IMG 8170

That looks to be an unusually robust juniper -- awfully thick trunk.

As I commented to Gudrun, I've got a whole collection of photos of such trees: www.ipernity.com/doc/289859/album/735131. We'd first heard about such occurrences from the proprietor of the lodge at Rock Creek, and now we see them all over the eastern Sierra, high on the drier slopes! It's an astonishing occurrence for a tree more typical of the semiarid scrub.

Thanks for the link, some wonderful pictures. I need to get better at identifying trees -- now I'm wondering if some of what I thought were bristlecone pines were similar junipers.

Thanks! Now that my eyes are calibrated, I take pictures of every one I see-- ;)
Bristlecones are distinctive because of the "bottlebrush" arrangement of the short needles on the twigs. Western red cedar has similar bark to these trees, and aren't conifers, but the fronds are flat. They also live in microenvironments that are _wetter_ than the local norm.