Great Basin

Great Basin Country

The huge swath of land between Salt Lake City, Utah and Reno, Nevada is called the Great Basin or sometimes the Basin and Range Country.  It is a desolate place of salt flats, desert mountains, sage brush valleys and a few high peaks.

It is a lonely place that gets few people to visit and few to live in.

You might fly over this on your way to the coast or Vegas.  Some drive it on I-80 and hope to get through it quickly.

I planned a trip to come out and photograph this region.

A geologist might tell you the Basin and Range county gets it's name from the fact is is a series of sagebrush flats with the occasional mountain range.  They also might say the river here flow to no ocean.  They spill out of a few mountains into a basin and dry away to nothing or maybe reach the Great Salt Lake.  You may also hear that in the last Ice Age the lake was much larger but has dried in our warmer time leaving salt flats across western Utah.

For most it is not a place to want to visit.  For me that is exactly why I wanted to visit.....

I had looked at maps for years of the region.  I might see a mention in a book or article mentioning a place or mountain range.  On very rare occasions I even saw a picture.  It always intrigued me.  The land sounded interesting and the images were always compelling.  Yet, I never met anyone who had actually been there.  The best you might get was someone drove I-80 to California and just remember it being hot.

So when I got off the plane in SLC and rented a car to go west it was an adventure.

The first place you see going west is the vast salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake.  I found them fascinating.  It was clear but I found a place to stop and make some images.  It was someplace I knew had potential, I just had missed the right light.  I also planned my last night to stay in Wendover so I could visit the Bonneville Salt Flats are and see what I might get with a little more time.

Past the flats is is basin, then mountain range, then another dry sagebrush basin, followed by a mountain range.  It is empty country.  Much of it is still managed by the Bureau of Land Management and offers public access.  

I made my way west and into a mountain range where I set up camp surrounded by peaks and a few aspen in full color.  I was also one of only a handful of people there.  That is always a plus for me, when there is not a crowd.  Here among peaks that went to 12,000 ft I found a little mountain paradise.  I hiked trails among aspen and up into rocky valleys.  I had clear night sky far from any light pollution where I photographed the fall Milky Way.  It was a fantastic location.

I would do a hike or a drive over to the next mountain range.  To get there I would cross a flat empty basin with sagebrush.  Loved this.  People only see the dry basins and do not realize some of the mountains are tall enough to enter a different world of granite and trees.

Out at night under the dark skies looking at the stars is always great and in a place like this with truly dark sky it is even extra special.  Every night I would wait for dark and then set up photos of mountain peaks with the arc of the Milky Way or my tent glowing in the night.

Then the next day off to hike and explore among the peaks.

It was an adventure and I had several days to go.