So began a recent email from James Mayeau telling me about a hike up to Round Top Lake with Larry Fields.  They were returning to get some photographs of the White Bark Pine Trees… remember Mr Fields told us about them in the Sierra Nevada Range of California along with that lesson on climate change?  

Anyway following is the official account from Mr Mayeau:

“GUIDED by an experienced hiker with an encyclopaedic familiarity of the trails of the central Sierra Nevada, we made the assent to the headwater of the American River. 

The trail was fairly well-maintained. A few of the tree trunks had “i”-shaped trail markers–called blazes–on them. These served as historical reminders of the Wild West days, when the trail itself was considerably less distinct.

Still there were a couple iffy places where a novice could get lost taking the wrong line at the fork in the road.

We passed an abandoned gold mine attended by the skeleton of a model T, and spare engine block, with the wheels knocked off and a rear hub adapted to power the sluce box.

I’m guessing the enterprise folded circa 1910-20.  How the miners got the car up here is a head scratcher. If they drove, then the T was one hell of an SUV.
Leaving the mine we immediately faced the problem of fording the river. One, two, three steps… done.  Thanks to some handy stepping stones.  Where I live you need a trestle bridge to do it.

The walk was a steady grade with switchbacks snaking up the side of a gradual rise. It didn’t feel like climbing really.

Whitebark Pines overlap with the ranges of other high-altitude conifers. These include Western White Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Mountain Hemlock, and Red Fir.

We cruised over a rise, and there it was!

Round Top Lake surrounded by a semi circle of Whitebark on the North, and a semi circle of glacial cirque on the South.    There were only Whitebark Pines, the kings of the mountain.

Although the trip took an hour or more it seemed shorter because we were met by a trickle of hikers coming down as we went up. Everyone was cordial, happy to be there, passing small-talk and banter.

Regards,
James Mayeau

More photographs http://picasaweb.google.com/JamesMayeau/RoundTopLake#   
More about whitebark pines http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/cone-bearing_trees/white-bark_pine.html 
Part 1 http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/08/white-bark-pine-trees-a-note-on-climate-change-from-larry-fields/  

for some context …  http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/08/clean-up-just-stirs-up/

In the Sierra Nevada the White Bark Pine is typically the highest-elevation pine tree marking the tree line.

Round Top Lake, at 9,340 feet elevation in the Northern Sierras near Carson Pass is my favorite place for informal climate history research.   Here White Bark Pine trees grow in tight clumps around half of the lake; as shown in this photograph from Kevin Gong’s website. http://kevingong.com/Photography/RoundTopTrees.html

Here the pines in any given group are nearly identical genetically; they reproduce asexually. A new tree trunk will grow outward from an existing root system, and then curve upward. Because the seeds that do sprout at this altitude can’t endure the harsh winters.

Walking along the trail, one can see a small gap between the pines near the lake and the ones farther down that have grown from seed.

Question: After the last Ice Age, how did the pines reach the lake in the first place?
Answer: At some time after the last Ice Age, the Northern Sierras were somewhat warmer than they are now. The pines sprouted from seeds at that time.

Several years ago, I was surprised to see a knee-high pine seedling a short distance outside the half-circle of pine clusters hugging the lake. However it did not survive.

If the Northern Sierra climate heats up in a big way, I’d expect individual seed-sprouted pines at Round Top Lake to eventually supplant the clumps of small trees.

Perhaps over the last thousand years, the clones have been gradually accumulating random mutations which would put them at a competitive disadvantage with their surviving seed-sprouted progeny?

When I see isolated pine seedlings that grow to 6 feet in height, then I’ll believe that the Northern Sierra climate is the warmest that it’s been since before the last Ice Age.

Naturalist Jeffrey P Schaffer devoted a couple of pages to Round Top Lake in his hiking guidebook, The Tahoe Sierra. http://www.amazon.com/Tahoe-Sierra-Natural-History-Northern/dp/0899972209

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More from Larry Fields here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/larry-fields/

The Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis; family Pinaceae) occurs in the mountains of the Western United States and Canada, specifically the subalpine areas of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Range, the Pacific Coast Ranges, and the northern Rocky Mountains (including the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem). The Whitebark Pine is typically the highest-elevation pine tree of these mountains, marking the tree line. Thus, they are often found as krummholz, trees dwarfed by exposure and growing close to the ground. In more favourable conditions, trees may grow to 20 m in height, although some can reach up to 27 m… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitebark_Pine

But a Border Collie named Gurr and his toy-making is one notch above chimp termite-fishing.

On 13th August 2005 I set out for a hike with a friend, Kanako, and the large handsome Border Collie mix.   

We set out from Sacramento County to hike the little-known Bassi Cabin loop trail. The hike is a symphony of coniferous forest, running water, and glacier-polished granite.

I walked down through the trees, Gurr ran ahead to be certain that there were no ferocious Golden Retrievers in our path, stopped to sniff the shrubbery, ran back to check up on us, and then ran forward again. When we came to some large Jeffrey pines, we turned off the trail for the short cross-country leg of our adventure. In a few minutes, we came to the creek. Gurr promptly jumped into the water, and when he came out, we walked downstream for about 200 m, before crossing over. We followed a game trail to Bassi cabin, which is still occasionally used by the Bassi family.

The cabin itself is fairly ordinary, but the backdrop is gorgeous: the steep face of a gigantic granite boulder, flanked by conifers, towers over the cabin. About 100 m past the cabin, my friend Kanako and I sat down by the creek for lunch.

Unlike humans, Gurr thinks that a lunch break is for playing fetch. He prefers to fetch big sticks, rather than small ones, because the heavier sticks give his neck muscles a better workout. Gurr managed to find a nice piece of wood of the right weight. Then, to my surprise, he started chomping down on one end. He is not normally a very chewy dog. When Gurr has excess energy–which is most of the time–he usually runs, swims, or digs. But the wood chips were flying, and I wondered what he was up to. My question was answered a few minutes later, when Gurr brought the wood chunk to me, knowing that I would throw it for him. Initially, the wood chunk was too large for Gurr to grip comfortably in his mouth; so he chewed a handle on one end!

The canine craftsmanship had nothing to do with high-priority survival, and everything to do with lower-priority preparation for play. As an indicator of cognitive function, toy-making trumps tool-making. In terms of intelligence, chimpanzees have nothing on Border Collies!

***

Larry lives in California and is a regular reader and contributor to this weblog.  The picture is of Gurr.

The species, Sarcodes sanguinea, has no chlorophyll and so, like most plants, can’t obtain its energy directly from the sun. Instead it is parasitic on fungi that also colonise the roots of pine trees.  Experiments with radioactive carbon 14 show that the sugars from the conifer roots enter the fungi and then are transferred into the roots of the snow plant.

So we have a true vascular plants with flowers and seed-bearing capsules, that can’t photosynthesis, instead getting its energy from pine trees via fungi.

Does this all have something to do with being perfectly red?

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Links and Notes

http://tinyurl.com/pbffc2

Regional specialization of Sarcodes sanguinea (Ericaceae) on a single fungal symbiont from the Rhizopogon ellenae (Rhizopogonaceae) species complex1
Annette M. Kretzer et al., American Journal of Botany, 2000, http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/full/87/12/1778

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljune97.htm
http://www.botany.org/parasitic_plants/Sarcodes_sanguinea.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericaceae

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/do-tourists-degrade-national-parks/#comments

Thanks Larry!