To the Top of Eastern Nevada: Up Wheeler Peak with Kids

The day arrived: time to head up Wheeler Peak. We had two seven year olds and a ten year old. We had spent the night before at Wheeler Peak campground at 10,000 feet to acclimate and make the hike easier. We took a before hike photo when we were still all smiling (we forgot to take the after hike photo, but I can assure you some of the faces would have been showing different expressions!)

The start is easy, not too steep, fairly flat ground, and gorgeous views. We could see where we would soon be--on the ridge that leads up to Wheeler Peak (the mountain on the right in the photo above).

As we got higher, the trail got rockier. The kids wanted lots of breaks, so we had to use our best parenting techniques to keep them going.

I found the flowers distracting. I especially loved this pink one, moss campion (Silene acualis), that grows in a mound.

At one point, Desert Boy went ahead, found a wind shelter, and then laid down and pretended he was dead. Here are the kids trying to revive him. Fortunately they were successful!

Higher up, we found some snow!

We decided to take this snowy route for awhile.

Desert Boy's expression shows how enthusiastic he was. But then he and Isaac started talking about video games, and they got a second wind.

Jenny is such a trooper, up to any challenge! And with a smile.

Almost to the top!

One of the benefits of climbing the peak in July is seeing the bright pink Palmer's primrose (Primula parryi) in bloom. It's usually a riparian plant, but for some reason it also likes the higher slopes of Wheeler Peak. The purple plant is sky pilot or sticky Jacob's ladder (Polemonium viscosum), and it smells like skunk. Fortunately it wasn't too odiferous on this particular day. In the middle of the photo below, you can see Bald Mountain, with Buck Mountain to the right. The dry playa in the background is Yelland dry lake bed in Spring Valley.

Finally we got to the top! It was so nice to be there. We shared the summit ridge with about 20 other people, who were scattered along it.

Some of us went to the eastern edge of the ridge to see the Wheeler Cirque Rock Glacier and Jeff Davis peak. This year there aren't any thermokarst ponds (pools of water) on the rock glacier.

Jenny got a family photo of us.

And I wanted to get a photo with Jenny!

We spent about an hour at the top on the rare, almost windless day. You might notice we're not even wearing jackets. This is not common at all! Desert Girl wasn't feeling so good, and we hoped heading down would relive her altitude sickness.

The Ross's aven (Geum rossii) with its mats of yellow flowers and cushion phlox (Phlox pulvinata) with its white flowers decorated the scene, along with more sky pilot.

I thought going down might end the whining, but the kids were tired and let us know it.

With snow down the gully to Stella Lake, we thought that would be a fun alternative to the trail. There were a few fun moments...

 ...but it was really long and probably didn't really save us any time. But now we know.

We were all exhausted when we got back to the vehicles and forgot to take the after photo. The kids said they would never hike the peak again. But once they told other people and saw their reactions, they changed to saying that they wouldn't hike the peak in the next few years. After that, who knows?

Anyway, we were really proud of them for accomplishing such a big feat. and it was great to spend the day outdoors in such beautiful settings. For anyone wanting to take kids to the top, plan on an all-day adventure (it was about 9 hours total for us, including an hour at the top), lots of food and water and patience. And it sure helps to have good weather!

A Trip up Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park

Last week I had the opportunity to climb several mountains as part of the GLORIA project, a world-wide project that is looking at climate change by studying how plant species are changing on mountain tops over the long term. The basic idea is that as the climate warms, plants will have to move upward in elevation to survive. Eventually they will reach the top of the mountain, have no where else to go, and will disappear. Yikes!

One of the four peaks we studied was Wheeler Peak, at 13, 063 feet the second highest peak in the state of Nevada. The hike is 4.1 miles long starting from the Wheeler Peak summit trailhead at about 10,000 feet. To get to the trailhead, you simply enter Great Basin National Park via Nevada Highway 488, then take the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive about 12 miles to the sign.

After a briefing about possible dangers (lightning, altitude sickness, hypothermia, tripping and falling, dehydration, etc.), we set off through the aspen groves on a rather flat section of trail.

After a mile, we reached the second trail junction, with Stella Lake nearby and the summit of Wheeler Peak only 3.1 miles away. Only. Ha.

The trail gets progressively steeper, and the peak still looks far away! Wheeler Peak is the high peak on the right, while Jeff Davis is on the left and stands about 400 feet lower. Wheeler Peak is named for Lieutenant George Wheeler, who summited and surveyed the peak in 1869 as part of an Army mapping expedition. For more on the history and climbing the peak, see the highly recommended  Great Basin National Park: A Guide to the Park and Surrounding Area. (Disclosure: I wrote it, so of course I highly recommend it!)

