Early morning reflection in Alice Lake.

My fifth day on the trail was the longest, beginning with a hike to a waiting resupply and ending with a long slog along a lonely forest road, 15.2 miles total. “Everything hurts,” I wrote that evening.

I awoke beside Alice Lake to a clear, crisp morning. It was 26 degrees, and a thin layer of frost covered the ground. The air was still, and so was the water. It reflected the surrounding mountains as the sunrise provided quite a show.

The campers nearby were just beginning to stir as I packed up my campsite and started down the trail. It was 8 o’clock in the morning.

The first order of business was to hike down from Alice Lake (8,596 feet) to Pettit Lake (6.996 feet), where a bear canister holding food, fuel, and other supplies (hopefully) waited. The trail is mostly open for the first two miles, providing excellent views of the jagged peaks, particularly the prominent El Capitan.
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Tags: alice lake, aug09 idaho trip, cliffs, creeks, el capitan, lakes, mountain vistas, pettit lake, pine trees, reflections, rivers, sawtooth mountains, sawtooth national forest, sawtooth wilderness, sunrises

This was a rare moment of relatively clear skies from my couple of days in eastern Nevada. It turned into one of the most beautiful sunrises from my nearly month-long trip to Idaho a couple of months ago, as seen from my campsite on the shoulder of Wheeler Peak. At 9,886 feet in elevation, this was the highest campsite during the trip.

Later that morning, I walked along among ancient bristlecone pines and then went underground to see spectacular Lehman Caves. Great Basin National Park is an unknown treasure, way off the beaten path. Had the weather been more agreeable — it rained off and on the whole time I was there — its spectacle would have been grander.

Wheeler Peak Sunrise, GB09-0825-6479R, Great Basin National Park, Nevada | ©2009 Jeff Blaylock

Tags: aug09 idaho trip, campsite views, clouds, great basin national park, pine trees, sunrises

KANAB, Utah — I’ve spent the last several days driving across and exploring the Great Basin, a huge geographic expanse centered on Eastern Nevada which doesn’t drain to the sea. It is a vast, sagebrush-covered plain frequently interrupted by north-south mountain ranges. The highlight was Great Basin National Park, one of the nation’s least visited preserves.

I camped at nearly 10,000 feet on the shoulder of Wheeler Peak, which at 13,063 feet is the highest point on the Basin. Standing more than a mile above the surrounding desert, the peak creates its own weather, which meant yet more rain. The clouds cleared just long enough yesterday morning for a 3-mile hike among ancient bristlecone pines, some of which are more than 3,000 years old!

I also took a ranger-guided tour of Lehman Caves, a spectacular cavern carved by water over the course of millions of years beneath Wheeler Peak. The cavern is famous for its shield formations, which are uncommon features in caves and rarely seen in this concentration. There are more than 300 shields along the tour route.

Last night, on a whim, I headed over to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah to camp. It was one of the nicest campgrounds I’ve seen, and it had hot water in the restrooms and showers! A heavily armed ranger assigned me a campsite off to myself and got some firewood for me. A very nice evening.

Now I’m off to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim for a couple of nights. I’ve been to the South Rim before but never the North. The weather has cleared up — it’s sunny and will be warm, hopefully for the next few days.

Ancient Bristlecone Pine, GB09-0825-0029J, Great Basin National Park, Nevada | ©2009 Jeff Blaylock

Tags: aug09 idaho trip, bristlecone pines, great basin national park, pine trees

Two days ago, I hiked more than 13 miles in a loop from the Bear Lake trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park. Part of that hike took me deep into Loch Vale, one of several spectacular gorges falling east from the Continental Divide.

Here are photos of the Loch, the largest lake in this particular gorge, which sits at 10,190 feet above sea level. Clouds were streaming over the Divide, reflecting in the sometimes still, sometimes churning waters. Thatchtop is the hulking mass along the left shoreline, and The Sharkstooth is the jagged peak on the right (The vertical photo shows it better.).

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Tags: alpine vistas, cirques, clouds, jun09 colorado trip, lakes, loch vale, pine trees, reflections, rocky mountain national park, Snow, the loch, timberline falls, water, waterfalls

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Tags: apr08 big bend trip, Big Bend National Park, birds, pine trees, Pinnacles Trail

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Tags: apr08 big bend trip, Big Bend National Park, campsite views, deer, grasses, pine trees, South Rim, sunrises