Day 1: Over the River and Thru the Woods (yes, in the middle of the Nevada desert)

Finally! A year and a half ago I read a trip report in National Geographic Adventure about the remote beauty of Great Basin National Park. As I read, I knew that I had to get there. Try as we could last year, it just wasn't happening, but this year we finally got there.



Great Basin National Park is the newest, most remote and least visited park in the country. It is an alpine island in the middle of the vast western desert, a 50-mile long mountain range with 13 peaks over 11,000 feet.

Last Thursday, all our hard laid plans came to fruition as five of us headed west for a six-day backpacking trip. The park is only 3 1/2 hours west on Highway 6 through Eureka and Delta (which is a rockin' place), and we hit the trail at around 4:30 pm.



We started from Shoshone Campground (elev. 8,200 ft) and climbed through beautiful aspen forests bordered by fields of sage that I would expect to find in the Nevada desert. We trekked several miles through terrain more beautiful than anything I have seen in my native Wasatch.

We made camp at Johnson Lake (elev. 10,700 feet) just as the sun was setting. It got cold as quickly as it got dark; all we wanted was to have a hot meal and climb into bed. I absolutely froze as the temperature dropped below freezing (in the middle of Nevada in August?), but I managed a few hours of sleep.