Great Basin’s Mount Wheeler, the second tallest peak in the state (after Mount Charleston, which is just outside Vegas), used to be famous for having the only glacier in the continental U.S.
Well, not anymore.
The glacier is all but gone. When I asked a ranger to point it out to me, she said "oh, we don’t even call it a glacier now. It’s that little trickle of ice over there." Between the poor light (it was cloudy during my visit) and sad little "trickle," I didn’t even bother to take a photo.
The park was still beautiful, and the following morning I did a great hike at dawn through alpine meadow and aspen groves, some of which, alas, were being destroyed by what the rangers told me was a beetle infestation. They must be pretty big, violent beetles, because I thought it looked almost like the trees had been struck by lightning the way the bark was torn open (see photo).
That dawn hike, through the lovely and serene Pole Canyon in case you’re planning any trips of your own, was a good antidote to my run-in the previous afternoon with an RV guy. It was at the general store in nearby Baker, though I really think of it as more of a specific store, since it had an odd inventory that consisted mostly of 20 different kinds of beer and six different kinds of crackers.
While I was checking out, the guy in line behind me struck up a conversation with the woman at the register, complaining about how cold it had been camping the night before.
"Are you in a tent?" she asked.
"What? Hell, no! You gotta be stupid to be camping in a tent! I got me a nice RV. I kept the motor runnin’ and the heat cranked all night."
The woman turned to me as she handed me my change and asked what kind of camper I had.
"I’m in a tent," I said, and walked out before I gave in to my more base desires and smacked RV man upside the head.
I saw the guy later when I searched for a site in the one campground that was open for the season. It was only 11 sites, but it was almost full with nine gi-normous RVs, the ones that look like band tour buses. Everyone had their lawnchairs out under awnings with their grills firing, drinking beer and yapping to each other.
I tried not to let my visit be spoiled by the irony of these people keeping the motors running and their heat cranked all night under a peak whose glacier had retreated into a trickle due, at least in part, to global warming, but I couldn’t help think, over and over:
If all you’re going to do is sit on your ass drinking beer and grilling hot dogs, why do you have to drive your gas-guzzling RV out to a national park and "keep the motor runnin’" to do it? Why?
Why?
They weren’t even looking in the direction of Wheeler Peak. They’d set up their chairs and awnings and grills and coolers facing east, looking out onto the empty plains.
I found a site on the fringe of the campground and set up my tent, then went back to the visitor center to fill my water bottles because there was no water at the campground. The ranger I’d been talking to earlier saw me and came over to tell me a second campground, Baker Creek, had just opened up for the season, literally minutes earlier.
"Go. Move your tent. The sites are too small for RVs," she told me with the knowing smile of another person "stupid" enough to camp with a tent.
Thanks, Jenny... Baker Creek was empty aside from two other campers – we waved to each other as we set up or drove around to find a spot, but I noticed in the morning as I was leaving that we had put as much distance between ourselves as possible. I chose a spot right beside the creek and had a wonderful, quiet night with no electricity or heat, not even a campfire. It only dipped down to the lower 40s, I’m guessing, and I was quite cozy in my tomb tent (I call it that because it is about the size of a coffin... I can’t even sit up straight in it, which can be annoying, but it heats up nicely, a plus given I tend to hike in colder climes).
Here's a shot of my tomb tent at the camp site.
You’ve got to be a total wimp to need to camp in an RV with the motor runnin’ and the heat cranked.
2 comments:
While I don't by any means want to defend RV guy, speaking as somebody who has suffered through chiggers and leaping tarantulas while sleeping on the ground, I would have to say I *do* think that tent campers are a little nuts. But in a nice way ; ) I like nature, but I don't want to sleep right on top of it anymore! (Still, there is a big difference between a pop-up camper or a shelter on the back of a pickup and a Bluebird with Corian countertops and satellite TV!)
Just to clarify, I have no problem with people who use campers in theory, especially if they're older or have some infirmity, or have kids or whatever. My problem is with people who seem to simply transport their living rooms to the great outdoors in a conspicuously consumptive manner simply to do what they'd do in their living rooms at home, and then bash those of us who have the crazy idea that there's something great about experiencing the great outdoors in an outdoor kinda way... And hello, L., if that really is your name (wink).
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