Great Basin National Park - Climbing to the Top

Above the pygmy forest, at about 8,000 feet in elevation, you enter the realm of mountain mahogany, a shrub with hard, reddish wood. Climb just another 1,000 feet, and you find yourself in cooler air, surrounded by the sweet resinous smell of spruce-fir forests and aspen groves (their leaves turn the autumn hillsides a blazing gold). Fed by melting snows, ice-cold streams twist and tumble their way through the forests. You might even spot a bighorn sheep, a species reestablished here in the early 1980's.

Higher still, at about 11,000 feet, you approach the tree line. Stunted limber pines ring the shores of crisp blue alpine lakes nestled in beautifully carved glacial basins. Snow lies like a mantle on the mountains' shoulders. Yellow asters, lupines, and shooting stars grace unspoiled meadows during the brief summer, a crowning glory to the procession of color that has climbed up the slopes since spring.

At the very limit of the tree line, the park reveals its most prized treasure: three separate groves of bristlecone pines -- the oldest living tree species on earth. Many bristlecones appear lifeless. Small, gnarled, and often mostly denuded of bark, the stunted branches reach upward as though clawing at the sky. Large areas of tree trunk have been baked by the sun and burnished by brutal winds, snow, and ice to a striking golden hue. Only on close inspection do you discover small patches of bark here and there and clusters of sharp green needles. Scanty clues, indeed, to the fact these trees are alive and growing -- and some have been doing so for more than 4,000 years!

The secret of such longevity lies in the bristlecone's ability to adapt to a harsh and inconstant climate. During severe winter weather and prolonged annual droughts, most of the tree dies; just enough needles are left for photosynthesis to sustain life. (In warmer, wetter times, more needles develop.) Bristlecone needles survive some 15 to 30 years. This long duration is nature's method of conserving energy, since the tree does not have to grow as many needles each year. In addition, the bristlecone's resinous wood protects the tree against disease. Even the arid alpine air is turned into a positive force: it helps preserve the trees from rotting.

Above the patriarch pines, you reach the snowy spires of the South Snake Range. Looking west from its highest pinnacle, Wheeler Peak (13,063 feet), you can view the almost endless march of desert and mountain, alternating across the basin, stretching into forever. In this wilderness, remote and rugged, nature proves once again that life is indomitable.