almost heaven

this should have been before Great Basin !

If you are going to make an extended exploration of Nevada …. bring an ATV ! Unless you are ultra runner and carry a gallon of water ….which I tried ..... oh and the whole state seems to be at least 6500 feet … so bring your O2 too !


Ghost towns and Pinon


to White Pines Ghosts

One of my more interesting runs was in search of Cathedral canyon in the White Pine Mts . One of those places were directions are vague at best . Camping at a BLM free site called Illipah I went in search on foot ( to see if the road was ok for car ) . Also in the neighborhood were a couple ghost towns . Hamilton & Treasure City ….. amazing how this place rocked for silver at one time .

The road was good , the run was great , but the canyon was unreachable …. right where the road washed out . I saw a trailer parked off the side with "Blue Coyote Pine Nuts" graphixed on the side . No clue at the time , but Pinons are great for pine nuts and this is the time of year .

hows the bobCat ?

here is desert Bucci smelling the sage

and here he is on take-off

just let me go … I'll come back !

"walk right by with my tail in the air"

desert cat on patrol

got him conered

got moisturizer ? dry dry dry is the climate

Bristling

• skip this post if you don't have an hour to kill and haven't read the previous !

 Long story short , I had a rough go this morning . Life can mystify . Actually, the older I get the more it does . Almost didn't go . Road was closed . Bucci was cranky . Banged my head . Blood everywhere.  I was willing to chalk up Great Basin in the loss column. Closed . Like so much of life . But I gave it a shot and went up to see if I could . Anyway . And dang if it wasn't heaven on earth .

This place. These trees . Are so so old. And so much dignity. Beauty . Grace. And all amid so much struggle . Many of the living , had been born a thousand years before Christ . Not too too long after the end of the last ice age . Some of the trees that weren't living had been born way before that . And they didn't look all that dead . The wood still had color . Amazing . Growing in a pile of rocks ! What is it about seeing such stark , striking beauty that makes you see your life differently ? Makes you happy to be alive ? Makes you want to never stop seeking it ?

The thing here , for me , that makes it so fantastic  …..Joshua Tree is incredible . Yosemite is a temple . Glacier , Yellowstone are overwhelmingly beautiful . I can't wait for the canyons of the southwest . But there is a combination of Alpine &  Desert  beauty here , blended into an incredible sense of antiquity that stops your heart and makes you laugh somehow at the same time .

Lots of tree hugging pics .
If I get a chance I will add some captions

there was a side trail where a handful of the trees had been singled out with interpretive signs

it is difficult to describe how alive these ancient trees projected

Ents

the tree on the right was over a thousand years old . the one on the right had been dead for hundreds and still the wood had color

bristle kindergarden

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 .

Trailhead

Boardwalk over wet spot ( I could run that )

Aspens starting to look like fall

First Bristle - Cone ... probably a young one

?

Cool way to channel a spring

Bristling

amazing how well preserved they stay

...and grow in a rock pile

going up ....

the glacier & the rock glacier

yeah , like  am leaving this trail

who's older ?

the Bucci on guitar