Ancient Bristlecones and the Oldest Tree on Earth | White Mountains #2

There's a reason they don't tell you where the oldest trees are.

Having completed two very hot hikes, we hoped that by gaining a bit of elevation, we would find somewhere a little cool(er) to eat our hot dogs and corn before quickly getting horizontal on our Exped Megamat to fall asleep. To do this, Silver Canyon seemed to be the quickest way to climb from somewhere around 4,500 feet in Owens Valley, to more than 10,000 feet along the ridge of the White Mountains, so that's the direction we headed.

Hmm, I thought this was going to be a paved road. Oh well, more fun this way!

Silver Canyon really did end up being a fun drive. Signed as "DIFFICULT," we found it to be steep, but reasonably well graded. Certainly nothing that warranted a trail rating - unless that trail rating was "BEAUTIFUL" - under dry conditions. Racing the setting sun, we pushed the Tacoma up a series of dusty switchbacks, high clouds making for a dramatic ascent as sunlight spilled into the valley behind us.

Kaleidoscope of color.

As we neared the head of the canyon, it wasn't entirely clear where the road would go. Turns out, it would go... up. Via a series of switchbacks.

I just happened to glance over my shoulder and notice the sun streaming through the dusty air of Owens Valley. Spectacular!

As we neared the ridge, we could see rain falling - and a single bolt of lightning that arced from one cloud to another - to our northwest. This provided an interesting dilemma as we tried to decide which - of two - camp sites to choose. The first - nestled into the trees - didn't have much of a view, but would provide a bit of protection from the 15mph winds, as well as any stray electricity that might try to tag a tent perched on top of a large metal conductor. The second - out in the open - would offer dramatic views and fewer bugs (moths, mostly) to contend with as we prepped dinner and put away the tent in the morning.

No idea if this rain was making it to the ground, but it sure added some ambiance to our evening, especially given that it wasn't directly overhead!

In the end - and as often seems to be the case when I am involved - we opted for the view. As I set about deploying our CVT sleeping sail, @mrs.turbodb pulled out the kitchen box for a gourmet dinner of hot dogs and corn.

"Gourmet?" you say, "How are hot dogs and corn, gourmet?"

Easy. You do a series of hikes that gain 6,000 vertical feet over only 4.6 miles in 100°F temperatures, and I assure you that this meal will be fully appreciated. Plus, it was the first fresh corn we'd eaten all year, and boy, they've really got the genetic modifications down to make this stuff taste great!

Our romantic evening light.

Even with the wind, sleep came quickly to our tired bodies, and as the wind blew the clouds away, one day changed to the next.

The following morning...

I'd planned for us to get up at sunrise - mostly to take advantage of cooler temperatures earlier in the day - but my companion can be very convincing that staying in bed is a better option than obeying our alarm, so the sun was well into the sky by the time we finally climbed down the ladder at 6:56am.

It was a beautiful morning over Bishop.

Looking down into the valley, we had a great view of the Volcanic Tablelands.

Our plan for the day was relatively simple: take it easy. This was partially to recover from our previous day's hikes, but also to acclimate to the higher elevation in preparation for a hike to the summit of White Mountain the following morning.

The only problem is that - to me - take it easy means something entirely different than it does to the entire rest of the world. As such, I'd planned six miles of hiking through the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest to see some of - and the - oldest trees on our planet. That is, if we could find them. Or it.

Entering the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, which - as you can see - was just full of trees.

I took this photo because the white rocky hill was so striking, but I see now - as I tell the story - that it does demonstrate that there were some trees in the forest.

Upon our arrival at the parking area just after 8:00am, we were surprised to discover that we weren't anywhere near the first people to show up - a point I made several times to my hiking companion, in order to prove how easy we were taking it compared to everyone else. This didn't seem to work, but she was a great sport and after gathering up plenty of sunscreen, a bit of trail mix, some water, a GPS with the coordinates of the oldest tree on the planet, and my trusty tree capturing device, we were off.

@mrs.turbodb absolutely loves to read all the brochures, pamphlets, and signs along a trail. This particular one - which she ended up reading to me during the first quarter of the hike - turned out to be quite good.

Methuselah, now 4,856 years old, was only 4,789 years old when sampled by Arizona Associate Professor of Dendrochronology Edmund P. Schulman in 1957. A Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), it is the world's oldest non-clonal tree, with an estimated germination date of 2833 BC. Schulman named the tree after Methuselah, the 969-year-old oldest-living human, from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament.

wikipedia

To get to Methuselah would be a four-mile round trip, which wouldn't have been so bad were it not for the 800 feet of elevation gain entailed in the loop. Still, we set out in search of the oldest tree, blissfully unaware of how difficult those 800 feet would actually be at 10,200 feet above sea level.

Early on, I was taking photos of all the cool looking Bristlecone Pines. I soon realized that I was photographing every tree and that we'd never finish the hike if I continued to do so.

A Bristlecone Pine grows one ring/layer of needles each year, and maintains the rings for decades. They are quite nice - almost soft - to the touch.

