Utah Trip - Day 6

On this day we stayed in Utah. In 2014, when I was in the area with Margarit and the girls, we hired an outfitting company to take us out to the White Pocket, and to some Anasazi sites. The guide that was assigned to us was a fellow named Brent. We've stayed in touch by e-mail since then, and on this day, Wednesday October 21st, we were meeting up with Brent to go to a place called the Twisted Forest Trail. This area is in the Dixie National Forest, just outside of Cedar Breaks National Monument. It is at high elevation, about 10,000 feet, and like the last time we were up this way, a couple of days prior, there was snow.

Brent was pretty respectful of a couple of stupid Canadians that were packing around the high country with big, heavy cameras in crappy weather conditions. Although he doesn't really let on, Brent is actually a pretty exceptional photographer himself, and has a number of fantastic images posted on photonet...

http://photo.net/photodb/member-photos?user_id=7356404

We followed Brent up towards Cedar Breaks National Monument. He turned off on a secondary highway and circled around to the north boundary of the park. Here we turned off onto a rough backroad that actually traversed the Brian Head Ski area before winding down into the aspen forest beyond. There was more rain than snow at this point in the day and the road was a little muddy and greasy. The parking area at the trailhead was particularly bad. We parked and wandered up onto a slope that was inhabitated by a scattering of spectacular Bristlecone Pines.

The following is information on Bristlecone Pines was taken from a US National Park Service website...

Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva and Pinus aristata) are among the oldest living organisms on earth. Clone-creating plant species like Quaking Aspen live to be much older if you age their root systems. Bristlecones are only found in six states, Utah included. The oldest LIVING tree is called "Methuselah" and is 4,765 years old. This tree is nearly 1,000 years older than any other bristlecone alive today. It lives in a secret location in the White Mountain range of eastern California. The oldest known tree named "Prometheus" was cut down in 1964 by a doctoral student. He was studying climate change as expressed in receding glaciers whose historic size could be measured by influence on the growth rings of nearby ancient bristlecones. This happened in what is now known as Great Basin National Park. The tree was later confirmed to be almost 4,900 years old.

The tree is also noteworthy because the needles stay on the limb for over 40 years, unlike most other pines, which shed their needles every few years. This is important, because the tree can go through periods when it does not grow at all. At such high elevations (8,000-11,000 ft), there are years when the environment does not thaw. This prevents the tree from putting on a new year's growth (both foliage and cambium rings.) By keeping its needles longer, the tree doesn't lose all of its foliage without having the opportunity to grow new needles. It also means that a tree with 900 obvious rings may be significantly older.

Great longevity is also insured by highly resinous wood which helps prevent the trees from desiccating in the hot, dry temperatures. This resin also helps shield the bristlecones from insects and harmful bacteria that prey upon many other, more fragile trees.

We spent a few hours wandering around here and making photographs. Brent climbed up the ridge to the rim of the amphitheatre, looking to isolate some of the individual trees against the sky. The rest of us dumb Canadians stayed lower down, with our heavy camera gear. But the clouds rolled in and helped to compositionally isolate some of the trees. With the clouds came some heavier rain turning to wet snow, so we eventually had to retreat.

After driving back out to the road, we headed over to Cedar Breaks National Monument. It looked like the clouds might break a little, and we wanted to try a short hike along the rim. But the trail was very muddy and slippery, with some wet slushy snow, and there were no guard rails or barriers to prevent a dangerous tumble hundreds of feet down into the canyon. We soon gave up on the hike and went back to the viewpoint. Brent headed back to Kanab at this point while we stayed for another half hour or so and tried to take some photographs from the viewpoint. Brad got a couple of pretty spectacular shots with, of all things... his iPhone. Perhaps even the best shot of the trip. Makes us dumb Canadians with our big cameras look a little dumber yet....

Though maybe when I get around to processing my film I'll find that I've captured something that can compete with Brads image. For now, here are a few digital snapshots that I took on this day...