limber pine, crystal butte

dusk tour, searching for survivors

Finally, ski season is here again! Pic of east ridge of Wister from a few years back by @dougworkman.

First day of the TreeFight #Panolapse Project, and the students of Summit High rocked it! Chaaarge!

TreeFight welcomes Becca Bredehoft to our Ambassador Team! @rhbredehoft is a badass aerial photographer, acrobatic paraglider, tandem pilot, and instructor, and will be providing crucial non-motorized aerial support for our summer projects. I love it when a plan and a team come together!

Mixing it up in the alpine.

red under the white

#moosewars

A few facts about #bristlecone pines:
1. They’re the oldest individual organisms on Earth; clonal colonies of Aspens in Utah are collectively older (+/- 80,000 years) but no individual aspen stems are nearly as old.
2. The oldest surviving bristlecone (in the White Mountains of CA) is 5064 years old, which means it germinated in 3051 BC.
3. Researchers used the growth rings of both living and dead bristlecones to more accurately gauge the age of Stonehenge in the UK.
4. A bristlecone can lose 90% of its bark but still survive if there’s an intact strip connecting needles to roots.
5. The oldest bristlecones live in the harshest, driest parts of their habitat: the fewer the nutrients, the slower they grow, and the longer they live. Researchers believe they could live even longer if not for the problem of soil erosion. Every thousand years means the loss of about another foot of rocky topsoil, so the oldest ones are eventually left high and dry.
6. As far as I can ascertain, pine beetles and blister rust have yet to impact the bristlies of the western US. Yay!

‘For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.’ James 4:14. #bristlecone

cactus flower #spring #thebirdsandthebees #iphonemacro

though fire scorched and axe-hacked, this old desert juniper still thrives. among many other reasons, i love trees for the perseverance they preach. #happyearthday.

roadside Valhalla

‘dogs and angels aren’t very far apart.’ - Charles Bukowski #pepkowski

Last year Pepi and I brought James Balog, @chasingice, to check out the beetle-kill on Goodwin Lake. This is the centuries-old wbp that used to shade the picnic-perfect peninsula that juts into Goodwin lake. It died in 2011, the year after we stopped protecting trees at Goodwin Lake because of wilderness regulations. I wished I’d kept stapling pouches on him anyway. #bummer #theonethatgotaway