Pacific Crest Trail Pioneers Search for a Shadow of the Past : Chapter 8 Page 103

The mountains along the Crest Trail are noted for their division of climate between wet and dry. Without them, in California at least, the population of the Far West would live in small villages by the sea separated from the rest of America by a vast unproductive desert. Most of the moisture that comes from heavy gray clouds from the sea, and that are conquered by the high barrier of jagged rock, falls as snow. Winter snowfalls near Lake Tahoe have been recorded at 60 feet. Further north along the chain of many year-round snow clad mountains, a ranger station in Mt. Rainier National Park holds a world's record of 83 feet for one season. Yet, summers here are often hot and dry. Without this snow 'banking' a reserve of liquid assets, the Far West would be a poor place to live. Each foot of snow that falls in the winter means that the creeks and rivers will flow a week longer in the summer, providing irrigation to grow food for how many millions of people, and jobs for countless others.

My children, having gone without water, knew it's importance. Yet, stopping to look at a crystal of snow, ever so slowly melting into a diamond of water, I could only try to impress them with another lesson on the grand design of nature. I pointed out that since the last ice age this simple drop of moisture grew giant forests, and created vast inland sea basins that today are agricultural wonderlands. I told them to look down on this creation, across the beginnings of ancient glaciers that carved the western slope, that dictated the path of rivers that are the reason for being for cities and commerce. The mountain came first. But that droplet of water that fascinated us as it fell from the melting snowbank, was as the beginning of all life in our Far Western home.

Granite Staircase on the PCT

The snow helped us on the way down. It was deep enough to cover the rough surface, and the slope steep enough to ski. Charlie Horse was the first to catch on—maybe because if he were human he would be the type to draw welfare, unemployment, and live off of a rich old lady. Why fight for footing he reasoned? By taking a hop, then a four feet-on-the-ground quick stop, he learned to glide 20 or more feet with the minimum of effort. Down we went, shush-booming, having a snowball of fun. I doubt, though, that this sport will ever catch on, for can you imagine such a thing as a ski lift for horses?

At the bottom of the slope we came to a grove of Sequoia Gigantea, the Giant Sequoia, or Sierra Redwood. These are not the coast variety that are the tallest living trees, nor, thank goodness, is their wood as valuable. The Giant Sequoia do have larger trunks (the biggest living thing on earth) and they are older.

Unlike dating geological time and understanding millions of years, I had difficulty comprehending that some of these trees were estimated to be 3,500 years old. If we had been visitors to the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite experiencing a traffic jam of auto tourists and tour buses hoping for a brief glance of a living tree that was young when the wheel was still developing from the crude cart, that might be one way to measure a Methuselah.