With all the new snow, it seemed like a good idea to get out the snowshoes and go for a little walk. It's about 1/4 mile or so to the Rim Trail from where I'm living and it was a bit of a chore in spots. Even with the snowshoes, at times I would sink 8-10 inches in the light, fluffy snow. Nobody had been up there since the snow the night before, so I was breaking trail the whole way.This Bristlecone Pine is growing adjacent to the trail and probably measures around 45-51 cm (18-20 inches) in diameter at the widest point on the trunk. The height is probably around 6 meters (20 feet) and, though there is no way to tell without getting a core sample, a Pinus Longaeva that size is almost certainly well over 1,000 years old. Hard to imagine that this tree was a little sapling back in the Dark Ages (or maybe even before)!
Very impressive. Just imagine if those things could talk...
Great minds think alike . . . I want to hear from that 4700 year old Bristlecone in California.
Hi Kevin,
I spent a lot of time as a teenager in the Bishop CA area. I was mostly on the west side of the valley but several times I got over to the White Mountains. It was very impressive. I was over there once with a woman who was a dendrochronologist and was studying the Bristlecone Pines. I can remember her name--old age is bad that way. :)
The White Mountains are definitely on my short list of places to visit. There and Great Basin NP - either of which I could easily do in a long weekend if I just did it. And could you imagine how bad the memory would be if your age was measured in millenia?
A 100 year old tree!
That is amazing. I bet it is huge.
Just to think that it was here when the Indians alone ruled the country...
You meant 1000, right? They are not really all that big, either. This tree is not a lot more than 20 feet tall - and young compared to the almost 5000 year old Bristlecone Pines in eastern California (which only grow to 35-40 feet)! True about the Native Americans though - this tree would have been a sapling when the Fremont Culture (one of the Ancestral Puebloans, also known as Anasazi) were living in this region (they are responsible for much of the rock art found in Utah). Amazing.