Trees

Giant Tree Is So Massive It’s Never Been Captured In A Single Image. Until Now.

Cloaked in the snows of California’s Sierra Nevada, the 3,200-year-old giant sequoia called the President rises 247 feet (75.3 meters). Two other sequoias have wider trunks, but none has a larger crown, say the scientists who climbed it. The figure at top seems taller than the other climbers because he’s standing forward on one of the great limbs.

The trunk is 27 feet wide and the mighty branches hold 2 billion needles, the most of any tree on the planet. On top of that, it still adds one cubic meter of wood per year – making it one of the fastest growing trees in the world. Giant sequoias exist in only one place, where The President and smaller trees that make up his “House” and “Senate”, reside — on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas in California, at 5000-8000 ft above sea level. The team painstakingly put together a set of pulleys and levers to climb the tree. It took 32 days and then they pieced together the 126 separate photos, but they managed it! Awesome stuff. Here’s some footage of the team at work:

8 Comments

  1. If only humanity concentrated on the workings of the natural world and imitated it the best they could, instead of this monstrous oddity called industrialization.

  2. We visited them (not in snow!!) a couple of years ago… majestic, magic standing ones. Thank you for amazing footage… not entirely sure how I feel about them being climbed, though….. :-) Mind you, one Sequoia that we saw somewhere on our road trip had a black bear cub snuggled up on one of its lower branches :-)

  3. until now? this was first printed in National Geographic two years ago. awesome though, the poster has been on my wall ever since. The irony of enjoying an image of giant old growth printed on paper that we probably bought off of japan after they bought our pulp made from our own old growth. well done again humans

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