With the exception of some of the parks in Alaska, Great Basin National Park is probably one of the most remote in the lower 48. Whether you choose to head to it from the north, south, east or west, your going to be crossing hundreds of miles of desert and prairie with not much in the way of humanity sprinkled along the route. We left Colorado to the east and headed west across Utah until we were just over the border in northeastern Nevada, and that’s where you’ll find Great Basin National Park. As the name implies, it is a series of huge, flat, sagebrush covered valley’s (basins) that are hundreds of square miles in size and are bordered by mountain ranges on both sides. This geological arrangement ensures that any snow or rain that runs down the mountains into the basin will never run out to the sea. It stays in the basins, forming salt lakes, salt marshes, and mud flats. It stays in the arid basin until it eventually evaporates. The Great Basins and the mountains that border them occupy most of Nevada, almost half of Utah, as well as parts of Oregon, Idaho, and California. Quite a significant geological feature of the western US and yes, they are huge. The visitor center and campgrounds as well as the hiking trails for this National Park however are situated in the mountains that border the west side of this basin, in Nevada. This park contains a number of caves, the most popular is Lehman Cave and we took the one hour tour. The ranger was very knowledgeable and went through all the formations of stalagmites, stalagtites, disks, columns, broccoli formations, etc. and how each is formed. These caves are pretty unique and the trip to the “underworld” is definitely worth the time.

We were surprised and happy to find that they still had a campground in the park that was open at this time of the year so we secured a spot for a couple of days in order to do some hiking. We have been less than lucky in a number of the parks since the Calendar hit November as the colder temps freeze the water pipes in the campgrounds and the roads become dangerous and impassable due to snow and ice. The result has been no campsites in some parks and some popular trails and roads closed as well. Like I said earlier, although the park is named after the “Great Basin”, all of the activities are located in the mountain range that borders it. What this means is that instead of hiking on trails that are at sea level where the air is thick with oxygen and the slope of the trail is 0 degrees, we were hiking on trails that started at 7,000 feet and went up from there. As happy as we were to find that their campground was open, we were disappointed to find that several of the roads and trails were closed because of the winter conditions. Still, we hiked the Osceola Ditch trail which follows a ditch (what else!) which was dug by hand for miles and miles along the side of a mountain through rock to channel water from a creek to a gold mining operation. The ditch then had a wooden “flume” built into it which is basically a trough to keep most of the water moving to its destination. Gold mining operations require massive amounts of water to separate the gold from the rest of the dirt and rock. As we hiked this trail the remains of the wooden flume laid along side it. Amazing amount of human labor went into building it but the mine itself never produced much so it was abandoned. Much of the western US is littered with mines and mining operations that are no longer in operation and lay as a reminder of the rush to exploit the mineral wealth that the west held. Some produced and some didn’t, but all of them played a roll in causing treaties with the American Indians and stealing land from the American Indians. It was about a 3 mile easy jaunt and when we completed it we headed to the other side of the park for a second hike. We did about a mile up on a second trail that started at 8,000 feet but altitude sickness hit Laurie hard and we had to turn around. Altitude sickness is nothing to fool around with and although the symptoms she had was light headedness and nausea, it can cause serious and life threatening effects as well. We got back down to the RV and not only drove to a lower elevation in the park, we drove another thousand feet out of the park and down to the small “town” of Baker, which is outside of the park. Dropping altitude is the best remedy for this condition. We stayed there for a couple hours and then drove back up to our campsite, which is at 7,000 feet, where she continued to recover. By the next morning, she was feeling better so we headed for the Lehman Creek trail that would take us up to the base of Mount Wheeler whose peak sits at just over 13,000 feet. The trailhead starts at 8,000 feet and takes us on a 7 mile roundtrip hike that brings us to the base of Mount Wheeler that sits at 10,000 feet. The hike has a vertical increase of 2,050 feet. We didn’t plan on pushing it and were not planning on doing the final 3,000 feet when we reached the base because of time constraints and, the significantly higher altitude. OK, so this at best was a moderate hike as the literature from the Ranger Station assessed it, and, I wouldn’t disagree with that. The altitude was the wild card though. For a couple of pilgrims like us that haven’t spent a significant amount of time at this altitude, it puts a little bit of molasses in your step. Sort of like having a governor on your engine (for those who know what that is). It’s certainly not in the same category as the world class climbers who head into the “death zone” above 20,000 feet often with bottled oxygen on Everest and the other big ones, nonetheless, you can definitely feel its effects here. So as is often the case, I find myself thinking “biologically” about lots of things and this hike was right in line with that. Some basic bio here: Our muscles run on ATP and in order to make it we need sugar, oxygen, and water. The higher you go in altitude, the less oxygen there is in the air and that means you can’t make ATP as fast as your muscles need it. The result is that you tire faster. To compensate for the diminished O2, your heart rate increases and your respiratory rate increases as your body tries to get more blood and the O2 it carries, to your muscles. The hemoglobin in your red blood cells in effect are carrying less O2 so increasing the exchange of gases in your lungs by breathing faster and you’re your heart pumping your blood faster does help but, you’re still not going to perform at peak levels . We made sure it was only the lack of oxygen slowing us down by eating twizzlers (sugar), staying hydrated, and taking a slower gait in our hike. In effect, hiking slower lowered our muscles demand for oxygen to make ATP by slowing its use of ATP. It all seems to have worked out pretty well as even though we took longer to cover the distance, we made the round trip relatively easily. There were a few wild cards on the way though. About an hour into the hike, we started to get light snow flurries. Throughout the hike the gusting wind kept making it feel colder than it actually was but the snow let us know that the temp was dropping most definitely as we gained altitude. By the time we got to the base of Mount Wheeler, the wind was blowing fiercely and the snow had increased significantly. Instead of staying there for a few minutes to enjoy a granola bar and a drink of water, we turned immediately around and headed back down the trail. What a change of weather. In no time it had gone from a pleasant though cloudy day to the white of winter. The pines and boulders and trail were now covered with a light blanket of white, which was both beautiful and surprising and brought a smile to my face as the wind and snow bit into it. I noticed on our trip up the predominance of lichens on the rocks that were a burnt orange color. They really stood out. There were also some cacti growing at the high altitudes which was also a little surprising. The higher we climbed resulted in forests of Aspen, Junipers, and a variety of Pines. A real treat on this mountain is the rare Bristle Cone Pine, which is the oldest living organism on planet earth. They live in nutrient poor soil usually above 10,000 feet and we had only seen it once before on our trip. The oldest Bristlecone Pine is 4,700 years old! It was cold and our jackets and packs were covered with the white by the time we made it back to the RV. We roused Jackson from his nap and immediately took off our wet jackets and put on a pot of Laurie’s home made chicken soup to warm us up. Just what the doctor ordered as that soup took the chill out of our bodies with every slurp we took. It was 1:00 in the afternoon and this would be our last hike in Great Basin. I did the dishes and we turned the RV around and headed down the mountain and out of the park. Down the six mile hill we rolled with the tiny hamlet of Baker at the bottom where we would dump our tanks, reload with water, and start heading west again. It had started raining down there which was probably a welcome site to this parched landscape. Our next stop would take us back again to the very western edge of California to either Death Valley National Park or, a swing on the way down there with a stop at Monmouth Lake, an idyllic area of California along the edge of the Sierras. Decisions like this are easy to make since either way, you win. We were off again across the desert and up through the mountain range that we just came from, which was now noticeably accented with snow. Death Valley here we come.