The Great Basin National Park, which covers most of Nevada's South Snake Range on a line midway between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, is so remote that its night skies are among the darkest in the country. It boasts one of only a handful of bristlecone pines - which, sometimes reaching an age of 5,000 years, are the oldest trees on earth. The park is also full of ponderosa pines and pinyon-junipers and Douglas firs. It's full of mining history, with an 18-mile-long channel built by gold miners in the 1880's, and the historic mining structures of the Johnson Lake mine area. And it has the southernmost permanent glacier in the country.
For a beginning hiker - for anyone who wants a gorgeous stroll at 11,000 feet - there's no more exquisite walk than along Great Basin's 2.7 mile Alpine Lakes Loop Trail. This trail's climbing elevations are mild. Its views are spectacular. Its flora and fauna will take your breath away: Engelmann spruce and limber pines; butterflies; wildflowers spreading as far as the eye can see - from Parry's primrose, penstemon, and phlox, to Jeffrey's shooting star, crimson columbine, and mountain bluebells. In autumn you might see Townsend's, hermit, or orange-crowned warblers.
Beginning at the park's Bristlecone Parking Area, near the Wheeler Peak Campground, you'll cross a footbridge, take the Alpine Loop counter-clockwise, and cross a creek. The trail passes two splendid alpine lakes, or tarns, that freeze solid in winter. The first of these, Stella Lake, has gorgeous views of Wheeler Peak - at 13,161 feet, the highest mountain in New Mexico - and Jeff Davis Peak. It also has a grove of aspens growing on its western bank, where you might look for dendroglyphs - the art carved into the region's aspens by nineteenth-century Basque sheepherders.
After leaving Stella, the Alpine Lakes rail slopes down to Teresa Lake, which is filled by a spring-fed stream that is banked by emerald green grass.
Shortly after Teresa Lake the path forks - on the left-hand, to complete the Loop Trail, on the right-hand to a spur that will take you up another mile, and 600 feet, to a half-mile loop where you can see the magnificent ancient bristlecones and the Wheeler Peak Glacier. Though the added 3.2 mile round trip to see these natural wonders will more than double the distance of the Alpine Lakes Loop Trail, it would be well worth the effort for those who can handle it.
