Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Loneliest Road in America

This August I was getting a little cabin fever and so I set out to visit the only National Park in Nevada - Great Basin National Park. It also happens to be the smallest National Park (I think). The distance between Reno and Great Basin is around 400 miles and it is all on a two lane road called Highway 50 - the so called "Loneliest Road in America."

If there is a middle of nowhere, I definitely found it on this trip.

The Shoe Tree. You can read more about it here: http://blog.travelnevada.com/articles/highway-50s-shoe-tree-middlegate

Wheeler Peak. The 2nd tallest Mountain in Nevada.
The pint of the trip was to summit Wheeler Peak. It is over 13,000 feet tall and is the tallest mountain entirely within the state. (Boundary Peak is considered the tallest mountain in Nevada but half of it is in California).
The hike is around 10 miles round trip and you ascend over 3,000 feet going up.


The view right as I reached the summit. Incredible.


I signed my name in the summit log.


13,068 feet.






All in all, it was a great trip. Summiting Wheeler Peak was strenuous but well worth it. It is difficult to describe the feeling of accomplishment and relief when I reached the Peak and was the only one there. Simply incredible. This is a place I will visit again.