bristlecone pine

While we were excited by the prospect of dark skies and meteors later that evening, our aim for the day was to see some earthbound wonders: Great Basin's bristlecone pines.

Fifty years later, a visual artist had an idea: set up speakers around the bristlecone pines, including the Prometheus stump, and have the trees "talk" to visitors as they hike through the park.

Caption: Below: A stream flows through the Ansel Adams Wilderness at 10,000 feet above sea level and what is traditionally known as timberline by backpackers--sparsely forested, granite outcrops and garden-like settings; right: Bristlecone pine forest between 10,00 and 11,000 feet above sea level, a few miles south of Forester Pass

But the chronology from the San Juan bristlecone pines showed something completely new:

I'd recently seen the Bristlecone Pines at Wheeler Peak

The Bristlecone pines in the USA are 4,600 years old!

Hiking Nevada's County High Points' trails meander through bristlecone pines, the oldest trees on the planet, to the summits Boundary Peak, Nevada's highest and Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park to the historic overlook of Mount Davidson above Virginia City; along alpine lakes and cliffs to Ruby Dome; past herds of pronghorn antelope to Mount Jefferson in Nye County; around the old Pony Express trail in the pursuit of Desatoya, Churchill County's high point.

White Mount Peak home to the nearly 5000-year-old Bristlecone pines is described as being easy to ascend "if one is acclimatized and can handle a round-trip hike of fifteen miles in such a super-bright skin-sizzling landscape."

Near the California-Nevada border, Bristlecone pines have lived longer than any other trees in the world, nearly 5,000 years.

A continuous chronology for over 8,000 years has been established using dead tree trunks of bristlecone pines.

The world's oldest trees are thought to be Bristlecone pines in the USA which have been dated at 4,600 years old - as old as the Egyptian pyramids.

The wall reliefs and floor pieces in her new show were in fact inspired by the wind-blasted trunks of the ancient bristlecone pines that the artist encountered on a trip to California's White Mountains.

Only 20 to 30 minutes from the Strip, Welch could have gone to Mount Charleston and on the way seen blooming Joshua trees and ancient bristlecone pines, enjoyed a meal at the lodge overlooking this scenic area or gone on one of a dozen hikes.

Bristlecone pines could be considered Earth's oldest living inhabitants, since some of them may be 5,000 years old.

'I went on a tree pilgrimage because the bristlecone pines are the oldest organisms.