| clear day a huge area was visible with its
repeating sequences of mountain ranges and valleys stretching to the
horizons. With must of the day ahead, I decided to encircle the top of the cirque. I came down off the east side of the mountain to the top of the cirque ridge, and Wheeler's huge north wall came into view. On one side the cirque ridge dropped precipitously into the depths below: the other side sloped to a canyon far below which led upwards to another large cirque carved into the side of Baker Peak. 12,298 feet. I climbed back onto Wheeler Peak's eastern prominence (12,600 feet plus) where many of the crests of the Snake Range could again be seen, and then down its unstable scree slopes turning to massive piles of boulders at its bottom where bristlecone pine trees grew. I finally arrived back at the campground in the early evening. The other trail of interest from the Wheeler Peak Campground is the New Bristlecone and Icefield Trail. It passes through a portion of the bristlecone pine field and climbs up into the cirque where it ends in the moraine below the glacier with Wheeler's north wall towering above. Climbers have scaled the wall in winter when the loose quartzite rock is cemented by the ice. Although ice and permanent snow had been observed during the summer seasons on Wheeler Peak by early explorers and surveyors, it was not until 1955 that at was established that a probable glacier existed when Weldon Heald and Albert Johnson explored the area. They ". . . and eventually made our way into the great north cirque. This proved to be as arduous an expedition as Albert and I had ever undertaken together. But when we passed the portal like cliffs and saw into the cirque, we both shouted at once. For there before us, cradled in the gigantic rock basin, was not just ice, but an active glacier. All the signs of moving ice were readily apparent - neve, bergschrunds, crevasses and fresh moraines. True, this was no giant river of ice. - - But the wonder was that it should be there at all |
in the midst of the Nevada desert."
(Heald, Sierra Club Bulletin, 1965. p. 52.) The later extension of the road past the monument and the trail into the cirque make it much easier to see this glacier at the present time than when Heald and Johnson first came upon it. There is still some question about whether the ice body is an actual glacier. From this exploratory trip came Heald's proposal for the creation of national park status for the area. Although the national park proposal was defeated, Wheeler Peak and a portion of the Snake Range are included in the 28,000-acre Wheeler Peak Scenic Area. Many visitors to the area stop at the Lehman Caves National Monument. If one continues down the road to the Wheeler Peak Campground and takes the trails into the high country, one will enter the "sky island" area of Wheeler Peak and the Snake Range, an unsuspected alpine oasis far above the surrounding Nevada deserts.
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