The final day trip of the year was a hike on the Bristlecone Trail. Dizzy, a clamper friend from the San Jose area, was in town for Thanksgiving. He wanted to stretch his legs. The Bristlecone Trail starts at the end of the Lee Canyon road at 8700 feet in elevation and goes for about a six mile "loop." Loop is in quotes because you finish about a mile from the start. That mile is covered by road, going up or down about another 600 feet, depending on which end you started at. The elevation gain on the trail is about 800 feet. The first two miles goes through ponderosa and hardwood forest, with a few stands of aspen mixed in. The aspens ahd hardwoods had lost their leaves a couple of months before. The next two miles is at the treeline. The trees are mostly bristlecone pines here. While they are probably a couple of thousand years old, they are not as grizzled as those in the While Mountains or on Wheeler Peak. But they are still grizzled and live a tough life. The final 2 miles go back into the ponderosa-hardwood-aspen forest.
We took the dogs to stretch their legs, too. We started at the high end of the trail. It was about 40 degrees the day of the hike, and we finished near sunset, so it might have been near freezing by that hour. We walked brishly There were, of course, no other people on the trail on that day, so we let the dogs run free, hoping theyat they would not go off of the trail or down the cliffs. They did not. The trail is well marked and easy to follow. The hike was fun, even in that weather.
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