The route Google chose as the fastest is also the most scenic option, driving
through Yosemite and then across Nevada on US6. If US50 can be billed as the
"Lonliest Road in America", US6 could be described as "Even Lonlier than US50."
The only downside on the drive out was that it would be done entirely at night
and I would miss most of the scenery. Luckily I would be able to see most of it
for the drive back. Leaving San Jose at 7:30p, I reached the Yosemite
entrance on SR120 at 10:40p and 
Tioga Pass
just before midnight. I passed through
sleeping Benton near the CA/NV border, gassing up in Tonopah and then Ely, the
only two towns of any size across the entire state on US6. It was growing light
as I left Ely, continuing east to Baker and then up the winding road to the
trailheads at over 10,000ft of elevation. It was 6:30a when pulled into the
small Wheeler Peak Trail parking lot, not another car to be seen.
There was no entrance station as one would
normally find in a National Park, none of the trapping of tour busses and
gift shops (although there was a Visitor Center in Baker), just a lonely paved
road with a couple of trailheads and a campground at the end. The stark
difference with Yosemite Valley on a Sunday morning could hardly be greater.
Sunrise had just come to this alpine island in the desert, with
aspen trees
lighting up in golden shades of autumn. I had managed to drive the route in
11hrs without once consulting a map, but now seemed a good time to look at the
trail map that I had similarly neglected ahead of time. There was a good map
at the TH kiosk that showed the current TH would be fine for a hike to Wheeler
and back, but since I wanted to do more of a loop, the other TH at the end of
the road would be better suited. So I got back in the car and took off again,
just as several cars were arriving from the campground. Less than a mile away
is the larger 
Bristlecone-Alpine Lakes TH
complete with restrooms and picnic
area. It's a few hundred feet lower in elevation, but would save some in
distance with the loop I planned. It was 6:40a when I started up the trail,
another hiker having started a few minutes earlier.
Both 
Wheeler Peak and 
Jeff Davis Peak, the highest summits
in the park, are plainly visible from the parking lot, rising 3,000ft above the
forest towards the south. I signed into the 
trail register at
the start, following the right fork of the Alpine Lakes Trail to its
intersection with the Wheeler Peak Trail. A dozen
wild turkeys
were found along the way and a bit later a good-sized 
buck
with a nice rack of antlers that might not last long in hunting season outside
the park. The trail starts off under forest cover but soon opens to
alpine meadows whose grasses were now brown with the coming of fall.
I left the trail where it makes 
a sharp turn
towards the south, heading north
over easy cross-country to the first objective of the day,
Bald Mtn. Bald and
the other peaks today were all above 11,000ft in elevation, making the list of
Nevada
"11ers" much like the "13ers" list in CA. From the trail, it is only 30 minutes
to the rounded, talus-strewn summit of Bald Mtn. There is a small
telecom tower (possibly a solar-powered weather station) at
the summit along
with a pile of rocks marking the highpoint. One gets a quick feeling of this
alpine island, views of the surrounding desert in all directions, with
Spring Valley to the west and Snake Valley to the east. To
the north is
Sacramento Pass and the northern portion of the Snake Range with Mt. Moriah
topping out at over 12,000ft. I looked about the summit cairn for a register,
eventually finding one in
a broken glass jar tucked in a hole. The contents
were mostly shredded by mice or similarly nesting animals and didn't seem
worth the bother to try to open, so I put back where I had found it.
It was just past 7:30a, having taken less than an hour to reach the first
summit. Things were looking pretty easy. I headed
south down the 
broad ridgeline
connecting Bald to Wheeler, reconnecting with the trail just after 8a following
class 1 walking down the talus slopes. The wind had picked up, blowing in
from the west, though not as bad as some reports I've heard of very strong
winds that often course the range. Still, I put on my fleece and wool gloves to
make things more comfortable. There were other folks now along the trail, about
four
or five that I passed enroute to the summit and others that arrived not long
before. Though 
the trail
is nothing special, it makes the job of climbing this 
talus heap
much more palatable, not unlike the trail up Mt. Dana in Yosemite.
The views of course are spectacular, reaching out across the desert expanses for
many miles. There was some hard, 
crusty snow
from fairly recent storms found
alongside the trail, but it hampered the effort to climb it in no way at all.
It was 9:15a when I reached
There is nothing technical about the traverse between the two peaks, about one
air mile apart. The ridge is nothing more than
It was 10:15a when I reached
The next named summit to
When
Back at
The outing had taken only 8hrs and there was plenty of daylight left in the
afternoon. I decided to use it to drive back across Nevada as far as I could
before the need for sleep caught up with me. It was a beautiful drive through
a dozen huge valleys surrounded by peaks everywhere one looked. Many of them
caught my attention as I noted so many possibilities, so many places I'd like
to come back to explore. It was dark by the time I got to the CA border and I
was fairly exhausted as I neared Mono Lake. I found a place on the east side
of Mono Craters off SR120 to spend the night, intending to climb Crater Mtn
the next morning. I don't think I was two minutes in bed in the back of the van
before I fell asleep that night. If I dreamed anything at all, I had no
recollection - just the sound sleep of the dog-tired...
the summit,
less than three hours from the start
and with a bonus peak to boot. This really was about as easy as Mt. Dana. There
were two guys at the summit when I arrived and several more soon joined us. The
summit area has been polluted by a number of elaborate rock walls that have been
erected over the years from the talus abundantly strewn about the place.
