How do you do, Lincoln

Who'd a thunk I'd be up Lincoln Peak a week and one day after deciding it was the last goal for my Great Basin National Park summer 2012 season?  Not me.  After permission seeking, permission granting, vehicle finding, using winning smile to acquire use of vehicle, and hiking buddy establishing, I was ready.  Things didn't fall into place until about 5:30pm the evening before, and nothing was confirmed until even later that night.  Kate was doing cartwheels in the visitor center; really I was.  It was closed.  I closed it.

 

Friday dawned, the weather looked perfect, and except for some thick forest fire haze, the day couldn't have been more perfect.  I picked up the vehicle, a huge, monstrous thing that made me feel very small, hiking buddy got in passenger seat, and we were off to the west side.  Below is a map of our route.  The blue is the part we drove.  See that squiggle in the middle, those are the Sketchy Switchbacks of Scariness!  I'm not exaggerating them either.  I called in the back-up driver to handle these, although he protested, saying it would be amusing watching me attempt to navigate said SSoS.

We made it safely to the 'route' head, parked, prepared, and were off.  The day was lovely.  We only took two detours, but they were worth it.  Hooray for exploring new places, exciting adventures, and enjoying this beautiful place.

Following fairly close to the ridge line, the below was taken from the last saddle before heading up Lincoln.  If it looks rocky and craggy, it is.  If it looks like limestone that's easily eroded and therefore nice and loose, it is.  If Kate said she scampered up fast as a big horn sheep with no fear, she'd be lying.

Whoop!  On the top!  Took me a bit to decide what I wanted to do on the top of this peak.

We ate lunch on top and enjoyed the amazing view.  What a beautiful view of the Snake Range, looking north.  That's Wheeler in the smokey, hazy background. 

 

During lunch, hiking buddy became intrigued with the design inside his carrot stick.  He took seven pictures of said carrot guts with my camera.  Funny guy.

As always, the traditional contemplating the Snake Range.  The back of my t-shirt says "NPS" in big, white, block letters.  I am so proud to wear that uniform and love being a park ranger, can you tell?

The Snake Range.  From the south looking north, it's easy to see just how much taller Wheeler is than the surrounding peaks. 

The hiking buddy, route finder, willing photographer, pinch driver, and fellow adventurer, Mr. J.

Glorious day + great hike + new type of adventure + new peak + good company = very content park ranger.

Mt. Washington Success!

If you refer back to August and my attempt at Mt. Washington post, I mention a road.  I've been hounding our law enforcement division to take me with the next time they went up there and it overlapped with a project or rove day for me.  It finally happened, thanks mostly in part to dear Anthony.

 

The peak in the picture was our goal.  I've heard rumors, horror stories, tales of individuals screaming the whole way up this road.  It was quite the road.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but was very glad Anthony was driving.

The whole of Nevada is covered with abandoned mines and ghost towns.  On the west side, where the road is, we stopped briefly to look at this site.  Don't worry, I didn't go in, but it was pretty awesome to gaze into.

We made it safely, thanks to Anthony's skill at handling switchbacks with hairpin turn and 45 degree slopes, pretty much to the top of the mountain.  I honestly don't know if I can count it as hiking, since from where we parked, it took all of fifteen minutes to summit the peak.  Hooray for a new peak in the park!

Hello again, Wheeler.  This time standing to the south of the peak and looking north, at 11,658ft elevation on Washington.  And hello Pyramid (far right); I've summited you too!

Had to do something, so I stood on my head.  It's the best way to get the blood in it at such a high elevation.  And, notice the attempt at pointed toes in park ranger boots.

Because of the geology of the region and the fact that the park lies in the eastern portion of the Great Basin of the US, our east slopes are nice and gentle and the west slopes are steep.  Here I am investigating just how steep that west slope is.  Eek!

The bristlecones were all over!  They are such impressive trees.  Look at this guy, growing right out of the rock!  See that peak on the ridge line to the left, that's Lincoln and a goal before I leave.

Another abandoned mine site.  This was a pit that I'm assuming had some sort of shelter over it.  The shelter collapsed and plugged the hole. 

A bristlcone in the foreground, craggy mountains in the back, and an absolutely beautiful stand of aspens showing off their fall colors.  It was a hazy day, so sorry not the best clarity on the aspens.

I survived the road.  I didn't scream, I didn't gasp, but coming down the switch backs I definitely maintained a death grip on my seat belt.  After the almost 1.5 inches of rain we got in two days earlier this week (yeah, welcome to the desert), we had the best weather you could ask for.  As I gain more confidence as a hiker, I wish I had another two months of summer to explore this wonderful park.

Labor Day Weekend

I was off on Labor Day itself.  When you work for a place that is open every day of the year and you can work every day of the year...it's a rare occurrence to have holidays off.  (I had to work Sunday, so I definitely got my holiday pay!)

Two co-workers, Katie (interp) and Chris (law enforcement), and I decided it was high time to summit Wheeler for the season.  We started bright and early Monday morning and had a grand hike.

When we hit the saddle between Wheeler and Bald mountains, we could look into Spring Valley to the west.  There is a brand new (less than six months) wind farm that was just installed.  I know it's better than a coal plant, but doesn't do a whole lot for the view shed.  I'm a ranger, the view is a resource and I've vowed to protect all park resources.

We made it to the top in about 2.5 hours; same time as last year.  We had the whole summit to ourselves.  The view was grand, the weather perfect, the company lovely... what more could a girl ask for?

When we hit the saddle coming down, Katie and Chris headed back to the trail head, and I headed off trail and up Bald Mountain.  I made better time than I thought.  There are some really cool weather monitoring stations up there; this is the modern station.

This is the archaic station.  It was beyond windy on Bald and I hunkered down on the east side of this pile of rocks to eat my lunch.

Hello Wheeler and Jeff Davis, from roughly (no, not really) the same elevation!

Me, on Bald, elevation 11,562 ft, looking to Wheeler, elevation 13,063ft, where I was earlier that day.  Awesome!

I had the following Tuesday off of work as well.  After some serious outdoor spiritual rejuvenation, I headed to Manti, Utah, for some indoor spiritual rejuvenation.  Just as lovely.

It was a grand weekend.  Two weeks ago I officially finished hiking all the trails in the park.  I'm now moving on to the routes.  I have exactly one month from today to finish, as my season out here ends on Oct. 6.  Bring on winter....

Especially since I have a job at Death Valley National Park!