The oldest know tree is over 4851 years old, but its exact location has been a guarded secret. We show you the ancient tree and tell you how to visit it at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest in the Inyo National Forest's Schulman Grove on the road to White Mountain north of Big Pine, California. This tree's identity is hidden by the forest service, but it was featured in National Geographic is 1958. Since then, the Forest Service has promoted other trees such as Dead Sentry, which is an obviously dead, but picturesque, bristlecone pine. There was an assertion of an older living tree's coring, but that core has not been independently verified by scientists.
Methuselah is actually in the clearly marked Methuselah Grove in the Methuselah Trail just outside the Schulman visitor center. Pick up a paper map at the start of the trail. A picture of Methuselah is outside the pit toilets with Dr. Schulman, who discovered it, embracing the ancient pine in July 2021. Methuselah is between trail marker 16 and 17. It is to your right as you pass marker 17 following the trail markers from 1 to 24. Its base is surrounded by a dead tree. Most of its branches are spikes dead and weathered orange sticking up like spikes. Nevertheless, the ancient tree has live bark and pine needles that grow for up to 40 years. (Don't touch the pine needles. You could kill the oldest living thing on earth!) The Ancient Bristlecone forest grows at between 9,000 and 11,000 feet above see level in the White Mountain range.
There are two things that signal a really old living Bristlecone Pine:
1. Part of its bark is gone and part of its trunk and branches are orange, but there is living bark and pine needles.
2. It has several feet of exposed roots. This is caused by slow erosion that erodes the white dolomite soil to wear away at a foot per 1,000 years on average.
When visiting the Ancient Bristlecone Forest you should not touch the ancient trees or take anything from them or the forest floor. To do so would be criminal and immoral. Stay on the trail at all times. You could kill an ancient tree or destroy a fragile ecosystem by going off trail. The Methuselah trail hike is a 4.5 mile loop with 800 feet of elevation gain. I saw a family with a baby carriage on it. That is probably a mistake. It should only be attempted by good hikers. Methuselah is right on trail between 16 and 17 at GPS coordinates of 37.37913, -118.16593.
Scientists have used bristlecone pine rings from live trees such as Methuselah and other cored living and dead trees to come up with more accurate dating for for ancient history going back farther than 10,000 years.
Check out this blog by FamousRedwoods.com about finding Methuselah
On the Slow Boat Sailing Podcast Linus Wilson has interviewed the crew of Sailing SV Delos, WhiteSpotPirates (Untie the Lines), Chase the Story Sailing, Gone with the Wynns, MJ Sailing, Sailing Doodles, SV Prism, Sailing Zatara, Adventures of an Old Seadog and many others.
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