Re: vegetation question (e.g. Windy Point)

Russo:

You're right on! Allegedly, aspens are related to the grasses of the world. They spread in much the same way, mainly through their ever expanding root system. Aspens also are said to like carbon dioxide and grow faster and thicker if there is a lot of carbon dioxide. [Maybe THAT's the "fix" for global warming -- continent-sized aspen forests!]

To illustrate the rapid changes in forest cover, consider this photo which I took from the end of the wye at the top of Boreas Pass on July 7, 1968. There once was a large stone engine house, much like the one at Alpine Tunnel, located all the way across where the third leg of the wye appears to be (but wasn't quite). The building is the old Section House (now a very nice shelter for hikers and cross country skiers). There were other auxiliary buildings around it in railroad days as well as snowsheds all across the scene. I believe there was a small depot here too.

Look at the mountainside behind the section house. See all the bare stumps. I once thought they were cut for building materials but more likely they were cut for firewood to heat at least the principal buildings. Note the small trees to the right and left of the bare stumps -- the forest beginning to come back 30 years after the railroad was abandoned and torn up. Note, too, the low brush on each side of the wye.

I was last over this Pass in my Toyota FJ Cruiser in August 2006, almost 40 years after I made this photo. The forest now has grown back substantially and so has the brush, which no longer is "low". Many of the bare stumps have rotted. Growth at this altitude is slower that at lower altitudes. It's not far from the tree line where the thinness of the air stops further growth up the mountains.

Best regards, Hart Corbett



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Russo Loco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi, Christian -
>
> When pine trees are removed, either for use by
> humans as fuel or railroad ties or by
> Mother Nature by avalanche or forest fire, the
> aspen will tend to take over. They are
> very fast growing, and spread rapidly as their
> root systems expand. (Large groves of
> aspen are generally recognized as the largest
> living organisms on earth). Eventually
> pine trees will grow tall enough to shade the
> aspen, which will gradually die off, and
> the pines will take over again after two or three
> hundred years.
>
> See
> [ngdiscussion.net]
> 33431#msg-133431 for a comparison of the Cresco
> Tank area in 1975 versus 2004. The trees have
> grown another eight to ten feet taller in the past
> five years, and today there are even more of them.
> Several of my 1968 'Last Freight' shots could not
> be duplicated today - such as 'Slippery Footing'
> west of Sublette (see
> [ngdiscussion.net]
> 032#msg-98032) - even if #483 and #498 were
> restored to operation unless a LOT of trees were
> cut down as well.
>
> - Russo