2/4 – 2/6/23
The Great Basin – the vast desert, centered on Nevada, from which no water escapes to the sea – is perhaps the most desolate part of the entire American West. With the exceptions of scattered mining towns and the Reno metro, the Basin is a basically unsettled and seemingly unending series of barren mountains and desolate valleys. I was drawn to this unprepossessing region by two motives. First – since I rather like barren mountains and desolate valleys, at least in moderation – I wanted to see the wilderness in its winter dress. Second, since I was planning a video on Clarence King’s Fortieth Parallel Expedition, I needed footage of the Basin and its towns. And so…
2-4
From Zion, I continued west into the emptiness of the Great Basin: windrows of broken hills, sagebrush-dotted valleys between, and only the black ribbon of the road interrupting the snowdrifts and the sun-bleached stone.
At the Nevada border, I pulled onto a gravel drive to take a picture of a distant mountain range. As I emerged from the car, the door of an adjacent mobile home flew open, and an old woman stepped out to peer at me. “You’re lost!” she declared. When I explained that I was just stopping for a photo, she turned to shouting at her enormous dog, which was barking furiously in my direction.
A short distance west, after a brief visit to Great Basin National Park – located on the shoulders of Wheeler Peak, Nevada’s tallest mountain – I scrambled through the snow to a small pavilion housing a ranching history exhibit. From here, I launched my drone, taking sweeping shots of the desert and mountains for my Fortieth Parallel video.
An hour’s drive through howling wilderness brought me to Ely, Nevada, my stop for the night. After spending a fruitless half-hour in search of a broad-brimmed hat (I forgot mine at home, and had been extravagantly sunburned in Utah), I moseyed over to the railroad museum, where a century-old steam engine was puffing away heroically. Post-dinner (the “miner’s special” at Ely’s only pizza joint), I retired to my motel, an appendage of the Jailhouse Casino.
2-5
Around 2 AM, I was woken by the piercing shriek of a firm alarm. I waited in bed for a moment, hoping it would stop. When it didn’t, I pulled on my shoes and coat and walked out to the snowy parking lot, where a few other motel patrons were standing and stamping their feet. The casino manager ventured across the street, but couldn’t stop the alarm. One policeman arrived, then another and another. Their efforts were also in vain. After about 20 minutes, a fire truck showed up. But it took a full half-hour and the entire emergency services of Ely engaged to stop the alarm. An hour later, just as I was drifting off to sleep, the alarm started again. With a string of unprintable words, I packed my bag, slapped my key on the casino desk, and drove off into the night.
Ely sits on the eastern end of the “Loneliest Road in America” – a 400-mile stretch of US-50 with few towns, fewer services, and no street lights to speak of. For the first half-hour or so, a full moon lit my way. But as I continued west, a line of clouds appeared on the horizon. For a few minutes, the moon was suspended in a silvered amphitheater. Then it was swallowed by the advancing storm.
A few innocuous flakes drifted through my headlights. Then dozens, then hundreds, then a blinding curtain of snow that covered the road, leaving only the reflector poles to mark the way. Around 6, unable to see, I pulled into a deserted mining camp to wait for the dawn. As snow dashed against the windshield and drifted over the hood, I tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep.
Finally, as blue twilight crept over the desert, I could wait no longer. Snow was still falling heavily, driven by a wind that whipped headlight-defying clouds over the road. I crept forward, eyes straining, knuckles white. When I reached finally reached Eureka, I stopped at a gas station to scrape away the snow plastered to the Subaru’s rear and sides.
About 15 minutes past Eureka, the snow stopped. The sky cleared, and what had been one of the most harrowing drives in my experience became one of the most beautiful. In splendid isolation – over three hours, I saw only four other vehicles – I rumbled over the snow-covered road through shimmering panoramas of mountains and desert.
I encountered the first plow just outside the old mining town of Austin, where the only signs of life were a few bobcat tractors clearing snow. Most of the town’s buildings are relics of the mid-nineteenth century, when Austin was the center of a silver rush. The silver is long gone, as are all but a hundred or so of the inhabitants. But the little brick churches and storefronts remain, and I spent a pleasant half-hour walking up and down the steep streets, taking footage for my video.
Just outside Austin, I followed a winding unplowed drive up to Stokes Castle, a ruinous stone tower built at the turn of the twentieth century as the summer home of a wealthy eastern family. Noticing that the castle commanded a spectacular panorama over the surrounding desert, I brought the drone out and took a few tracking shots, the last of which nearly ended in the branches of a large cedar.
A hundred miles or so west of Austin, I turned onto a dirt road to view a series of earthquake faults near Fairview Peak. Although the road became impassable after a couple miles, I relished the view from the ridgetop where I stopped. I soon had a hard time appreciating that view from inside the Subaru, however, thanks to an extravagant coating of mud.
As I approached the mining boomtown of Virginia City, clouds overtook the sky again, and a steady snow began to fall. Parking on the main street, I pulled on my boots and emerged into the blizzard. In summer, Virginia City is the worst kind of tourist trap. But under snow, with the streets all but deserted, it was a peaceful place.
It was still snowing in Carson City, Nevada’s unprepossessing state capital (there are several large casinos on the block next to the capitol building; I guess legislators want to win big too). I was the only visitor in the Nevada state museum, originally the fabled – among American coin collectors – Carson City mint. I became oddly engrossed in the mineral exhibit, and spent more than an hour peering at rocks.
Although there was a storm raging over Lake Tahoe, the sky was clear over Reno, where I had reserved a room at the Circus Circus casino. My room turned out to be on the 21st floor of the tower farthest from the parking garage, leaving me regretting my wheelless duffel bag. I had been looking forward all day to the buffet at the El Dorado Casino; but at the reception I learned that the buffet had fallen victim to the pandemic. Crestfallen, I slunk into a brewery and consoled myself with barbeque.
2-6
After walking the quarter-mile from my room to the casino reception, I fought my way through the morning rush to Pyramid Lake, located on a reservation about an hour north of Reno. Despite a cold wind, I extracted the drone from its case and flew it low – in one case, nearly too low – over the whitecaps for some dramatic video footage.
Then, off to California. Since I-80 was still a mess after yesterday’s snow, I followed a two-lane highway over the Sierras. Initially, beyond lending itself to the hair-raising sport of passing semis around blind curves, the road had little to recommend it. But past Susanville, where ten-foot banks reared up on either side and the pines were heavy with fresh snow, it became a pleasant mountain drive.
Along the way, I stopped at Lassen Volcanic National Park. Although most of the trails and facilities are closed in winter, the entrance area is kept plowed. And so – after a long conversation on organic farming with the only other person in the parking lot – I struck out through the woods, walking on top (and sometimes plunging into) five feet of snow.
There was no real trail, so I wandered along a beautiful babbling brook, snow piled high on every stone. In the distance, mountains frowned over frosted trees.
Returning to the Subaru, I plunged down the western slope of the Sierras, the temperature rising 30 degrees by the time I reached the floor of the Central Valley. To celebrate the springlike weather (and obliterate at least the top layer of encrusted salt and mud), I stopped at the irresistibly named SasqWash car wash in Redding. Then I continued, over endless wooded ridges, toward the Pacific coast.