Patriarch Grove (Mono County, California)

 

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest high on the summits of the White Mountains that straddle the California-Nevada border are home to the oldest living trees on earth. I've visited the area a couple of times in the past, but I've never driven to the northernmost grove of the area, the Patriarch Grove. After spending the night in nearby Bishop, CA, I decided to head up into the mountains and seek out the open-air museum.

Driving past the Forest Service's visitor center, the road abruptly becomes washboard gravel jeep trail. It's not terribly rough, but it is a bit bumpy. Twelve miles beyond, I finally reach the Patriarch Grove. As I exit the jeep, I can already feel how thin the air is up here at 11,500 feet. I've suffered from altitude sickness a couple of times and it's not pleasant. While I don't feel my head becoming a hot-air balloon attached to my shoulders, I do find that I have trouble catching my breath.

As my symptoms are not that bad, I decide to explore the area as I had planned. Just beyond the parking lot, I encounter the tree for which the grove is named, the Patriarch. While not the oldest Bristlecone Pine, it is the largest one ever discovered. In comparison to other specimen I've seen, this one is absolutely massive with a segmented trunk probably 20 feet in circumference.

The entire area up here is windswept and pretty much lifeless, save these ancient sentinels. Bristlecones have adapted to thrive in the highly acidic dolomite rich soils of these mountain tops. As not much else can survive in this soil, these trees are pretty much all alone, though the twisted and gnarled trunks give testament to the struggle for survival that takes place here. Many of these trees are more than three millennia old. The oldest one ever discovered was estimated to be 4,800 years old. Let that sink in for a moment. These Trees were already well established when the the Great Pyramid was constructed on the Giza Plateau on the other side of the world.

It's like another world up here. The white dolomite soil covers the landscape, with the occasional Bristlecone poking through. To the west, the highest of the Sierra Nevadas still have a fair amount of snow on them, while to the east, the vast desert of the Great Basin opens up. Some of the trees appear mostly lifeless with several limbs appearing to have died off centuries ago, and with only the most meager signs of life poking out of other limbs. Due to the nearly sterile environment at this altitude, the trees that have finally succumb to time take hundreds of years to decay.

On the nearby hillsides, a number of dead specimen remain standing and will likely still be there for centuries to come. I'm humbled every time I visit any of these groves. All of them exist in areas that seem other-worldly. Enough though, I still have some exploration to do today. After hiking both loops through the grove, I see that I've only hiked a little over a mile, but even with the difficulty breathing at this elevation, it was totally worth the visit.