Great Basin

[dave4242]

Hi all,

Never been but planning on going so looking for advice on where in the bristlecone forest is best as well as other locations in the park

Thanks!

[Vaughn]

Drive up the road to its highest point and take a short hike on the trail you'll find there. The air will be a bit thin.

[dave4242]

Thanks

[Vaughn]

If you are planning on camping at the campground at the top of the road (Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive), be aware that moonless nights can be hard to find a campsite -- too many people are there for the stars!

[dave4242]

interesting ok good to know thanks!

[Nodda Duma]

Watch out for antique store toys! Just saw a movie about them.

[Drew Wiley]

I assume you are meaning Great Basin National Park? Very few facilities in the area, and it's a pretty stiff drive either way from even the nearest sizable towns like Ely,NV or Cedar City, UT. The tiny town of Delta,UT right below Wheeler Pk has a some modest or perhaps marginal accommodations. The official Park campground uphill is along a little stream in a pleasant aspen grove. Bring all necessary supplies along. Lehman Caverns is nearby. Don't go up the road when it's iced up towards Autumn. Wheeler Peak is the second highest peak in Nevada and has a single glacial cirque with a small lake in it, below the summit cliff. Typical high altitude with a lot of UV. Only three places in the Great Basin were glaciated during the Pleistocene; this is the furthest south and the one least altered by glaciers, or rather, just a single small glacier in this case. The surrounding desert might seems either intriguing or desolate; but it's only about four hours, as I recall, from much more colorful places like Kanab Canyons south of Cedar City, the forgotten end of Zion NP, but equally beautiful, especially in fall, when it will be unrealistically late for the upper part of the road in Great Basin NP. Considerably more bristlecones pines can be accessed in summer in the White Mtns on the border of CA and NV, with the lower grove accessible on a small paved road, but the classic gnarly trees quite a bit further on a bumpy dirt road along the summit of the range. Be self-contained there too. There's a big campsite lower down, but without even water. Most other bristlecone groves are inaccessible by car.

[Vaughn]

A couple times I passed thru Baker without knowing the beauty waiting at the end of that drive into the heavens. My Boys and I took the shorter of the the two tours thru the caves, and we had a good walk in the bristlecones, tho I only had my Rollei with me. We camped lower down below the HQ and caves. The creek and trees were a joy to discover after driving on Hwy 50 across Nevada.

[Tin Can]

Won't go there. Altitude may be to high, pun intended.

I am a flatlander.

I did drive up to Pikes Peaks twice in one day in a $1, 1972 Pontiac on mostly gravel, in 1993. Good car. Low miles.

Real fun drive as I love gravel roads. I passed everybody. Snow drifting is my speciality.

Anyway, I was fine at 14,000 ft as long as I took it real easy. Most people were having a bad day.

I was surprised no oxygen was available. Many needed it. They were very sick. I got my sightseers back down quickly. Wife's family.

Same trip, I wanted to motel it at 7500 feet, my wife vehemently declined.

A smoker.

[Drew Wiley]

Hwy 50 is a lot of fun if you're not in a hurry and there's weather. Seemingly boring, bland Nevada can be utterly stunning with storm clouds. I once drove clear across Nevada on Christmas Eve, at night, and only passed two other cars going the opposite direction. Wandering cows are a bigger danger. Austin is a wonderful old mining camp. Wheeler Peak is part of the Snake Range. Three years ago I did some backpacking up in the Ruby Mtns of Nevada, above Elko, which was the most glaciated part of the Great Basin. People drive past that range on Hwy 80 and don't even imagine that it's a different world up there, all lush with wildflowered meadows and aspen groves, and one glacial cirque after another, with trout-filled lakes. Even mountain goats and bighorn sheep. You'd think you were in Montana, except there are no bears.

[dave4242]

Thanks everyone for the input

[Vaughn]

Hwy 50 is a lot of fun if you're not in a hurry and there's weather...

A couple Aprils ago it took me 3 days to cross Nevada on Hwy50 -- camped on a couple of the passes. There is usually dirt roads leaving off of them to camp on. Great road for slow travelers!

Have a great trip, Dave!

[John Kasaian]

Take a spare tire.
Heck, take two spare tires.

[Vaughn]

Take a spare tire.
Heck, take two spare tires.
Unless Dave plans on detouring to the White Mountains, the roads are all paved.

My boys and I drove 2500 miles earlier in the year in southern Chile, a far majority of that on 'interesting' gravel/dirt roads. We got a flat on our first day on gravel roads, only to find the rental (small van -- a Chevy Spin) had one of those small emergency tires as a spare. Fortunately we were close to Torres del Paine National Park headquarters and the maintenance fellow there fixed the flat for us. Hard to believe we had no other flats.

