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A different desert pilgrimage

Highest peak in Nevada site of decades trek

Nevada’s Wheeler Peak seems an unlikely place for a pilgrimage. It rises 13,063 feet from the desert floor of Great Basin National Park. A solitary giant with an odd, three-part head, Wheeler Peak stands alone in the middle of nowhere.

The eastern shoulder’s ridges ripple along at 12,771 feet. In the center, a blunt outcropping shoots up like a belligerent thumb – its very name. And on the western shoulder, the peak itself flattens out. Wheeler is the highest mountain in Nevada.

The centerpiece of Great Basin National Park, Wheeler Peak can be seen for miles. Driving west on U.S. Highway 50, America’s famous lonely highway, or north on Utah Highway 21, the distances are so great the mountain looks like a faraway anthill. But when you arrive at its feet in tiny Baker, Nevada, elevation 5,317 feet with a population of 58, you sense real grandeur.

Named after Civil War veteran and explorer, Lt. George Wheeler, the mountain figures prominently in his 1869 geological survey of the Great Basin. It’s an enormous area that stretches from Utah’s Wasatch Mountains to California’s Sierra Nevada. Today, Great Basin National Park covers only a small portion of the Basin and Range Province with upwards of 75,000 acres and sediments deposited as far back as the Cambrian period, about 540 million years ago or so, according to various geologists including retired Fort Lewis College professor Rob Blair and confirmed in park literature.

So it’s an ancient place, a severe example of deep time in the middle of the Great Basin. It’s also one of the newest national parks, dedicated in August 1987.

Given its remote location and desert conditions, why would such a place become a destination for a pilgrimage, a long journey with moral or spiritual significance?

World-famous pilgrimage sites generally are more accessible: Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca or The Camino, the road to Santiago de Compostella. For more than 1,000 years, pilgrims and now modern travelers trek across northern Spain to the tomb of St. James. For their effort, believers used to receive one indulgence for the forgiveness of sins. Today, college kids, movie stars and retirees make the journey, one section at a time or the entire route in one season.

Closer to home, the Santuario de Chimayó in northern New Mexico witnesses an annual Good Friday pilgrimage. Chimayó is said to be America’s most famous destination for Roman Catholics in search of healing and redemption.

But people also make individual pilgrimages to unusual places. And so it was for me and Wheeler Peak. Earlier this month, I hiked up the summit trail to mark what would have been my late husband’s 80th birthday. David claimed it was his favorite mountain in the United States; his affection for it began when he turned 30, and we were concluding a Western camping trip. We drove through Nevada’s alternating desert valleys and mountain ranges long before the Great Basin became a national park.

Signs pointed to Wheeler Peak and since it was his birthday, we decided to camp, climb and celebrate.

Ten years later, we made a trip to see his favorite aunt in Phoenix and went out of our way to climb Wheeler again. When David turned 50, he had more vacation time than I and started annual Western trips ostensibly in search of a place to retire. He scheduled a Wheeler Peak climb to celebrate 50.

At 60, we traveled to Logan, Utah, to attend our son’s graduate school passage. If you know your geography, Logan is a long way from Baker, Nevada. But we made the trek and the climb again.

By 70, David and I had moved to Durango, and we plotted a combination trip to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, and you know where. It’s a mere 138 miles to Baker, so we celebrated another decade birthday with another summit trail hike.

Two years later, David died suddenly. On what would have been his 75th birthday, my now Los Angeles son and I made arrangements to meet in Nevada and hike up Wheeler Peak. Neither of us made it to the top, but it didn’t matter. We were there.

And now I’ve just returned from marking what would have been David’s 80th.

From Durango to Baker, it’s about a nine-hour drive. You can camp or stay overnight in one of two motels. In the morning, check in at the visitor center and drive 12 miles up a spectacular mountain road to the summit trailhead. The 4.3-mile trail starts at 10,000 feet and gains 2,900 feet in elevation.

It’s easy at first. An otherworldly aspen forest straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales meanders for about a mile with periodic views of the mountain. At the first meadow turnoff, you can walk to an alpine lake or take switchbacks up to treeline, some snowfields, and then it’s rocky, shifty quartzite scree the rest of the way.

I’ve never made it to the top – summiting anything holds little interest for me. At 12,000 feet or thereabouts, the views are spectacular and the wind brisk enough to warrant a jacket in July.

So on my last hike up Wheeler, I went as far as I deemed possible, knowing I had to return safely.

Wheeler Peak isn’t a religious shrine in any conventional sense. But there is something very satisfying about making a pilgrimage for oneself ... or for someone else.

jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, artist and critic.



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