A Quick Trip to Great Basin National Park
So in 2024 work sent me out west and I got to tag on a trip to Great Basin National Park. So let's dig in!
This park is pretty far out. It is a 5 hour drive north from Las Vegas and 100% worth the drive. Now I am going to let you know this park is on my list to visit again. While I was there a lot of the park was shuttered for maintenance so I did not get to see a ton but what I saw I loved!
I left Vegas after my work trip and drove 5 hours till I made it to Hidden Canyon Retreat where I managed to get a cabin for two nights. Hidden Canyon Lodge is where I spent my nights in Great Basin and when they say hidden they mean hidden. 7 Miles down a dirt road and you drop off in a canyon via 6 switchbacks.
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Okay so I need to give a shout out to my local coffee shop PERC. They have some of the best instant coffee. It makes camping mornings feel more like home and I would be a monster without the caffeine!
First stop is of course the national park sign!
One of the highlights of the park is Lehman Caves, which happen to be the longest cave system in the state of Nevada. Tours have been entering the cave since 1885. You can take a tour if you are able to book tickets with a ranger led group. I hope that I am able to go back at a time when I am able to get tickets for the tour!
The Wheeler Peak Bristlecone Pine Grove trail was also closed and the only way to go visit the pines would have been a 14 mile hike that I was not up for solo. So I added this to the list of things I would like to do one day!
I did get to go to Mather Overlook! This is named after the first director of the National Park Service, Stephen Mather. The placard at he overlook reads the following ""He laid the foundation of the National Park Service, defining and establishing the policies under which its areas shall be developed and conserved, unimpaired for future generations. There will never come an end to the good he has done . . ."" May we all work toward
The location offered amazing views of the Wheeler Cirque Rock Glacier which is Nevada's only glacier! I stayed at the overlook for quite some time and got to watch the glory of the stars come up. This was august and with how dark the sky was i could see the milky way with my bare eyes. This truly was the best night sky I have ever seen and I don't think I can shake how it makes me feel.
This was the best photo my cell phone could grab but this night alone was worth the whole trip. Great Basin National Park has a Bortle Dark Sky scale rating of just above 1. With my home farm sitting at 3, Atlanta at 8, and NYC at a 9.
There is a ton of history about how Great Basin national park came to be. President Warren Harding established Lehman Caves National Monument on January 24, 1922. Great Basin National Park was established on October 27, 1986, when President Reagan signed the Great Basin National Park Act. The park includes Wheeler Peak, Nevada's highest peak at 13,063 feet
A note for people visiting the Great Basin National Park. Several distinct tribes have historically occupied the Great Basin; the modern descendants of these people are still here today. They are the Western Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute, and the Washoe. In the mid-1800s, the US government forced tribes onto reservations. This park had very little information on the indigenous population that lived in the land before the cave tours began to take off and the park became what is it today
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