Initially I thought these holes were from carpenter bees, but it turns out they are from a Sap Sucker woodpecker, a species that simply doesn't care that they are destroying history.

Stairway sunstar.

Surely the trail to Methuselah was longer than it need be. This - obviously - was to deter the vast majority of humans from getting anywhere near the tree, since unlike the sap sucker, we actually do have a tendency of destroying history. And so, we wound our way from one hillside to the next as we lost more and more elevation. Wondering - as the sun climbed in the sky and temperatures rose - whether it would all be worth it.

The terrain was beautiful, even if they all just looked like old trees to us.

A hillside of decoys.

I especially liked the shape of this "not the oldest tree in the world."

Of course, the good folks who care for and monitor the Ancicent Bristlecone Pine Forest know that despite their best efforts at keeping people as far from the historically important trees as possible, some people will actually make the trek along the entirety of the loop. Knowing this, the Methuselah tree itself was not marked in any way to indicate its special status. I'd suspected that this would be the case prior to leaving home, and so I'd done some research and discovered the actual location of the tree, which I'd smartly added to my maps.

Methuselah, located at ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ , ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ .

The problem with my plan was that there are a lot of trees in that vicinity, and I'd neglected to either download a satellite map so that I could see exactly which tree was being referenced, or save a photo of the tree to my pocket computer so that I could compare it to the real-life trees in front of us. And so, as we came to the location where my waypoint suggested a historically significant object, I started taking pictures of all the trees, in hopes that one of them would be "the one."

A true specimen. (left) | Perhaps the oldest (right).

It wasn't until I got home and was able to compare all my photos to a picture of what I knew to be the actual tree, that I confirmed with 100% certainty that I'd failed. In fact, I'd taken pictures of most of the trees around Methuselah - a few of its spindly dead branches reaching into my photographs - but never of the tree itself. Methuselah it turns out, is a small, scrawny tree, and in a forest of ancients, that's the best disguise of all!

Continuing on the loop, @mrs.turbodb is younger than many of the pine needles on this ancient sentinel.

We especially enjoyed the shape of this bristlecone.

As we snapped photos of the last tree that we though might be Methuselah, we passed a trail marker that informed us we were exactly halfway around the loop. No surprise there - putting the tree anywhere else would surely result in only half of the loop ever being hiked! Figuring that we wouldn't save any time, distance, or elevation by returning the way we'd arrived, we opted to continue around the remainder of the loop - soaking in new sights along the way - each of us now eager for the breakfast that awaited us back at the Tacoma.

There were lots of this light purple western blue flax (Linum lewisii) at these higher elevations.

In the distance, Deep Spring looked parched.

Every now and then, we'd get a little peek at the Sierra to our west.

Having planned for a quick-and-easy 90-minute stroll in cool temps at high elevation, we arrived back at the parking lot three hours after our departure, sweating. Ready for shade, we grabbed some milk, cereal, bowls and spoons and made a beeline for the only shady spot we could find - a rock wall near the newly remodeled visitor center. I'm not sure we've ever enjoyed the cold 34°F milk quite so much as we did that day.

Soon though, we were back at it. Another trail - from the same parking area - led two miles through another set of trees identical to the first. Two of these are "named" and we figured that we might as well go not find those in the same way we'd done with Methuselah.

At the very least, this hike was looking to be just as beautiful as the last.

Dead Sentry, a tree depicted on many souvenirs sold at Schulman Grove Visitor Center, often found in internet image searches for Methuselah, or world's oldest tree, and displayed on the cover of Inyo National Forest Atlas, is not the world's oldest tree. It is a long-dead bristlecone pine snag without bark, cambium, or foliage.

To our delight, Dead Sentry turned out to be easy to find. (left) | Another nearby snag. (right)

Dead Century view.

Continuing around the loop, finding Pine Alpha - the first non-clonal tree confirmed older than 4,000 years - would prove much more difficult, due to the same hiker-induced mistakes we'd encountered with Methuselah. Still, there was no shortage of cool barkless trees to admire, and this Discovery Path also had a series of information signs, which added to the interest.

Ancient giants.

At the apex of the loop, it was springtime - and green - at this elevation in the White Mountains.

What a magnificent shape!

Of the two trails, the Discovery Trail was - in my opinion - significantly more pleasant than the Methuselah Walk, and not only because it was half the length and a quarter of the elevation gain. Still, we were both ready to get off our feet for a bit as we returned to the Tacoma and pushed the A/C lever to full. It was nearly 1:00pm, and as we headed north along White Mountain Road, we were both ready for a nap.

We were also a little concerned. Our plan for the following day - to summit White Mountain itself - was in possible jeopardy after another couple informed us that the rangers in the Visitor Center told them that the road to the trailhead was closed. "Have you two been up there?" they asked, becuase the rangers say the road is "covered by a snow drift."

Ruh roh.

Throwing the rest of our plan out the window, we decided we'd better figure out the situation at the top.

 

 

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