Explore the Methuselah Grove Lone bristlecone
Click and drag on the image below, and see also the accompanying text.
As the Discovery Trail rounds the corner of the hill to the west slope it
leaves behind the white dolomite (a kind of limestone), and the bristlecone
forest abruptly stops. Many of the bristlecone pines in the White Mountains
grow in groves that are strictly limited to a particular rock type, usually
dolomite.
Past the edge of the grove the trail runs across an outcrop of rusty red
quartzite, an ancient metamorphic rock, with a single spectacular bristlecone
pine growing on it. This rock type has the same ecological role as dolomite:
reducing competition and fire danger to the few hardy trees that will grow on
it. Across the valley the rock type is sandstone, and no trees at all will grow
there, only sagebrush. On this cold autumn day cloud shadows were racing across
the hillsides.
The paved road ends at the Schulman Grove, but White Mountain Road, visible in
the bottom of the sagebrush valley, continues north along the spine of the
range for many miles. It passes a side road to the Crooked Creek Research
Station and ends at a gate two miles short of the Mount Barcroft Laboratory at
12,000 feet. Both belong to a series of high-altitude research laboratories run
by the University of California. Along the way there are a number of groves of
bristlecone pines, including the Patriarch Grove, before the road climbs
permanently above timberline. An old jeep trail, now used as a hiking trail,
continues to the summit of White Mountain Peak, at 14,246 feet the third
highest mountain in California.
