Great Basin National Park
Great Basin lies just off the loneliest road in America. You don’t arrive here by mistake. Want to walk among the 4,000-year-old bristlecone trees that are just a few hundred feet from a spectacular glacier, or around alpine lakes reflecting the snowy mountaintops and the Milky Way? Great Basin reveals its true beauty among its many trails, and we’ll be hiking to experience it.
Workshop Details
August 7-13, 2024 — Completed
This is a 7-night, 6-day workshop. Your adventure begins with a welcome dinner on August 7 and after our night shoot on August 13.
$2,649 + applicable taxes. Register below.
Skill level
Intermediate and above. Participants should have a firm grasp of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras, and have a comfortable understanding of night photography fundamentals.
Group size
10, with 2 instructors — 5:1 ratio
NPS website
Our workshop mission is to explore every U.S. national park. As with all our Passport Series locations, it may be years (if ever) before we return to any specific park. If you have a dream of making epic long exposures at night at Great Basin, we hope you join us.
Workshop Leaders
Registration
This event has passed. Thanks for your interest!
| • Deposit of $600 is required to reserve your spot at the workshop. |
| • Balance of $2,049 is due on March 21, 2023. —> Pay balance here. |
| • You may choose the “Pay in Full” ticket if you desire to pay all at once. |
| • Last day for a cancellation request is March 20, 2023 (see cancellation and refund policy). |
| • The workshop fee does not include lodging, food, airfare, park entrance fees, or transportation to Baker, Nevada, or to our nightly shoot locations. |
The Great Basin Experience
Want to experience the Milky Way in all its glory with a backdrop of bristlecone trees, glacier-capped mountains and reflecting lakes?
Great Basin is one of the least-visited parks because of its remoteness. We have planned this workshop around a waxing crescent moon and the Perseid Meteor Shower. The moon will be setting in the early evening and we’ll have plenty of dark skies, Milky Way and meteor showers that will make you feel one with the universe.
This will be a fully immersive workshop with classroom time to hone your skills and then nightly hikes ranging from .5 to 5 miles round-trip to get to each unique location within Great Basin. We are limiting the classroom size to 10 attendees so that you can have a more intimate experience with the wilderness and even more hands-on time with Gabe and Matt.
We’ll also get an exclusive tripod tour of the Lehman Caves, which feature plenty of stalactites and stalagmites, but also has over 500 cave shield formations that surreally drip to the limestone floor. Arches, aspens, steam trains and beehive charcoal ovens are also on the docket.
So strap on your hiking boots and get ready to delve deep into all that Great Basin has to offer!
What You Should Know
This workshop caters to knowledgeable photographers with an intermediate or higher skill set. Participants should have a firm grasp of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras, and have a comfortable understanding of night photography fundamentals. We will be happy to offer advice and answer questions about both day and night photography, but the focus of the formal education will be Milky Way capture and processing techniques, light painting and pushing you to expand your night vision.
If you would like to attend this workshop but are unsure whether you have adequate night photography skills, we can offer pre-workshop tutoring to get you ready for your adventure with us. Alternatively or additionally, a few of us have written books that may be productive pre-workshop reads.
What You Will Learn
We hope to inspire you to step outside your comfort zone—to test the limits of what you and your camera can do.
TOPICS COVERED WILL INCLUDE:
how to compose and capture a meteor shower radiant, or meteors in general
scouting and planning your shots with PhotoPills
composing and focusing in low light
optimizing exposure for RAW capture and development with Lightroom
best settings and development of the Milky Way
panoramic night capture and processing
how to photograph and blend twilight foregrounds with dark-sky backgrounds
light painting
creating jaw-dropping star point and star-trail photographs
and more …
This workshop will have both field and classroom instruction. We will be in the classroom during the day, and out in the field at different locations each night, and then we’ll stay out chasing the Milky Way long into the night before hitting the trail back home. Our locations have generous room to explore, so everyone will be able to spread out and not get in one another’s way.
While in the field, the instructors will demonstrate their own techniques and will work with participants one-on-one to make sure everyone gets the most out of the workshop.
We do not tell our attendees what to photograph, and we won’t line you up in a row to all shoot the same thing (unless it’s helpful to get some people on track). Instead, we encourage you to use what you have learned to create your own unique images, and to let us guide you through the process should you desire.
We do not teach you to do what we do, but rather how to develop your own night vision.
Night Conditions
Logistics & General Info
Travel
You are responsible for arranging and paying for your own transportation.
Rental Car
You will need a rental car.
