From Here to Great Basin

To celebrate the end of the school year I left town, which is kind of counterintuitive from the standpoint that Logan is just a lot nicer when all the students leave and things don’t feel quite as crowded. Except on Saturday when all of Franklin County, Idaho comes to town, which is just kind of sad, irritating, and road-jamming. Gott strafe Franklin County!, etc.

First off, headed to the Frisco ghost town in Utah, which is just north of Milford, Utah, which is a good reminder that there are some tiny little stuggler towns in this state. From a passing through small towns perspective, this part of the trip reminded me of the part of western Pennsylvania that’s not Pittsburgh.

The ghost town, though, was probably not worth driving out of your way for. There’s a cemetery and like three still-standing buildings, although the mining company that owns the property has put up gates and made roads impassible and the dog didn’t feel like going for a walk, so…

You can still drive up to the cemetery. Most of the interred, though, are children, which made this part of the trip, overall, both sad and boring. Although sometimes I think boring is already a subset of sad. Or at least there’s a lot of overlap.

From Frisco, it was on to Baker, Nev., home of Great Basin National Park, which facilitated my checking that park off the list.

The park has some new-style signage, which took a little time to get used to, though I eventually adjusted. I’m not sure anything can ever compare to the stained-wood signs and that peculiar national park almost-handwritten font they use, but if you’re going to replace the signs, these weren’t bad.

This post doesn’t get better from here.

The park itself features Wheeler Peak, the highest point in all of Nevada. The road that takes you to the hiking trails near the peak, though, was closed still due to snow. :(.

That’s Wheeler Peak there in the photo, taken from one of the main roads in Baker, Nev.

I stayed in a hotel in the one hotel in Baker, which has eight rooms. For some reason I liked Baker. Maybe it just gave me a lot to think about with regard to it being a tiny, rural town with a small clutch alt-hipsters who all seem to work at the one restaurant/cafe and a little-known national park and what would it actually be like to live here? That kind of thing*. It’s a town, though, where people’s dogs roam the neighborhoods at will and no one seems to mind. They’re also upset about Las Vegas stealing their water.

That’s the highway that passes through town.

The trails that are in the main part of the park aren’t dog-friendly, but that kind of didn’t matter since they were all still closed for snow anyway. I took a pass on the cave tour, since I figure it’s probably mostly just a cave tour, and it’s probably not as good as Carlsbad Caverns.

We instead went to find a hike on the east side of the park, accessed from within Utah (!), that is dog-friendly and wasn’t under snow (mostly). Lexington Arch I think? Let’s go with it. There’s a dirt road that took us off the highway toward the trailhead.

After a bit, there were a couple of stream crossings that I probably shouldn’t have taken on with the family truckster but did. Then we came to a part in the road where there a couple people in a Toyota Tacoma trying to figure out how to build a bridge out of branches to cross the next stream.

Anyway, they (their names were Ryan and Shannon for some reason) were both nurses up at the U of U medical center. Seemed nice and gave Aela and me a ride another quarter-mile up the road where it then became too washed out even for them. We then all hiked together from there.

Apparently this part of the park burned down some time ago. I probably should have spent more time in the visitor’s center. Anyway, most of the hike was through a burned-out forest.

Good conversations, burnt trees. She used to be a competitive snowboarder who toured the world, he just finished his DNP degree at the U.

After crossing a couple snowfields, we eventually got to a viewpoint for the arch. Some I didn’t take any photos of it that were better than this, but, hey, live in the moment, right?

Then we walked back to the truck, they gave me a ride the quarter-mile back to my car, then we all went and got lunch together in some other really tiny town just on the Nevada side on Highway 50. The ranch chicken bacon wrap was huge and surprisingly good. I can’t remember the name of the town** or the restaurant, but, you know, if you want you can email me and I’ll try harder to come up with it.

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* I’m guessing after the second day it’d be pretty boring. Fortunately I didn’t get to that point on this trip and was therefore left wallowing in my sense of child-like wonder.

** There’s not actually a town. There’s just the restaurant (and gas station and three slot machines). Cross the border from Utah, it’ll be on your left. Chicken bacon ranch wrap. Also, try to pay with cash because their card reader has a hard time.

