Our second day in Bishop was spent climbing the White Mountains to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to the oldest living, non-clonal organisms in the world, averaging 2,000 years old--the oldest being 5,062 years old. The trees themselves are the definition of gnarled with swirls of orange, yellow and black in their bark. I could have spent hours exploring the grove and obsessing over each tree, but the light was beginning to fade and we needed to make it to Mammoth.
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