A mailbox
served as the register holder, built into the side of one of these
rock shelters. 
The book
dated back less than a year and would soon fill up,
testament to the popularity of this summit despite its remoteness. Not feeling
all that social, I didn't stay around the summit very long and after taking
some photos (
W)
I started heading south along 
the ridgeline to the next
summit, Baker Peak.
easy class 3
and this can be
reduced to class 2 by moving just a short distance off the west side of the
crest. The east side drops precipitously to the cirque on that side and I stayed
on the crest the whole way to keep this impressive sight in view. In addition
there are fine views to the Snake and Spring Valleys to the east and west,
respectively. Though there is no use trail along the crest, travel is not
difficult and the cross-country trek is rather enjoyable. There is little of
the loose talus/boulders that one might expect from the looks of it.
the summit
of Baker, though I wasn't aware of it
immediately. A little less than half a mile to the east, off the main crest, is
another summit that looked obviously higher and I mistook it
for Baker itself. It
took about 20 minutes to cover the distance, dropping down only a short ways
to two saddles before climbing back up to the highpoint. This summit, Peak
12,305ft is only 7ft higher than 
Baker Peak
it turns out, and is just shy of
having 500ft of prominence. There was no register to be found on either summit.
The view 
east into the Baker Creek drainage was worth the extra hike.
the south is Pyramid Peak and originally I'd hoped to
make it to this one as well. After hiking back to Baker Peak, I contemplated
the pros and cons of continuing on the traverse. If I'd had a car shuttle
arranged it would have been a no-brainer, though I'd have had to do Jeff Davis
Peak earlier. Pyramid is about 2 air miles from Baker so the effort to reach it
is about twice that of going from Wheeler to Baker, probably adding 4-5 hours
onto the day. Much hemming and hawing ensued, but in the end I decided that I'd
need to come back again anyway in order to tag the other two 11,000-foot summits
to the south of Pyramid, namely Washington and Lincoln. Back I went to Wheeler's
summit.
I arrived just after noon for my second visit to Wheeler there
were half a dozen individuals milling about, a different set from those I'd
left nearly three hours earlier. One gentleman greeted me with "Welcome to
the summit!" to which I smiled and mumbled, "Yeah..." Not knowing that I had
traversed back from Baker, they probably thought it strange that I didn't even
look around the summit or sign the register but instead continued east on my
way 
to Jeff Davis Peak.
Like the other summits I visited, Jeff Davis has one
impressive facet, in this case
the NW Face, the rest being class 2 talus slopes.
It took about 45 minutes to traverse between the two peaks, all class 2, but
of all the peaks Jeff Davis was the lamest from a scrambling point of view. The
talus is not as consolidated as on the other summits and along the crest, and
there was some tedium in
the final slope to the summit. 
A register left by
some firefighters dated back a few years and was found tucked away under some
rocks that took some exploring to discover.
Looking north,
one can easily spot the Wheeler Peak Campground only a mile and
a half away. I decided to take the direct route down the northside talus slopes
which proved to be the most serious bit of tedium on the day. There was some
lingering snow
in the shadier chutes of the north side, but this really was not
much of a hindrance. The talus and boulders that carpet
the slopes were
somewhat loose and made for slow going for the several thousand feet of descent
off the peak. And then when you reach the base, you realize there are
hundreds of acres of awful morraine in all directions. I spied the Glacier
Trail to the west and though it was not on the direct line back to the TH, I
decided the extra mileage it would entail must certainly be better than more
of the morraine that spread out to the north. It took another twenty minutes
to traverse across the morraine slopes, but by 2p I had found my way to the
ease of the trail.
A sign found near the end of 
the trail
where I picked it up described the
glacier found in the cirque to the south, between Jeff Davis and Wheeler peaks.
There is really nothing much to see as most of the glacier is buried under tons
of rock and looks much like the rest of the morraine acreage that spreads out
around you. If someone had come out there hoping to find a living glacier with
crevases and ice and a large snowfield, they'd be sorely disappointed. The
trail led back towards the campground, first through the morraine field and
then through forest, some of it 
almost lush.
The main creek was but a small
stream at this time of year, yet it provided sustenance to some tender green
plants that might otherwise have no chance of surviving in this ocean of desert
that is the Great Basin.
the TH at 2:30p, I checked in at
the register to find the page full
where there had only been two entries when I started. It was interesting that
of 14 parties listed, only three were from Nevada. States as far away as Alaska
and Ohio were represented among the entries. Only three of them were heading to
the summit of Wheeler, the rest out to do the Lakes Loop or Glacier Trail.