Great Basin National Park: Alpine Lakes, Backroads & Cloudy Skies
Days two and three….
📍 Great Basin National Park
🚙 120 miles
📈 Elevation Change: 8,263 feet
Favorite moment: The Alpine Lakes hike!
September 9th started with packing up camp at Cathedral Gorge State Park and getting back on the road. The next stop on my eight-day camping trip was Great Basin National Park, where I would spend the next two days exploring. Great Basin ended up being one of those places where the driving was almost as much a part of the adventure as the hiking.
A Campsite All to Myself
My campsite at Great Basin was definitely unique. It felt tucked away from everything, with far more privacy than I expected. After spending the day exploring, it was nice to come back to a campsite that felt like my own little corner of the park.
There’s something I really enjoy about camping this way. You’re close enough to everything you came to see, but at the end of the day, you can settle in, make dinner and enjoy the quiet.
Two Lakes in Three Miles
One of the highlights of my time at Great Basin was hiking the Alpine Lakes Loop.
At around three miles, it was a relatively short hike, but it packed a lot into those miles. The trail passes both Stella Lake and Teresa Lake, two beautiful alpine lakes surrounded by mountains, trees and wide-open scenery.
Each lake had its own feel, and naturally, there were plenty of reasons to stop along the way with my camera.
For such a short hike, the Alpine Lakes Loop delivered exactly what I was hoping for—mountain scenery, beautiful water and a chance to spend a few hours outside without needing an all-day trek.
And Then There Were the Drives
I can’t talk about Great Basin without talking about the drives.
One of the places I wanted to explore was Snake Creek. Before heading out, I had read the description of the road, and it definitely made the drive sound a little intimidating.
The road narrows to one lane part-way up, with blind corners and some pretty significant drop-offs, so it’s definitely a section where you want to take your time and pay attention to what might be coming around the next corner. There was also some washboarding along the way.
But overall, the drive was much easier than I had expected.
It was one of those roads that sounds much worse when you read about it than it feels once you’re actually driving it. I took my time, enjoyed the scenery and kept going farther into the Snake Creek area.
Of course, there was one unavoidable consequence of all that dirt road driving.
My truck was sooo dusty by the time I got back to the campsite. There was nothing that wasn’t covered in dust; not even stuff in the covered bed of the truck!
It had that unmistakable I have been driving around in the middle of nowhere all day look—which, to be fair, was completely accurate.
Above 10,000 Feet
Another memorable drive was Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive.
The road climbs high into the mountains, eventually taking you above 10,000 feet. I drove up partly to explore, but also with photography in mind. I wanted to scout potential locations for the Milky Way and see what kind of foregrounds and open views I could find for later that night.
The higher I climbed, the more the landscape changed. The desert scenery below gave way to mountain views, forests and cooler air. It was hard to believe that I was still in the same national park.
I stopped along the way to look at possible compositions and imagine what they might look like beneath a sky full of stars.
I had some ideas.
Now I just needed the sky to cooperate.
Chasing the Milky Way…Again
Unfortunately, it didn't.
Clouds moved in and spoiled my plans for photographing the Milky Way. After spending time scouting locations during the day, it was disappointing not to get the clear night I had hoped for.
But that’s one of the realities of night-sky photography. You can plan the location, figure out where the Milky Way will be, pack all the gear and find the composition you want—but you still don’t get to control the clouds.
So the Milky Way would have to wait.
Two Days at Great Basin
Over two days, Great Basin gave me a little bit of everything I love about these trips: a quiet campsite, mountain roads, dusty backroads, alpine lakes, hiking, photography and plenty of exploring.
Not everything went according to plan, especially when it came to the night sky. But that’s also part of a road trip like this.
Sometimes you get the photograph you planned for.
Sometimes you get a truck covered in dust.
Either way, there’s always another road ahead.
Thanks for journeying with me!
~ Bridget
