Out of Baker, Nevada: Ancient Bristlecones and Mount Moriah

 Searching for Prometheus, chasing sunset's light, and finding peace in the remote Great Basin Snake Range.

Stella Lake at sunset under Wheeler Peak (right) and Doso Doyabi (left).
 Great Basin National Park

Trip Stats
Location:  Snake Range - Great Basin National Park - Eastern Nevada
Date visited:  Sept.  8-11, 2024.
​Photo advice:  Stella Lake is great for sunset shots, as Wheeler Peak and Doso Doyabi are bathed in orange light that reflects into the lake; late afternoon/early evening light was good at the bristlecone pine grove.
Links:  Stargazer Inn and Bristlecone General Store       Great Basin NP
Directions to Mount Moriah Big Canyon Trailhead - Willhite Web.com  (trail map at end of this post).
Mount Moriah Big Canyon Trailhead:   39.301432   -114.211424
Hike to Wheeler Bristlecone Grove:  2.8 miles total out and back from the end of Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive at Wheeler Peak Campground.
Fun Fact:  The Prometheus tree, a Great Basin Bristlecone pine, once recorded as the oldest tree in the world (4700-5000 years old) is located in the Wheeler Bristlecone Grove in Great Basin National Park.
Quote:
"Now he walks in quiet solitude, the forest and the streams
Seeking grace in every step he takes
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake."
          - John Denver, from his song Rocky Mountain High

Related Posts

North Schell Peak, 11,883'

Wheeler Peak, 13,063'

Sunflower Mountain

Wheeler Peak Bristlecone Grove

FUN-ky Baker

​Baker may be a small, dusty town out in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, with only one gas station and one school (elementary), but it's a significant "home base" for exploration.   Just west of the Utah border, the curious and intrepid adventurer can spend a few days in nearby (only 5 miles away) Great Basin National Park hiking to Earth's oldest trees (bristlecone pines), hike to Nevada's second-highest (13,065') summit of Wheeler Peak, visit the Lehman Caves with its impressive array of stalactites and stalagmites, or hike to Nevada's only glacier.

Fred and I met up with friend and photographer Mike Shedlock (Mish) to photograph Stella Lake and the Wheeler Peak Bristlecone Grove at evening/sunset. We have gone on some photography expeditions, including Golden Cathedral in Escalante National Monument.  One night we had mediocre light/cloud conditions at Stella Lake, however when we returned two nights later after a storm, we had perfect clouds for photographing, so we caught the magic moment when two peaks were illuminated with orange and then red light, right before the light was lost.  I'm grateful I have met Mish through this website, as I have learned from his photography techniques.  Check out his image of the Ward Charcoal Ovens below.

Baker, just off of "The Loneliest Road in America."

Mount Moriah
Other adventures in Baker's backyard include summiting Mount Moriah, in the northern Snake Range, north of Great Basin National Park. This summit includes "the table" reached just below, a worthy destination all its own.  Our plan to summit this mountain failed when we parked too far away from Big Canyon Trailhead, the highest on Moriah's western side, after a very slow (5 mph) drive up a grueling and long rocky access road, doubling our planned hiking distance.  We didn't have it in us to do it this time.  Instead, we made it to a 10,000-foot summit nearby with a register in a glass jar and some bristlecone pines.  Mount Moriah will have to be a "grudge" peak for now.  We will probably access it from an eastern trailhead.  (Trail map to summit at end of this post).

Bristlecones! ♡ is an entry in the register that prompted me to explore more of this ridgeline, and indeed I did find some bristleccone pines a few hundred yards away, sadly dead or nearly dead.  I can't help but wonder what these stalwart trees witnessed over the possibly hundreds and maybe even thousands of years of their lives.

Dog Spring Guard Station

Mount Moriah, 12,072'

Peak register at 10,025'

Hike toward Mount Moriah from NF Road 469.

Bristlecone pine or Limber pine?  I think bristlecone.  Near Mount Moriah Wilderness at 10,000 feet.

From the truck:  driving back down to Spring Valley, looking at the Schell Creek Range on the other side.
Nevada, the heart of the Great Basin, is significant for its many parallel mountain ranges as a result of extension of the Earth's crust.  Note the sun shining on the light-colored silt and clay playa, an ancient lake filled during Pleistocene times.

