Great Basin

Jacqueline and I finally got a weekend off together, so I wanted to take her off on a trip. She was excited and so after we were off of work, we packed our stuff into the truck to head up to Great Basin National Park. We solved the previous trips problem of Jacqueline getting to choose whatever music that she wanted by using the Ipod and putting both of our music on it. That made the drive much smoother as we had to do most of it in the night. We almost gave up on our way to the park and camped outside of the park along the road. Jacqueline did not like that idea, so we had to turn around and head on our way to the park into the wee hours of the night. On the way, we ran over an incredibly large snake in the middle of the road. I felt rather bad about it, but that was how desolate this area was that we were able to cream a huge snake. We probably saw a total of 2 cars in a time period of about two hours once we left the small town of Milford, Utah.
We finally made it into the park and pulled up to the information sign. We were looking for close campgrounds. Almost immediately, a car stopped. It was the woman who gave the evening program that night. She asked us if we needed any help. We got some campground information from her and thought it particularly strange that someone would be that kind. It gave me a good feeling for Great Basin National Park. When we were preparing to leave, we ran into a beautiful, big insect. It was a Jerusalem cricket. The thing was monsterous. We were definitely impressed.
We found ourselves a campground and reluctantly paid the fee to camp there. Then we were off to bed. We awoke to the bright sunshine beaming through the shadeless campsite we foolishly chose in the middle of the night. After an enticing breakfast of top ramen, pop tarts, and bananas, we were off to the visitor center. We wanted to do the Lehman Caves tour, but since that was definitely the most popular thing to do at Great Basin, we decided to bail on that for the day when the wait seemed way too long. We went ahead and purchased our tickets for the next day and headed up to the higher country in the park.
We wanted to find ourselves a much better campsite for this evening. The highest elevation campground was Wheeler Peak. We drove around and we thought that we might possibly strike out given that it was a weekend night. Luckily, we found a nice site right by the creek. We dropped a few beers in the creek to cool them off and got our things together for a trip up to the glacier.
I was in Great Basin in 1998. On that trip we hiked to the glacier, went to the caves, and climbed Wheeler Peak. Of the three of those I wanted to do with my new beautiful girlfriend, I figured the glacier hike would definitely be the most appealing. Jacqueline really loved it. There were a couple of lakes along
the way. There was a forest full of Bristlecone pines which are some of the oldest trees in the world. At the end of the hike, there was the glacier with all of the boulders and the little bit of snow. Mostly what we were enjoying the most was each other's company. That did not stop when we made it back to our camp with the cold beers waiting for us in the creek. We had a fun evening with camp stove dinner and scabble to keep our enjoyment high.
The next day we had the fun of going to the cave. Waking up, we had to force ourselves to meet the deadline that we scheduled the day before. We got ourselves down there for the cave tour. Jacqueline was a little grumpy, so the cave tour was not as fun as it could have been. Still the formations were interesting, but our cave tour guide acted like he possibly did this tour a few too many times during the summer.
We decided to spend the rest of the day taking a longer hike. We hit the Baker Lake trailhead. It was sad to admit it, but Jacqueline kicked my butt up the trail. She was definitely in the mood to hike fast, while I was loafing along. It was so nice to be around some green. We had been in the desert for so long that the plants, trees, and streams really made us happy to be in Great Basin. The lake was beautiful even though it took a lot longer to get there than I originally thought that it would. Jacqueline made fun of me because for about two miles, I thought that the end was near. We spent some time at the lake skipping rocks and I wondered if we possibly could scramble up Pyramid Peak that rose above the lake. We headed back down for another night of camp food, river chilled beer, and scabble. The night before the big fire that the group next to us had seemed so appealing, but on this night the rain came pouring down. They were stuck in their tent, but we had built in shelter in the back of my truck to keep the scrabble game going. The next day we reluctantly returned to our jobs and life in Zion longing for a return to Great Basin.

Birch Hollow

Brad invited me to do a canyon with him, so we chose Birch Hollow. Birch Hollow is outside the park and it drains into Orderville. I was excited because I had been through neither Orderville or Birch Hollow. This would make it a fun trip for me. I met Brad at the dorms and Sharon drove us up to the trailhead. The first bit was rather brushy and just a hike until we came to the first rappel. It was a free hanging rap of about sixty feet or so. I went down first on my brand new rope. It went fast. I could smell my hands and the rope burning as I went down. Brad used the technique of putting his pack in-between his legs. I never used that one before, but I heard that it is helpful. We continued down the canyon. There were ten rappels in total. We did them pretty quick and the last five were really sweet. They were fluted rappels, which I would not know what that meant without seeing them. Basically the sandstone is fluted making for some interesting aspects to negotiate. The longest was near one hundred feet, but it was so straight forward it was not much of a big deal. Soon Brad was finishing the last rappel, and we were out of the canyon.
The adventure was not over with that, though. As soon as we were done with Birch Hollow, we finished through Orderville. There were two rappels in Orderville and we did the first one rather quickly after popping out of Birch Hollow. Then it was a long, dry hike until we made it to the spring to fill up some water. We ate some lunch, but the weather was not looking good. Orderville had some sweet narrows, but I did not stop to get any pictures because it started raining on us as soon as we left from lunch. The weather made it scary considering the fact that we were in a slot canyon. It also made things slippery and awkward, especially since Orderville has a series of 10-12 foot downclimbs. We hustled our way out and soon enough we were in the Narrows. We finished the last 2.5 miles to the shuttle bus as quick as possible also as the rain continued to fall. All and all, the canyon trip was great and Brad and I completed it in only 6 hours. That was rather quick and I would definitely be happy to do another canyon with Brad.