From the flanks
of Cathedral Rock, Mummy Mountain's peaks that lie at about 10,500 feet can be seen through the pines.
Confession time: this hike did NOT take me high enough to see the spectacular bristlecone
pines that lie above 9,000 feet and can be thousands of years old. (Wand to see them? Click on link below for "Old
Ones"!)
BUT, the Ponderosas and White Pines of the 7,000 to 8,000 foot elevation that I visited for these pictures are also very impressive trees.
From the flanks
of Cathedral Rock, Mummy Mountain's peaks that lie at about 10,500 feet can be seen through the pines.
The trail onto Cathedral
Rock is graced with some very solid Ponderosas!
And, judging by
the younger Ponderosas along this part of the trail, this is a healthy forest.
If you count them,
there are 4 tree trunks in this cluster, a veritable tree-family.
Note the roots on
the pine in this picture, they have become exposed over time, through erosion.
But judging by the thickness
of those roots and how and where they are anchored, this tree is going to survive just fine for many years to come!
It takes a bit of
staring to see the gist of this picture: it is the bottom of a fallen white pine, with several (one visible to
left) little white pines starting life off its decaying body. Succession is a fact of life.
To continue this theme,
here is another downed White, with a multitude of pines and quakies rooting nearby its decomposing remains.
It is a sign of good health that there is birth and death, and many, many examples of every age in between evident
in the tree-life of this forest.
The east wall of the bowl that forms the central part of the Spring Range hovers around 10,000 feet in elevation for about 6 miles, and rises to peaks at both ends: one nearly 12,000 feet to the north, and one just at 11,000 feet to the south.
In between there were other fields of quakies, punctuated by pines.
Notice how the pines appear to surround drainages while the quakies lie in the drainages themselves, except of course where water action would tend to make for a hostile environment. This is more specifically shown in the next shot (sorry about the sun in your face, it was in my face too):
It is having different niches wherein each species can excel that makes for permanent variety in a forest. And variety, as we all know, is the spice of life. In this case, it is variety that adds color to the forest, making it attract humans with cameras any time of year, but especially during fall!
So where is the picture that proves we were on top of the rocky outcrop that is Cathedral Peak? Well, you see,
the batteries on my digital camera ran out just as we got on top. Sorry. But thanks for hiking with me anyway!
Go to Second Spring Range Page: Quakies
Go to visit the "Old Ones," the Bristlecone Pines