What happened on the GBT?

I had to bail on my Great Basin Trail (GBT) hike. 900 miles of 1200 and I threw in the towel. One part injury (painful fifth metatarsal…look up “Jones Fracture” if you are bored) and another part fatigue.

The GBT is intense. Definitely the hardest backpacking I have ever done. The terrain is high mountain ridges interspersed among long, hot valleys. It is lonely: I went 4 days one time without seeing anything man-made except for barbed wire, dirt roads, and contrails. I don’t mind loneliness; I seek it on most trips. But it weighs.

The architect of the GBT warns about the winds. My everlasting memory of the GBT is the binary situation of either wind or stillness. The stillness was incredible. The southern portion of the trail is near Air Force bases. I remember cowboy camping on ridges when the wind stops and all I hear are fighter jets and then nothing. It is strange to look over 15 miles and hear nothing.

But, oh, the winds. Like a needy pet or clingy child, it usually just pushes up against you. But then it asserts itself. In the valleys, it picks up the dust and throws it in the air or blasting along the surface. Up high in the mountains, it takes light rain or snow and turns it into a freezing abrasive.

I had always heard about Nevada’s Ruby mountains. In June, I was slammed by one of the feircest horizontal snow storms I recalled. Tucked behind a boulder on a high saddle, wearing all my clothes, I broke out my sleeping bag to stay warm while I waited out the storm.

The pattern of the GBT is fairly regular: climb a mountain range, traverse it’s top, then drop down to cross a sparse valley. If you are interested in geology and botany, then there is keen diversity, but to this political science major it seemed to become a little bit repetitive.

I was not excited for a few more Valley + Range weeks. My foot hurt. So, once I had a sleepless night due crazy winds at Overland Lake, I knew I was done. I slinked down to Lemoille Canyon, then Elko, then home.

In hindsight, I should’ve just taken a week off. There was one other hiker (Buck-30) who was about a week behind me. Healing and then hiking with another person for awhile would probably been just the trick.