Visitors escape stress in Great Basin solitude by Mark LaPointe, Outpost Staff In this package: Cloistered oasis is treasure Grab Highway 50 kit Park claims long history No seasonal boundaries Baker guards gate An eye on the future   Great Basin National Park is small by most standards. Other parks, like Yosemite and Yellowstone, consist of hundreds of thousands of acres, unlike Great Basin's 77,000. The park is also not frequented by many people. Park Superintendent Becky Mills estimates that more than 87,000 people visited the park in 1996, making it the sixth least visited national park out of 50, a marked increase from the year before when the park was listed as the third least visited. Many visitors enjoy the small numbers of people that travel to the park and find the low numbers beneficial to the park's beauty. One such person is Sacramento resident Karin Winters who visited Great Basin for Labor Day weekend. Winters says the lack of visitors is one of the things she enjoyed most about her visit. "Probably my favorite aspect of the park is how few people go there. The Lexington Arch is a rough drive and a quick steep hike from the main park. Photo by Karin Winters It is so rare in this area to be able to go hiking or out into nature without running into packs of people. When I spend time outdoors, I like to get away from everything, including people. It was wonderful to find a place to hike for many miles with beautiful and interesting scenery in virtual solitude." In fact, on many of the park's trails, you're much more likely to run into a pack of mule deer or see pronghorn antelope than you are to see other people. This is especially true of some of the more difficult or obscure trails such as the one to the Lexington Arch, which requires a half hour drive on a rough dirt road and a short but steep climb that will take you to one of the park's greatest wonders and one of the nation's largest limestone arches. Next copyright 12/10/97 Nevada Outpost http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost Nevada Outpost is produced by students at the Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada, Reno Copyright 1999 Nevada Outpost http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost  TOP