We concluded the national park portion of our recent road trip through Utah and Nevada by visiting Great Basin National Park.

I wasn’t familiar with Nevada’s Great Basin, which is an area that stretches from California’s Sierra Nevada to Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. This expansive landscape has very few trees or rivers, lots of wide open views of the mountain ranges and sky, and quite a bit of cattle grazing.

We didn’t see a ton of wildlife anywhere in the Great Basin or in the national park with the exception of a few mule deer near the park entrance.

Our visit timing was not great as we arrived a couple days after the Trump administration announced massive layoffs to national park staff, and this national park was hit particularly hard.

As a result, we had limited access to key park features, including the scenic drive to the 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak, the Lehman Caves, and the main visitor center. We did enjoy the Lehman Caves Visitor Center, which has a park video and small museum in additional to a little store and nice restrooms.

The staff there were friendly but overwhelmed by the sudden loss of personnel. The ranger we spoke to was distracted and busy canceling tours and trying to determine what services they could continue to maintain. We only stayed long enough to get a recommendation for hiking the following day.

We had a sunny day for our hike on the Lehman Creek trail. We parked outside the Lower Lehman Creek Campground, which is as far as the road is plowed and open at this time, and hiked through the campground and woods to the Upper Lehman Creek campground, which sits at 7,752 feet / 2,362 m.

The trail was nearly clear as we set off but was covered with feet of snow as we approached the turnaround point. Snow shoes would have been a very welcome addition to our gear on this hike as we were eventually post holing every other step. Not only is that a fast way to drain your energy, it’s a good way to get hurt. Despite the nice views of the surrounding mountains, I was ready to head back!

Overall our hike was 7.9 miles / 12.7 km and 2,281 feet / 695 m of elevation gain – I great introduction to this park in the winter.

I would have loved to have seen the ancient Bristlecone pine trees, which live for thousands of years and are a standout feature of this park, but we couldn’t hike to that elevation in the current levels of snow. Definitely something I would prioritize on a future trip to this park.

Hopefully Great Basin National Park has its funding and staffing levels restored so visitors can take advantage of all the other park features again soon.