Wheeler Peak Great Basin National Park

We drove up the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive at Great Basin National Park to the Wheeler Peek Summit Trail to hike up to the peak (13,063 ft). This is 8.6 miles round trip with 2,900 ft of gain.

The trail begins with a very gradual ascent (less than 200 ft in the first mile), through the forest. Loved seeing the golden aspens.

We saw many mule deer in the first two miles of the trail.

View of Wheeler Peak through the aspen trees.

Davis and Wheeler Peaks as seen above the aspens.

At 1.1 miles, we had a good view of Wheeler Peak and the approach route.

View of Stella Lake below, Davis and Wheeler Peaks above.

View of Wheeler Peak near as we continue along the trail. (after 2.5 miles we had gained about 900 ft. 2,000 ft of elevation to go)

Above the tree line the trail got steeper, there were several false summits.

Wheeler Peak seen left of center

There were several wind breaks along the exposed trail, as it gets very windy here.

The trail crosses over scree and talus fields as it continues to climb.

I believe the last 0.5 mile to the summit gains 1,000 ft.

So happy to reach the crux of the trail, a nice gentle approach to the true summit!

View looking back down the trail.

We were so happy to reach the summit of Wheeler Peak!!!

benchmark on Wheeler peak

This mailbox within a wind break, holds the summit register for Wheeler Peak.

View to the south: Mt Baker, we hiked up to Baker Lake on the other side of this peak two days ago.

We then walked to the other side of the peak to look over to Davis Peak and the cirque between.

View looking down to the northeast, to the alpine lakes, bristlecone forest and approach to the glacier where we hiked yesterday.

After hiking back down a couple of miles, we had this nice view looking back at Davis and Wheeler Peaks.