Sentinels

Gorgeous shot and PIP!

Admired in:
www.ipernity.com/group/tolerance

I LOVE these

Admired in ~ I ♥ Nature

I've never seen such huge juniper trees- ours usually are small and stunted.

They're much more usually an element of the semiarid scrub, down low where the forest is thinning out. But they do occasionally occur at high elevation, as here, on dry slopes where evidently the conifers have trouble getting a foothold--and then they often grow very large indeed! We heard about such juniper occurrences from the proprietor at a lodge in Rock Creek, farther south in the Sierra. He said they were rare, but once we got our eyeballs calibrated (as a prof of mine used to say) we see them everywhere on the east slope of the Sierra! I've got a whole (and incomplete) album on them:
www.ipernity.com/doc/289859/album/735131?view=2