o00 feet.  Joyce and I both noticed a bit of altitude sickness coming on at around 9,000 feet, slight headache and light-headedness.  All we could do was drink more water and get back down the mountain.  There wasn’t enough light left for a hike and it’s not advisable to exert oneself when altitude is affecting you anyway.  But, we did see and touch the oldest trees on earth with some over 5,000 years old.  Really an amazing thing to think about….some of these trees were around 3,000 years before Christ was born.  Unfortunately, the light was also too low to photograph them.  Along the way, we were delighted with the beauty and color of aspens as well as other interesting conifer trees and pines.  

Joyce and I had been discussing our time schedule and distance still yet to travel to Yosemite.  We had found out the hard way, from our time in Dinosaur National Monument, that setting up camp in the dark was no fun at all.  We were determined to be settling into our Yosemite campsite with enough light to set up and have dinner with a nice fire going.  After much debate and my needing a reality check on my estimation on time, we realized we would need to get up and out of Baker by 8:30 to even have a remote chance of our goal.  It was unfortunate that we wouldn’t be able to go back up the mountain to photograph the bristlecone pine and, even more of a bummer, that we had to forego the Lehman Caves tour.  Joyce is especially interested in geology and this particular cave was supposed to be a marble cave of some significant structures.  However, she was right about how we needed to pad our estimation on travel times more than I had been doing so far.

As out of the way as Great Basin National Park is, it is worth seeing and I could see a future drive here with a plan to spend more time.  For me at least, seeing the endangered trees was a high point though.  They are ancient with intricately twisted and gnarled wood.  I’m so appreciative that someone had the vision to preserve them in this national park.