A few months ago my friend Andy and I were sitting in the office at the end of yet another mind-numbing exercise in futility "building" trails for Jefferson County - also known as a day at work. We were trying to kill the requisite 30 minutes of time we spend not working at the end of each day by reading back issues of Outside magazine. I happened upon an article detailing a backcountry weekend trip in Nevada's Great Basin National Park following unnamed ridges across unnamed peaks to thousand-year-old stands of Bristlecone Pine trees, the oldest known living organisms on earth today. It seemed like a good idea, so we went for it.
Some of the living ones are over 4900 years old.
As we left Denver on Wednesday, we drove into rain. Not a big deal - it probably wasn't raining 700 miles west, anyway. Well, we continued to drive in rain through Colorado, and then Utah. On Thursday, after lunch at the 'Lectrolux Cafe in Baker, Nevada, the waitress warned us about the recent rash of afternoon showers and storms blasting the park, and we shrugged our shoulders and decided that we didn't have much say in what happened and that we needed to get on our way - the park was waiting.
High-altitude Columbines.
After visiting the not-so-spectacular visitor's center, we headed up up up to the parking lot at 10,000 feet and set out on a short hike to check the local "glacier," - the only permanent ice feature in Nevada. As the skies darkened around us and thunder echoed off the brittle rock walls towering 2500 feet above our heads and lightening cracked closer and closer and rain began to fall, we decided to take shelter under a tree, and a tall one because it had more branches to block the driving rain (brilliant!). After basically being chased off the mountain, we regrouped and the words "Las Vegas" were mentioned once or twice (we were only 4 hours away), but, tragedy averted, the skies began to clear behind towering Wheeler Peak as we cooked dinner and the race was on to hike out of the basin and into the backcountry.
Sunrise against Mt Washington.
We reached the saddle as the sun set below the storms to the north, producing one of the most amazing sunsets either of us had ever witnessed. Not having much time to check the area before dark, we set up camp and went to bed. The morning, however, provided a disconcerting surprise. As Andy walked off to meet the call of nature, he stumbled upon a freshly killed deer carcass, which was uneaten. That deer had likely been killed by the only local predatory macro fauna - the mountain lion (or as we affectionately deemed it, the alpine pussy), and lions typically don't a) move very far from their kill and b) let anything threaten their hard work. Later realizing how foolish we were to inspect the kill more closely, we became much more thankful for not being killed and for the impending good weather.
The next three days were filled with long hikes up tall mountains in search of amazing views, rapid descents through deep valleys looking for life-giving water, and camping spots among thousand-year-old trees seen by only a few people lucky enough to learn about these living legends. We played Bristlecone baseball at 11,000 feet, and let me tell you, the cones really carry at that altitude. We stumbled across abandoned gold mines from the early 1900s on a failed attempt to find water. We threw rocks down thousand-foot-deep fissures in the mountains and listened closely as they caromed and echoed across the valley below. We were chased off the mountain on our final day after a desperate ascent against nature before arriving at the car as the rain drops began to fall.
This one's dead, and probably has been for a few thousand years.
We ended our stay in Nevada at the same place where we began - the 'Lectrolux Cafe in Baker. As part of our extensive and exhaustive calorie replacement therapy, we shared an appetizer of pizza before burgers, fries, slaw and, for me, and few of Alaskan Brewing Co's finest ales. I had lost nearly 10 pounds in those three days, so I felt justified in the slurpee I purchased a few miles down the road. However, I soon found that eating a slurpee and texting your friend, while driving across the "loneliest highway in the United States" at night, revealed itself to be very conducive to running over rabbits. I must say that Highway 50 is not so lonely if you are a rabbit - in fact, it is more like a singles club for strapping young thumpers. It would have been more dangerous to try NOT to hit them. (Apologies to all animal lovers, and a warning to not drive in western Utah at night.)
After not paying to camp in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah, we ended our calorie replacement therapy at Burger King for breakfast and Wendy's for lunch before strolling back home Monday afternoon to the news of endless rain in Colorado over the weekend and hopes for a greener tomorrow. All in all, things went pretty well.
Sunrise reflection against Johnson Lake with tree.
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