trailer running: run , walk, pant pant pant

Great Basin NP

Great Basin Web

This one was near the top of the list . "Under Pressure" . And I got here and it seemed closed . Roads were being paved , sections were closed for this and that reason . And the sign on the campground bulletin board said "Mt Wheeler Scenic Drive Closed" This was the road that takes you from the "lower" campgrounds ( 7,500 ft ! ) up to all the trail heads ( 10,000 ft ! ) that lead to the sights ( MT Wheeler , the Bristle-cone Grove , Rock Glacier etc ) . I was so pissed …. that I got pissed ( in the British sense ) and vowed to leave first thing in the morning .

Got up the next morning and asked a guy I ran into at the bulletin board . He said he was able to drive up to the summit parking lot ( not quite all the way but close ) . So I said what the Hey, and stayed .
So glad .

I got up to the summit parking lot , and that was as far as they were going to let me go . There was a trailhead there that worked nicely, only adding an extra mile to the hike / run /walk . From there I went up to Stella Lake , over and up some more to Teresa Lake , and then up a lot more to the Bristlecone pine grove , and finally the Rock Glacier ( somewhere around 11,500 ft ) . I did a lot more hiking then I did running . And some seriously slow hiking at that ! The trail was rocky and technical …. which was a good thing … because there wasn't much air ! But it was so amazing . The Bristle-cone is a pine that grows basically in rocks , like a gnarly old Chateau Neuf grape vine, and lives to be thousands of years old . Its a quite different feeling from the one you get in the Sequoia groves . They aren't very big .... and they are all about the struggle . It was most remarkable and I could go on and on but instead I will just put it on a separate blog !!!

Then the "glacier" …I don't know . I only saw 2 people on the upper trail . The first was a gal coming down who said I would have the trail to myself … she was it. The 2nd was a guy I ran into when I was coming down ( this was a 5 hour trip ) . He asked if the "glacier was still there" ? So here goes…. you gotta use your imagination" Why ? Well its a rock glacier … in other words the glacier and the rocks act as one frozen river … so it looks like, mostly , a river of rocks. Or maybe its climate change and there just isn't much there . But it was still pretty damn cool .