Ward Charcoal Ovens
The Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park near Ely and to the northwest of Baker features an essential process of remote silver ore mining in the American West.  It's a popular place to do night photography.  Located in the Egan Range, these ovens, or kilns, were used in the late 1800's to make charcoal, an efficient fuel used in smelters to extract the minerals from silver ore.  Normal supply lines couldn't reach these remote areas, so the kilns burned local trees to make the charcoal.  The image below was made by Mish.

Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park.
photo by Mish  (Mike Shedlock) - mishmoments.com
Comment from Mish:
“I used small, thin, Lume Cubes to light the inside of the kilns. The Milky Way was taken separately at Great Basin but is in the correct spot.  The kilns are a panoramic blend of 8 overlapping images with only 4 of 6 kilns used in the final composite.”
“I like blue hour blends. That is the hour after sunset or the hour before sunrise. Working with multiple sets of images improves the ability to capture details and reduce noise. There is a period of about 20 minutes in the middle of the blue hour where ambient light and light from Lume Cubes roughly match intensity. The resultant image is a whopping 656 megabytes.”​

 

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​Wheeler Peak Bristlecone Grove:  Prometheus - the oldest tree on Earth
Fred and I searched for Prometheus, the oldest-known non-clonal organism on Earth, estimated to be 4,900 years old when it was cut down by a researcher in 1964.  It's in the Wheeler Peak Bristlecone Grove, but we didn't find the stump.  Its scientific name - Pinus longaeva - literally means "ancient aged."

Bristlecones flourish where many species cannot, in limestone rocks and soil; this reduces their chance of burning by forest fire.
The Wheeler Peak grove is unusual in that it grows in quartzite boulders on a glacial moraine.   The top of Wheeler Peak is quartzite, a metamorphic sandstone.
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Prometheus, in Greek mythology means "forethought";  he was a god of fire.  Actually, myth has it that Prometheus stole fire from gods and gave it to humans to advance civilization.

​The bristlecone's dramatic, jagged and twisted appearance reflects its endurance in harsh conditions.  High winds twist them, cold temperatures contribute to slow tree ring growth, creating a protective, dense wood that resists insects and rot.

These majestic trees have been around during the fall of civilizations and the creation of America, survived through catastrophic volcanism.

Two other bristlecone groves in Great Basin State Park are the Mount Washington and Eagle Peak groves.

Our Photo Expedition
The challenge Mish and I had on this day was to find the right light conditions for photographing these bristlecones and then make sure we got to Stella Lake in time for optimal sunset shots.  Lucky for us, the wind blew away smoke from wildfires, storm clouds came in to reveal perfect illumination for photography.  

After photographing the bristlecones in late afternoon, we took the long way to Stella Lake afterwards risking missing optimal sunset light on the lake.  We realized afterward that there's a quicker way to get to Stella Lake from Teresa Lake, next to the bristlecone grove.  We set up our tripods and began shooting just in time as the light grew more and more intense on Wheeler and Doso Doyabi and in the lake's reflection.  The clouds were perfect!

One of the extraordinary things about photographing nature is the few magic seconds when you capture a scene not usually witnessed by humans.  The fast-changing light of a sunset makes you realize how quickly time passes.  Mountains stay the same for eons and a bristlecone pine would barely change during our lifetimes, but light can change quickly.  After all, it's the various degrees of light we are capturing with our cameras, as "photograph" means "writing with light."

Bristlecones from Wheeler Peak Grove and Forest Road 469 en route to Mount Moriah's Big Canyon Trailhead.

Identifying features of a bristlecone pine:  one-inch-long needles in packets of five that grow in tufts, and cones with scales that are tipped with a claw-like bristle.

Bristlecones under Wheeler Peak

Stella Lake with Doso Doyabi illuminated above.
The name comes from Shoshone language meaning "white peak."

 

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FUN-ky Baker

Horseshoes, anyone?

Little Free Library and Little Free Pantry (microwave)

Iconic Baker: bristlecone, starry skies and Wheeler Peak

Baker Community Church

Baker, Nevada scenes on a very smoky day due to distant wildfires.  The smoke actually made good lighting conditions for photography but bad conditions for breathing!

"Museum of the Future Coming Soon" on an old cabin with photos below:  something to look forward to ;)

Abandoned cabin in "downtown" Baker.

Topo map of hike (yellow) from Big Canyon Trailhead to Mount Moriah summit.

References
Britannica Website - "Prometheus."
​National Park Service - Great Basin National Park - Bristlecone Pines