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).