Before long we were above treeline and following switchbacks up the talus. Although we were gaining 3,000 feet, before the Scenic Drive existed, people would either ride horses up part way or start hiking about where the Upper Lehman Campground is, just short of 8,000 feet. And Wheeler started in Spring Valley at 6,000 feet, for a 7,000 foot elevation gain. (albeit with a horse for part of the way!).

More than half way up is a giant shoulder that is sort of flat. Some big wind breaks have been created. The wind sure can blow up here, and it's usually cold! Be sure to bring some extra layers.

During our rest break, I found one lonely little snow cinquefoil flower (Potentilla nivea). The rest of the flowers are wrinkled up and barely noticeable.

As we continued up, I commented on the flat areas with no vegetation. usually vegetation seems to like the flatter areas. I learned that these may be periglacial features. The movement of the ground due to freezing and thawing keeps it unsteady (or something like that, I'm not entirely clear about periglacial features).

A lot of planes fly over Wheeler Peak, and that particular day the contrails were staying put, giving an idea of just how many fly over in a short amount of time. Across the valley I saw my first ever contrail shadow.


A skunky-smell started permeating the air, and I looked around closely to find skunkweed or sky pilot (Polemonium viscosum). Beautiful purple flowers are suspended on some stinky upreaching leaves.

Then came a surprising sight: Parry's primrose (Primula parry). This species usually grows next to streams (the inlet to nearby Teresa Lake is a beautiful spot). Somehow, these flowers have been able to adapt to live in the alpine environment.

Although the oxygen became more limited the higher we went, the views kept improving. Soon we reached the summit and could look over the mountain top.

From the top we had the glorious view of the south Snake Range, beginning with the North Fork of Baker Creek, and continuing down to Pyramid Peak (it really does look like a pyramid!), Mt. Washington (the light gray peak), and Granite Mountain in the far distance.

Up on the summit are several round shelters. These just aren't for sheltering day hikers, they were used as part of a heliograph station to map the 39th parallel. They have a really interesting history (see Chapter 5 in the Great Basin book).

We began our vegetation resurveys on the west shoulder of Wheeler Peak, which has less disturbance. We used a variety of different survey types to document what vegetation is present. We also retrieved data loggers to find out what the temperature has been like for the past five years. Over the next months, that data will be studied to make some preliminary conclusions. Five years really isn't much time to see huge changes in plant communities, although we did see a couple of ferns that weren't spotted last time.

This rockslide yellow fleabane (Erigeron leiomerus) was outside of our survey area, but was one of the few plants still flowering. Due to our very dry conditions this year, most flowers were past their prime.

During a break, I walked to the far east edge of Wheeler Peak's summit to get a view of the rock glacier in the cirque below. Check out this post for a close-up view of the rock glacier.

I really wanted to see the glacier at the headwall, so I moved closer, and was stunned when I realized that the ice ascended nearly all the way up the steep face. It looks so much different than from down n the glacier. The slope is covered in dust, gravel, and rock, but it's smooth surface left no doubt that it's ice. I felt a moment of realization that this really could be a glacier. (I will admit that I've been a doubter, even though Osborn and Bevis have declared it a glacier in scientific literature.)

One of the definitions of a glacier is that it must be moving, and crevasses (cracks in the ice) show that the ice is moving. I zoomed in for a closer look at the crevasses. It would be kind of cool to get really close with an ice axe, rope, and crampons, and check them out more. The only problem is that there is so much rock fall off the Prospect Mountain Quartzite--hence the very dirty glacial ice.

Then it was time to get back to work looking at plants. The Ross' avens (Geum rossii) with its yellow flowers is one of the most common plants on all the peaks we looked at.

I only found a few cushion phlox (Phlox pulvinata) in bloom during the trip; most of the flowers had already disappeared.


We finished our work in the mid afternoon. Before heading down, I took a photo looking east, over Garrison in Snake Valley and the Burbank Hills to the Confusion/Wah Wah Range and beyond. If you know the area, can you spot Crystal Peak?

The afternoon heat allowed for a wildfire to the northeast of Spring Valley to produce an impressive smoke column. We also saw a lot of dust kicked up on Yelland Dry Lake bed. During the spring, the playa will be covered with water, but for most of the year it is dry and dusty. Many people fear that more of Spring Valley will become like Yelland Dry Lake bed due to a massive groundwater pumping project by Southern Nevada Water Authority that is expected to significantly drop the groundwater level in the valley and change the plant composition.

It took me about three hours to hike up Wheeler Peak (with people in our group both ahead and behind), and about two hours to hike down. It was a beautiful day to go up to the highest point in this part of the world.

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the views! What's your favorite peak to hike?

Playas

I've been trying to read more books about the Great Basin and just finished William L. Fox's Playa Works: The Myth of the Empty. Some of it was fascinating. Some of it I skipped over. Anyway, if you are interested in playas, it's worth a read.