So one spare is all that is needed -- but make sure it is a real tire and wheel!

[dave4242]

I'll be coming up 93 from Vegas so def need to stop at cathedral gorge anyone else have spots on the 93 they like?

[jprofita]

Rainbow Canyon south of Caliente NV is worth exploring. Pioche has some interesting architecture including the 'million dollar courthouse'.

[Vaughn]

I'll be coming up 93 from Vegas so def need to stop at cathedral gorge anyone else have spots on the 93 they like?

Nice campground there too -- showers!

If you have a rough-road vehicle, Road 317 through Elgin looks very interesting.

[dave4242]

cool thanks!

[Keith Pitman]

Different subject matter, but there's a railroad museum at Ely, NV.

[Vaughn]

Warning, I have not been on Road 317 -- so get more info on it if you think you'd head that way.

[Drew Wiley]

Watch your speed limit in those small towns! The whole county budget might depend on the local highway patrolman and his uncle judge.

[Vaughn]

When a girlfriend came over to the US from Australia in 1984, we took a road trip through the Southwest in my VW bug. She would blast thru the small towns and I'd have to get after her to slow down...she was looking on the wrong side of the road for the speed limit signs. We never got stopped, but her accent would have melted the heart of most small town cops.

[Drew Wiley]

Some of those law enforcement types, at least in certain small towns on the eastern edge of the state, already have more wives apiece than they deserve. No wonder they need to levy so many fines from out-of-state license plates.

[Willie]

Some of those law enforcement types, at least in certain small towns on the eastern edge of the state, already have more wives apiece than they deserve. No wonder they need to levy so many fines from out-of-state license plates.

Fundamentalist Mormon groups. Other Mormon and offshoot groups in the area who don't practice Polygamy. Partoun and Eskdale have some of these with Eskdale a whole community, school and all.

[Drew Wiley]

It spills over not only into Nevada but Idaho and Arizona. The most infamous polygamist cults are actually in the Arizona strip north of the Colorado River, but outside Utah jurisdiction. Some in Idaho involve white supremacist neo-Nazi members and have violent rivalries with other groups. I've been stopped and hassled a number of times. But outsiders are usually not in serious danger because most of these groups want to avoid attracting public attention. They just want you gone, moving along, with no cameras pointed their direction. It's too late for Colorado City; now the whole world knows what went on there. Such beautiful country, such sad people. I know far more than I'm willing to describe here, heard lots of first-hand accounts, know some of the real history from contemporaneous records - stuff that's pretty hush hush now.

[dave4242]

hey guys I appreciate the insight but now this is way way way... way off topic

[Drew Wiley]

Waaaay off? Hardly. How would you like to have your hands atop your vehicle while all your valuable camera gear and camping stuff was being rifled through by a local sheriff and deputy in the middle of the night with pointy beards down to their stomachs? Or how about an incontestable ticket for running a red light in a county that doesn't even have a single stoplight? Remember, you can be a darn long ways from anywhere in some of those places. I had an assistant of mine thrown in a jail cell for three days in Nevada without even being allowed a phone call. Illegal, sure. But it was his word against theirs. Most of the income in some of those little places comes from highly illegal activity; so you have to keep in mind they might be real criminals, not just seemingly odd people. I love driving through Nevada; but I'm sure as heck not going to risk getting shot at for setting up a view camera in a dicey situation. Med format SLR's are meant for that - get it done fast and keep movin'. I grew up around some of those kinds of people, so know to take them seriously.

[dave4242]

hey drew I was referring to the polygamy and other people related things...

[Drew Wiley]

Oh well. Ya gotta understand that being from a scruffy rural background myself, sharing stories about tight scrapes is just part of the whole point of traveling to begin with. I rode the range with a family of Nevada mustangers when I was 16. They came from managing a million acre ranch in Nevada all by themselves and had a lot of wild west still in them. A wonderful family if you didn't cross them; I saw what happened to those that did. Nevada contains some real characters. And what I was sorta hinting at, is that some of them don't like a camera aimed at some very photogenic subjects they might personally find sensitive. Even a pretty beaver pond might be a point of contention if someone is having a feud with the BLM and claims squatters rights to it. Chances are, that's not going to be the case; but if someone does happen to be there staring at you squinty-eyed, discretion is the better part of valor. When in doubt, I shoot quickie MF. But don't underestimate the demographic issues. Rural Nevada tends to be quite different from Reno or Vegas. Most important - hope for serious clouds. They can utterly transform the landscape into sheer magic. I pulled out an old neg a few weeks ago with a gigantic thunderhead right above a herd of black wild mustangs on a white salt pan. Glad I had a 450 lens along for my 4x5, cause those horses were very skittish.