There is no need for four-wheel-drive, but you will be driving down well-groomed dirt roads daily.
If you are interested in carpooling or sharing a rental car, let us know and we will try to connect you with another attendee looking for the same.
Nearby Airports:
St. George (SGU) — 3 hours, 15 minutes from Baker
Salt Lake City (SLC) — 3 hours, 45 minutes
Las Vegas (LAS) — 4 hours, 45 minutes
Lodging & Food
Because of Great Basin’s remote location, we have reserved a block of rooms at Hidden Canyon Retreat. This is by far the best accommodations near the park, but our nightly commute will be anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour.
If you prefer to stay closer to the park, the option would be to camp. There are plenty of campgrounds within the park. However, you would need to commute to the hotel for our daily classroom sessions (about 40 minutes, depending on your campground).
Lodging
You are not required to stay at the official workshop lodging, though doing so does make it easier to meet with the group each day.
Info and group code will be sent at some point after registering, once our lodging partner is ready to begin taking reservations.
If you are interested in sharing a room, let us know and we will try to connect you with someone like-minded in the group.
Food
Hidden Canyon Retreat will be providing two meals per day for us: a late breakfast and early dinner. This will be included in your hotel fee.
There are not many other food options, however each room does come with a full kitchen if you want to bring and cook your own meals.
When on the night shoots, you may wish to bring snack food or a sandwich and plenty of water.
You are responsible for arranging and paying for your own accommodations and meals.
Weather
Expect daytime highs in the 60s F, lows in the 40s.
Elevation will range between 4,000 and 8,000 feet within the area of the park we’ll be exploring. We will not be hiking to the peak of Mount Wheeler (the second-highest mountain in Nevada at 13,161 feet).
Recommended Attire
Shorts and short-sleeve shirts for daytime, light pants and long-sleeve shirts for night.
A sweatshirt and medium-weight jacket will likely be useful, and a base layer might not be a waste of packing space. Layers are good.
Comfortable and protective shoes are recommended for getting around. There will be long hikes, so quality trail shoes or hiking boots are strongly recommended.
Exertion Level
The exertion level of this workshop is Active to Strenous. (See more about our classifications.)
There will be vigorous hiking activity during this workshop, so please consider your physical abilities prior to registering. The hikes might not seem long, but with a full backpack and water, and moving along trails at night, they may be challenging.
We will be hiking at elevations ranging between 4,000 and 8,000 feet. (We will not be hiking to the peak of Mount Wheeler, 13,161 feet). Though altitude sickness is not generally a concern until altitudes over 8,000 feet, some people can experience it at elevations as low as 6,000. If you are concerned that you might be in the latter group, we advise arriving in the area a couple of days early and acclimating by going on some short hikes at altitude. We also advise staying well hydrated.
Note: To ensure the safety of individuals and the group, the workshop leaders may use their discretion to limit an attendee from engaging in a vigorous activity on-site should that person's physical health or ability be in question. If you are unsure about your ability to meet the physical demands of this workshop, we will be happy to discuss your concerns one-on-one before you register. You are also, of course, welcome to attend a workshop and sit out any physical activity that makes you uncomfortable. In such cases, we can provide you with ideas for alternative shoot locations for that time.
Considerations
IMPORTANT: We encourage reading our FAQs section for more information about skill and gear requirements, and other information that pertains to all our workshops.
If you have questions, please contact us—we're happy to talk it over with you.
A Dark Wilderness in the West …
“Quaking aspens lead to reflecting lakes, and everywhere there are stars—millions of stars.”
Matt and I have been scheming for a Great Basin adventure for many years.
We travel through Las Vegas a lot, and the signs for Great Basin are just a few miles outside the city.
What they don’t tell you is that the signs are pure marketing—Great Basin is another 5 hours away! Well, I finally made it last year and it was well worth the wait.
I did my due diligence and researched the park as much as I could online. But even better, I hooked up with a friend who had been to Great Basin about 10 times.
James suggested we camp, as it is really the best way to explore and experience Great Basin. We found a campsite by a roaring creek and started pouring over the topography maps of the area. We spent almost a week talking to rangers, hiking amazing trails, and trying to fathom all the things the bristlecones and glaciers have seen in their lifetime.
Great Basin is a quiet place. It is a place where you can reach out and touch the stars. Everything seems so intertwined—from the burrowing owls to bighorn sheep. Quaking aspens lead to reflecting lakes, and everywhere there are stars—millions of stars.
James and I saw no other humans on our nightly hikes, but we felt one with the universe.
