Bristlecone Pines - We're heading up to do our hike to the glacier today and thru a grove of Bristlecone Pines. We started our hike and a short way in, we ran into a ranger who helped us identify which ones were the Bristlecone Pines. The Bristlecone Pines had very short, compact needles, like a bottle brush and the cones were very compact, have little spines on them and are a beautiful purple color when young. Now that we can identify them, we saw some of the most beautiful trees! They have dated some of the bristlecones as 3,000 to 4,000 years old!! That's twice as old as Christianity! the oldest tree, Prometheus, was cut down in the 1960's, legally, by someone studying the Bristlecones. At the time it was cut, it was 4,600 years old and still alive. They can date the trees by counting the tree rings, but because of the very dense wood of the Bristlecone Pines, some trees can stand for hundreds of years after they die. We'll see more Bristlecone Pines later when we visit the Schulman Grove.  

Original Photo