The drive West on U.S. 6 was truly lonely! They call this road “America’s Loneliest Road” for good reason - we didn’t see any other vehicle for almost 80 miles! Also along this stretch there is absolutely NOTHING (except several Pronghorn Antelope that were too fast to get caught in a photo and some cows) between Hinckley Utah and the Nevada State Line - 83 miles apart.
We finally started seeing a few cars as we approached the Nevada State line. We totally forgot about the change of time zone at the border, so we arrived at the park visitor center well before it opened!
The Great Basin is called that because any water that falls within the boundaries has no outlet to anywhere. It gathers in pools and lakes that then either evaporates or sinks into the ground. These boundaries go from the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California East to the Wasach Mountains in Utah, the Northern edge pokes into part of Oregon and Idaho and the Southern edge includes part of Southern California Deserts from North of Las Vegas Nevada down to the Salton Sea. The Great Basin National Park is just a small representation of this huge area, with it‘s size being approximately 78,000 acres. This is one of the newest National Parks, being created in 1986. The park receives approximately 90,000 visitors per year. This is not a place you just stop by to see - you have to want to come here cause it is very isolated. The tiny town of Baker is about one block long and maybe has one or two little motels. There are several campgrounds within the park, but big rig friendly it isn’t!
A little piece of trivia that we found very interesting is that because of the geography of the Great Basin Region and the fact that most of the region is in the State of Nevada - it makes Nevada the most mountainous state in the U.S.! Hard to believe, but if you look at the relief map of the Western States, it is obvious that Nevada has more mountain ranges than any state around.
The main feature of the park is Wheeler Peak, standing at 13,063 feet. There is almost an 8,000 foot difference in elevation between Wheeler Peak and the valley floor. The Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive is 12 miles long and is paved, but steep and winding. The average grade is 8%. Thankfully there are restrictions on the size of vehicles allowed to drive this road! This road reaches the 10,000 foot level before descending back to 9800 feet at the trailheads. The road passes thru 5 ecological zones in that 12 miles. At the top there is a forest of ancient Bristlecone Pines, thought to be the oldest living things on the Earth at somewhere between 3000 and 5000 years old! There are several trails on the mountain, we took the shortest and easiest - it is not easy to hike above 10,000 feet if you aren’t in good shape (we left it for the youngsters!).
Great Basin National Park is home to the only glacier in Nevada, and one of the southernmost glaciers in the United States. The Wheeler Peak Glacier sits at the base of Wheeler Peak, in a protected cirque around 11,500 feet in elevation. The glacier measures 300 feet long and 400 feet wide. Exact depth is unknown. One of the hikes takes you to this glacier, but it was 4.6 miles with an altitude gain of 1100 feet - we took pictures from afar and were happy!
Located within the Great Basin National Park is the Lehman Caves. Of course, if there is a cave with a tour we are there! We were lucky to get tickets to one of the 90 minute tours this day. Weather in caves tends to be very consistent, compared to the surface conditions. Lehman Caves is 50° F year round. The relative humidity varies between 90 and 100%. We put jackets on and were thankful that we did. After the 90 minutes we almost wished we had gloves also.
The Lehman Cave was designated a National Monument in 1922, and was then included in the Great Basin National Park when it was created in 1986. About 50,000 people visit Lehman Caves annually. The cave was discovered by Absalom Lehman, thus the name. He owned the land and found the cave accidentally one day when his horse stepped into the entrance and broke his leg. He explored the cave and figured out that others would pay to see it. That was easier said than done back in the late 1800’s when travel was slow and hard. It took about 2 weeks to get from Salt Lake City to Baker Nevada! After Lehman's death, very little is recorded about Lehman Caves for several decades. His property, which was never legally filed upon, was sold and resold several times. In 1909 a forest reserve, embracing much of the Snake Range, was created by federal proclamation. In 1912 the caves and lands surrounding Lehman's old homestead, which had always been federally owned, were added to the reserve that became known as the Humboldt National Forest. A sign was posted advising all visitors of federal laws prohibiting the destruction of natural beauties, but supervision was non-existent until it became a National Monument.
The beginning of Lehman Caves can be traced back to approximately 600 million years ago, in the early Cambrian period. Lehman Caves formed by the process of a weak carbonic acid dissolving away the rock. The groundwater was probably only slowly moving (no raging underground whirlpools), so the chemical processes completely formed the cave passages. Physical erosion, or scouring, did not play a role in the formation of Lehman Caves. No one knows how long it took the cave to form. Caves often tend to be in the range of hundreds of thousands to a few million years old. Lehman Caves is probably not more than a few million years old, at oldest. Even today the water seeping through the soil above the cave forms carbonic acid. The acidic water dissolves a little of the bedrock above the cave passages. Most of the limestone is dissolved at the boundary of the rock and soil. The calcite stays in solution until the water reaches the air of the cave passage. At this point the water usually redeposit’s some or all of the calcite it contains in solution. When the calcite is deposited it creates some spectacular formations.
Shields are the formation that Lehman Caves is best known for. They are not as rare as was once thought, and have been found in at least 80 caves in the United States. Caves that have shields often have them in large numbers. Lehman Caves has an unusually large concentration of shields, more than 300. Shields consist of two round or oval parallel plates with a thin medial crack between them.
There were many other beautiful formations within this cave, including Draperies, Popcorn, Flowstone, Columns, Helicites, Soda Straws, Stalactites and Stalagmites. As usual, pictures can’t do justice to the beauty that is there.
This is a pretty good example of “Cave Bacon”!
This is what a Stalactite looks like in the middle - it is called Calcite Crystals.
This Cave had some pretty tight passage ways. Anybody over 4 feet tall had to be really careful and duck a lot!
The road home was just as lonely as it was going over. We arrived home and being tired we hit the hay a little earlier than normal.
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