I wanted to share some of the cool things I learned. After all, I feel like at least once in awhile I need to be true to the name of this blog and talk about the desert and what's in it. Plus, the more I learned about playas, the more I kept wanting to learn about playas. I've spent quite a bit of time doing some Internet searches the last few days. They are cool places, even though they are basically barren and hard to comprehend.

What is a playa? It's basically a dry lake bed. The word playa is Spanish for beach, which can be appropriate in some circumstances. G. K. Gilbert first used the word in a scientific context in 1875, while on a survey west of the 100th meridian. The word had already been in use by then, as Gilbert didn't define it. It's true that playas do get water on them. However, the evaporation rate is usually ten times greater than the evaporation rate. One other important component of playas is that they don't have an outlet. That means that the salts and other minerals that are left behind when the water evaporates are distributed evenly, creating a very flat, homogenous feature.
How many playas are out there? Fox reports that more than 50,000 exist around the world. Most are small, like Yelland Dry Lake, pictured below.

The largest playa in North America isn't far from where I live: the Great Salt Lake Desert. The largest playa in the world is Lake Eyre in Australia, with a surface area of about 3,600 square miles. That size is hard to comprehend!

If you don't have a playa near you, don't worry, as playas are growing in number and size. Okay, maybe that's not such a great thing. The reason they're growing is generally due to groundwater pumping.

The biggest example would be Owens Lake in California, which was a huge lake until the water feeding it was rerouted down a pipeline to Los Angeles. The resulting dry lake bed created some of the worst air pollution in the U.S.

Dust storm on east side of Owens Lake playa. Photo credit: Basin and Range Watch.

If you want to find a sliver of a silver lining, it might be that humans have adapted to live with these playas in many ways. The following list is not in order of importance. At least to me. But perhaps it will be to you. Or maybe this list will give you some ideas about what you might want to do the next time you see a playa either in person or a photo.

1) First, playas are good for setting speed records. This is important to a lot of people as evidenced by the thousands that go to the Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City every August.

A Streamliner at the 2009 Bonneville Salt Flat Races. (you can see a fun post I did looking at fast cars and going behind the scenes at the Bonneville Time Trials by clicking here.)

2) Playas have also been used for nuclear testing (the Nevada Test Site). Sometime in the future I'd like to do a post about the Nevada Test Site--I've been reading a lot about it lately and it's weirdly fascinating. They offer public tours--but you have to reserve a spot nearly a year in advance!

Most subsidences leave saucer-shaped craters varying in diameter and depth, depending upon the yield, depth of burial, and geology. This is the north end of Yucca Flat. Most tests have been conducted in this valley. Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office. 3) Playas can be great places to party. The Black Rock Desert, the second largest playa in North America, is home to the annual Burning Man Festival, a week-long event creating the fifth-largest city in Nevada. The Burning Man website describes the event as: "Once a year, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance."

Most subsidences leave saucer-shaped craters varying in diameter and depth, depending upon the yield, depth of burial, and geology. This is the north end of Yucca Flat. Most tests have been conducted in this valley. Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office.

3) Playas can be great places to party. The Black Rock Desert, the second largest playa in North America, is home to the annual Burning Man Festival, a week-long event creating the fifth-largest city in Nevada. The Burning Man website describes the event as: "Once a year, tens of thousands of participants gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance."

From the Google Earth Blog: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/09/burning_man_2011.html

 4) Playas were important crossing routes for emigrants.

5) Playas have encouraged art of various types, such as the famous Nazca Lines in a desert in Peru.

From http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/nazca/nazca-lines.htm

6) Playas may have encouraged aliens to visit.

Ibex Hardpan

(All the Groom Lake (Area 51) photos with aliens running around are classified, so I had to use the one above.)

7) Playas have some wonderful geologic mysteries contained in them, like the moving rocks on the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/Cynthia Cheung

8) Playas are great places to land airplanes--and for fly ins. Every year the Tule Valley (Ibex) Fly In at the Tule Hardpan/Playa west of Delta, Utah attracts many pilots. Unless, of course, the playa is wet. Then landing on it isn't such a great idea.

Photo credit: Blackrock at Backcountrypilot.org

9) Movie companies like to film on playas. I had heard about one being filmed on the above-mentioned Tule Hardpan and this post made me look it up. Here's a movie filmed out there:

What's your favorite activity on a playa? My husband has wanted to build a sail-contraption, but fortunately hasn't gotten past the dreaming stage. Somehow crashing at high speeds on the high desert floor doesn't sound like much fun to me.

I'm going to try and pay a little more attention to playas.

Like sand dunes, they capture some of the essence of the desert: the dry, desolate, and forbidding places where life is harsh, if it exists at all.