Alpine Loop and Animas Forks: An Off-Road (Sort Of) Adventure

I was getting my hair cut one day a few weeks back at the ol’ University Barber Shop (I’d include a link, but I don’t think they have a webpage) and mentioned I’d just bought a Jeep Wrangler and it turned out one of the other barbers in the shop was a real off-road enthusiast who was planning, this summer, to do some extensive off-road touring in Colorado. Anyway, I thought that sounded like something I to try at least once. Not the extensive part, just the part where you follow 4-by trails through Colorado.

So I got this book about Colorado 4×4 trails and it talked about this one trail that was rated Moderate and known as the Alpine Loop.

I’m not building tension very well. At any rate, it’s a loop trail that, the way I did it, started at Lake City, Colo., then followed the road over Engineer Pass to the Animas Forks ghost town, then followed the road back over Cinnamon Pass to return to Lake City. Moderate difficulty! Anyway.

It starts out somewhat easier than moderate.

In fact, you could take your Toyota Yaris and cover *most* of this same route. You’d probably have to stop, though, where the signs say “4×4 only beyond this point” — it gets a little steep, the rocks stick up pretty far, and you probably want high clearance and low gear 4wd. Which means you can’t easily drive your Yaris to Animas Forks via this route. Sorry. Do you even own a Yaris? Okay.

One of the cool features of the 4×4 roads in Colorado is they tend to take you through (abandoned) mining operations and ghost towns. This route had some of both.

Abandoned mining operation.

As well as some pretty decent alpine scenery that you can get a look at without leaving the comfort of your car and its stereo pumping out Mötley Crüe songs sourced from your iPhone. Which is huge.

Some fork (Lake Fork?) of the Gunnison River.

Upstream waterfall.

As you go further along the route, the road gradually gets steeper, narrower, and rockier, and the drop-offs more severe.

Plus you get above the timberline.

The actual top of the pass is a pretty, barren, alpine hellscape. In a good way. Not pictured are the tighter turns and larger rocks. Sorry. Was navigating over them at the time, so didn’t take a lot of photos. Regardless, these were at or near the top of Engineer Pass (elev. 12,800′):

From there, it’s a short, steep-ish descent down into Animas Forks, which was a functioning mining town with a post office clear into the 1920s (although the population was never more than a few hundred people). Seems like it would’ve been cold in the winter. 

One of many hairpins.

Welcome to the ‘Forks, elev. 11,160.

The roads in the area (e.g., the Alpine Loop Route) were originally built to support mining operations (and towns) like this. This is probably as good a time as any to note that, on this drive, you’re not exactly alone on the road. There are areas where you, yes, wait for traffic. Many times you have to stop where there’s a turn-out so someone coming up the hill in the other direction can get by. There are a (literal!) ton of Jeep Wranglers on the road, but probably even more ATVs. I’d go with: 40% ATVs, 30% Wranglers, 20% Dirt Bikes, 10% Other SUVs/Trucks. When I was at Animas Forks, there were probably 10-15 other vehicles there at the same time (you can see eight of them in that last photo if you click through to the full-size view). I also drove past some sort of off-road cop car near Animas Forks. Apparently that’s a thing.

So the ghost town itself is wide open and you’re welcome to walk through its houses and play on its swingsets to your heart’s content. There’s some graffiti and any vandalism is too much, but, still, the place doesn’t look or feel like it’s been trashed. OTOH, it would be cool if Fallout 5 were set here*.

View of one house from a different house!

Probably cold in the winter, but scenic.

From there, I completed the loop by taking the route back over Cinnamon Pass, a name which seems like it would fit together on a map with Fairy Village and Gumdrop Lane. At any rate, while the first half-mile or so out of Animas Forks is probably the steepest, rockiest, narrowest, and deadly drop-offest of the entire loop, things settle down pretty quickly almost immediately thereafter. Engineer is a little more steadily steep and rocky on both sides of the pass. If I hadn’t mentioned it, you would’ve wondered.

So steep, so rocky.

Toward Cinnamon Pass (elev. 12,640′).

A tight one.

So, all that having been presented,:

1. Total distance driven was around 50 miles. Took just a little over six hours. The going’s a bit slow.
2. The drive was pretty throughout.
3. Even as a complete neophyte, the four-wheeling here was unchallenging. OTOH, it was engaging enough and a fun way to see a lot of new terrain.
4. I understand what 4-Lo does now.

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* And if Bethesda formally apologized for Fallout 4.