Alpine
My favorite moments so far are small moments, little interactions with other travelers I chat with in a parking lot (usually curious about this monster van) or on a trail. Not because we talk about anything particularly interesting, but it’s just nice to have fleeting, momentary connections with other people after spending so much time in solitude and inside my own head.
This was most common at Great Basin National Park, where I camped on Wheeler Peak (~9800 ft) to hike up to an ancient grove of Bristlecone pine trees that I have wanted to visit for 25 years. Great Basin N.P. is an arid “mountain island” in the middle of a vast desert. These Bristlecone trees live thousands of years, and the oldest known tree, called the Methusalah tree, is over 4,700 years old. The trees I visited were around 3,000 years old, and are found just below the tree line at around 10,600 feet. They survive incredibly harsh conditions, and those conditions form the trees into twisted, gnarled shapes.
After my hike to the Bristlecone grove, the next day I hiked to Teresa Lake nearby, one of a few tarn lakes in the region that collect snow melt and occasional summer rains. By the time of my early October visit, Teresa Lake was nearly dry.
