ocT., 1899.) WHITE-BARK PINE BELT. 39 
non Bailey, in following the wagon road around the mountain, passed 
through a belt of it about 8 miles in length. It begins 3 miles 
northeast of Ash Creek at an altitude of about 5,400 feet and reaches 
northerly to about 3 miles northwest of Inconstance Creek, where 
it ends abruptly at an altitude of 5,600 feet. Here it is the dominant 
tree, and in half of it the only tree. This area is covered during the 
latter part of the afternoon by the shadow of the mountain, and couse- 
quently is colder than places of equal altitude farther north or south. 
The soil is sandy and barren and the trees are of small size. 
(3) The Upper Belt or Belt of White-Bark Pines (Pinus albicaulis). 
Still above the forest of Shasta firs, braving its way upward over the 
bare rocky ride 3s into the very teeth of the domain of perpetual snow, 
is another timber belt—an ¢ pen belt of straggling, irregular trees, whose 
Fig. 21.—Dwarf white-bark pines on a high ridge. 
whitened, twisted trunks with their storm-beaten heads of green are 
among the most weirdly picturesque objects on the mountain (fig. 20), 
The tree is the timberline white-bark pine, which, wherever found, 
pushes its way over steep and barren slopes to the extreme upper limit 
of tree growth. 
At the lower part of its range it forms an almost continuous though 
narrow belt around the mountain, and often attains a height of 30 or 40 
feet and a diameter of 2 feet. In the higher parts of its range it soon 
becomes restricted to the ridges, leaving the intervening basins and 
gulches bare, and as it climbs higher and higher becomes more and 
more reduced in size and undergoes material changes of form and posi- 
tion. At certain altitudes the slanting trunks, only 4 or 5 feet in 
height, serve as pillars to support the flattened tops which form a 
canopy of intertwined and matted branches (fig. 21). 
