Wheeler Peak at Last!

In which Moominmama finally gets up to Nevada's highest mountain and its bristlecone pine grove on the third try...

Wheeler Peak has been elusive, with Moominmama having failed twice in prior years to get to the rare bristlecone pine grove on its slopes. The mountain, highest in Nevada at just over 13,000 feet, has the rocky limestone slopes -- cold, dry and windswept -- where these ancient trees grow so slowly that the wood is unimaginably dense and insect resistant.

The tree pictured here is 3,200 years old, with a birthdate estimated at 1230 BCE. You may think it's dead but if you look on the left-hand side, you'll see a green branch that remains living and growing. Narrow strips of live bark, full of resin, run from root to branch and keep that limb alive even as other parts of the tree have died.

In contrast, Moominmama found a young bristlecone; it was about shoulder height to me and not yet twisted with age. According to a park ranger, it was about 100 years old.

But even after the trees die, they can remain standing for hundreds if not thousands of years, and the grain of the wood is a work of art.

Moominmama finds these trees fascinating, and it boggles her mind how old they are and how they've evolved to survive in extreme temperatures with dry and nutrient-poor soils. 

Plants that thrive in unlikely environments often have a rare beauty, not unlike the cactus flower. 

While I did not attempt the summit of Wheeler Peak (the right-hand peak in the photo), I did continue on past the pine grove on the "Glacier trail" to the rocky cirque pictured above. 

If you really squint at the far wall, there's a tiny bit of white glacier remaining but mostly this cirque is a demonstration of how an enormous glacier can carve out a rocky bowl from sheer cliffs and then vanish.

Already, life is seeding this hostile terrain. Again, if you look closely, you can see a rare strip of green on the left side and an isolated limber pine on the right.

As Moominmama explored near the patch of low-growing evergreens, she found plants that looked like tiny ferns nestled between the rocks, and this small yellow flower.

Life is tenacious, and Moominmama finds hope in that. Whatever we do to the planet, something is likely to survive and survive beautifully.

Fall is here, and normally I would miss the glorious leaf season back east. But Wheeler Peak rises above the desert floor high enough that aspens grow. In the fall, their leaves turn a bright yellow, and sometimes include touches of red, as seen here on the drive down the mountain.

Besides Wheeler Peak, Moominmama also did some hiking in the Nevada desert, including to a set of six stone beehive-shaped charcoal ovens built in 1876 near Ely.

The land is barren of old-growth trees in large part because they were all cut down and stacked in these beehive ovens to burn down into charcoal for use in ore smelters. It took only three years to burn up all the area trees, conveniently coinciding with the waning of silver mining in the area.

But the ovens were so well built that they stand 150 years later -- and at one time allegedly provided shelter for stagecoach bandits!

Moominmama has enjoyed her time in eastern Nevada, which is a surprisingly diverse state and full of mountains. Fall has turned out to be the perfect time to visit. 

As I write now, I'm in the middle of Utah, also in a mountainous area but camping next to a rushing creek. 

My next stop will be to see some rare Barrier Canyon-style petroglyphs in Canyonlands National Park. So expect more desert scenery as I work my way back to Grand Junction, where I'll trade my trailer for an epic train ride across the Rockies to Chicago and from there to Rochester, NY! 

More to come, but I leave you with a desert sunrise taken from a recent campsite.