From April to May, when the snow by repeated thawing and freezing is
firmly compacted, you may ride over the prostrate groves without seeing
a single branch or leaf of them. No other of our alpine conifers so
finely veils its strength; poised in thin, white sunshine, clad with
branches from head to foot, it towers in unassuming majesty, drooping
as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race, loving the
ground, conscious of heaven and joyously receptive of its blessings,
reaching out its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling the light
and reveling in it. The largest specimen I ever found was nineteen
feet seven inches in circumference. It was growing on the edge of Lake
Hollow, north of Mount Hoffman, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the
level of the sea, and was probably about a hundred feet in height. Fine
groves of mature trees, ninety to a hundred feet in height, are growing
near the base of Mount Conness. It is widely distributed from near the
south extremity of the high Sierra northward along the Cascade Mountains
of Oregon and Washington and the coast ranges of British Columbia to
Alaska, where it was first discovered in 1827. Its northernmost limit,
so far as I have observed, is in the icy fiords of Prince William Sound
in latitude 61 degrees, where it forms pure forests at the level of the
sea, growing tall and majestic on the banks of glaciers.
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