There is a relatively small number of living things in this world that have watched as civilizations have grown, prospered and fallen around them, and they all seem to be trees. A collection of these ancient organisms known as bristlecone pines grows at the tree line on Nevada’s highest peak now protected as Great Basin National Park.
After exploring the even more ancient Lehman Caves, a visit to these ancestral trees should be on the list for anyone visiting the Snake Range. Growing at such a high elevation would generally mean they wouldn’t be accessible to most people, but when you drive up to the trail head at 10,000 feet the hike to the Bristlecone Grove isn’t bad at all unless you’re susceptible to altitude sickness.
The trail leads through a beautiful forest of pines, spruces and aspens with streams crisscrossing every direction down from the alpine lakes fed by glacier runoff. These streams cross the trail at several points, trickle through tree trunks and splash over rocks. There is music to their dance down the hill where they eventually meet up with larger creeks heading into the valley below.
Parts of the trail cross rocky fields as you near the grove where the less hardy trees start to thin out. At this point an occasional limber pine or bristlecone pops up in the mix with their gnarled trunks and twisted branches. Finally, in the shadow of the beautiful peak and other rocky gods above, you find the grove of trees that began their lives thousands of years ago.
Interpretive signs shed light on these magnificent plants on this short loop trail meandering through the grove. They share ages of trees, information about why they grow where they grow, how their age is determined and more. The oldest living tree with age listed is more than 3,300 years old though the park says there are trees as old as 5,000 years on these slopes.
Had I been alone or with someone able to keep going (not two years old), I would have continued up the trail after the grove to Nevada’s only glacier, but that adventure will have to wait for now. On the way down, I did take a jaunt down a side trail to Teresa Lake, one of the glacier-fed alpine lakes off this trail. This lake is the source of many of the runoff streams racing down the mountain over the trail.
Once back at the trailhead, I took a quick tour around a short interpretive trail—Sky Islands Forest Trail. It is less than half a mile long and fully accessible. This trail shares the story of these mountains acting as isolated ecosystems in the Great Basin Desert. Due to this isolation, unique species have adapted to the habitat.
My trips into the cave and hike up to the bristlecones was a great introduction to Great Basin National Park. There are more trails I’d like to hike if I ever return to the island in the desert, and I’d definitely join another group inside the caves. A trip to Great Basin seems like a destination trip, but we used it as a pit stop on the way from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. It didn’t add much time to the trip other than the time spent enjoying the park. I highly recommend a visit to Great Basin National Park.
