Fave Hike: Timber-South Fork Baker, Great Basin National Park

The Timber-South Fork Baker Loop trail is so good I've already done it twice this year. It's about 5 miles (8 km) long and 1600 ft (500 m) elevation gain. It's not easy, but it's so beautiful.

The lower part is relatively flat, but then the trail starts getting into the trees and steeper.

There are always great wildflowers to admire, like this milkvetch.

We chose to go up the steeper Timber Creek side. There are some switchbacks, but we still had to take a number of breathing breaks.

On this late May trip, the aspens were just leafing out near the top.

A big limber pine has died.

Some of the aspens have weird bulges.

We even found a patch of snow!

We had intended to spend some time relaxing in the big meadow at the top, but we heard thunder!

We figured we shouldn't dawdle too long. (And we wondered at the trail signs, some with mileages and some without. It's good to take distances with a grain of salt.)

It started raining on us as we started down the South Fork Baker side, with more thunder. I had been so hot at the beginning of the hike that I had walked in the creek and wetted my shirt. Now, the rain was cooling us off.

We stopped for a selfie once we felt like we were in a safe place.

Most of the trail was tree-free, but this recently fallen one had us scrambling.

This trail is so picturesque!

The lower big meadow only had a few flowers blooming.

The Oregon grape (Mahonia repens) was impressive.

And then we were crossing the last bridges and back to the car.

We fortunately had a final wow--a yellow-bellied marmot!

Just a couple weeks later, I was up in the lower meadow (Baker-South Fork Baker loop, also a lovely hike), and the meadow was full of shooting stars!

This heart-leaf arnica made me laugh. It looks like how I feel most days--giving it my best to stand tall, but definitely a little disheveled and trying to pull it all together.

It's fun to play with the slo mo settings on phones!

A couple weeks after that, it was time to do the Timber-South Fork Baker loop again. This time we had blue skies, no  thunderstorms in the upper meadow. We had nice views of the backside of Wheeler Peak and Doso Doyabi. 

We also enjoyed seeing some very different flowers, like this Rocky Mountain columbine.

In the lower meadow, most of the shooting stars had dimmed, but the bistort was going strong.

Fresh off the Great Basin Bumble Bee BioBlitz, we were ultra-aware of bumble bees. And we saw two!

One of the first things to look for to determine if it's a bumble bee (vs. some other kind of bee or a fly mimic) is the pollen sac on the back leg. And it's really hairy, which is another feature off bumble bees. This lady has a huge yellow one! Then you look at the pattern of the tergites (6 back segments on the abdomen (remember head-thorax-abdomen as the three main body parts of an insect)). This one has some notable orange. 

You can upload photos to iNaturalist for guesses on identifications, as well as the Bumble Bee Atlas.

We spent quite a lot of time with the bees. Then we walked, and I challenged Desert Girl to find an orchid. What?! An orchid in the Great Basin desert? Well, it doesn't grow in dry areas, it certainly likes wet spots and it's rather small, but it's still an orchid.


Isn't it a beauty?

 Hopefully I'll get to hike this trail a couple more times this year and see what other changes I notice. While it's fun to hike new trails to see what's there, it's also great to repeat some faves to see how they change through the seasons. 

Early Season Ascent of Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park

It was May 26, and three of my brothers wanted to summit Wheeler Peak. Well, at least one of them wanted to and the rest of us were willing to go along with it. We got to the trailhead about 8:30 am, which seems to me like a late start, but this early in the season there's usually not the threat of afternoon thunderstorms. Instead, we ran into another problem, which I'll get to later.

There wasn't much snow on the first part of the four-mile long summit trail, but as we progressed, we found more.

Desert Girl was doing some training by carrying her cousin. The plan was to take him part way up the mountain, then his mom would take him down. He made it about 1/3 of the way up.

We crossed some very snowy sections and were glad to have poles. We also had microspikes, but didn't put them on till later.

As we headed above treeline, the kids surged ahead. The rest of us were wanting more oxygen.

It's both daunting and beautiful coming up that first false summit and then seeing the peak far off in the distance.

Looking back we see we are higher than Bald Mountain, to the north.

The big ridge had the wind shelters still full of snow.

And snow was the theme the rest of the way up. Although there were rocky patches, most of the way up was in the snow. 

In some places, the snow was easier to traverse than the rock.

I saw several of these Hemiptera, or true bugs.

The first time I go up a big peak each year is always the hardest. For this trip, I took 10 steps and then paused and took a couple breaths and repeated. 

For a short while I was even above Desert Boy. We could already see a long way off.

And then we were almost to the top!

We found the faster members of our group hanging out. This included Desert Girl, Desert Boy, and my nephew.

The view to the south was gorgeous, looking down into the North Fork of Baker Creek, Baker Peak, Pyramid Peak, Mt. Washington, and the Highland Ridge.

My daughter and nephew walked with me along the summit ridge towards Doso Doyabi, past the wind shelters and old heliotrope stations. These were used to help map the 39th parallel. You can read much more in the bood Geodesy: the transcontinental triangulation and the American arc of the parallel," 1900, US Coast and Geodetic Survey. I did not read it, but I did check that it's on Google Books at: https://books.google.com/books?id=--MNAQAAMAAJ. On page 334, it shows the measurements from Wheeler Peak to Tushar Mountain (near Beaver, UT), Mt. Nebo (near Nephi, UT), Ibapah Peak (near Callao, UT), and White Pine Peak (lost in NV).

p.s. You can learn more about Heliotropes on Wikipedia, including that someone using one could be called a "flasher."

Here they are, with Doso Doyabi obviously lower in the background.

The views were spectacular all around. Here's the ridge we had just climbed, with Stella and Teresa Lakes looking like little ponds in the right-center part of the photo.

As the clouds built, we gathered for a group photo.

We signed our names in the register, and then it was time to head down, with microspikes on.

We gave sliding down a try. It worked better on a jacket, as the snow was quite wet.

We had to be careful not to veer to the left, or we'd have a long hike into Spring Valley.

Remember how I said at the beginning that a later start might have a drawback? This was it. We found the snow was now very soft, and the postholing was awful. There were tears. 

But we did it! What a day.

This was one of the harder times for me to climb the peak, not only because my body wasn't so acclimated, but also because so much snow made it rather tough. I was so proud of my nephew, doing one of the hardest hikes of his life (so far).