Cumbres Pass

I was looking at locomotive shots by Otto Perry on the Denver public library site last night. I did one search for Rio Grande 484, got about 5 pages of photos of 484.
There were two shots that puzzled me. One shot was it going east past Jukes tree in 1948. The landscape looked almost like a desert. It looked like a desert with a huge tree in the middle of it. And there weren't very many limbs off on the one side either. I could see the bridge in the background too.
Then another photo of 484 going east past Jukes tree in 1949. It looks like it does now, half of the limbs on one side are gone on the tree, and a ton of trees in the background, and all over. Was there a HUGE blizzard that winter causing trees to grow like that? I can't believe that trees that much taller than the engine could've grown in a few months like that.
Are the dates most likely wrong? If I knew how to post links I would.
Sorry for that.
Kevin