Near treeline, zones can consist of white pines (such as whitebark pine or bristlecone pine); or a mixture of white pine, fir, and spruce that appear as shrub-like krummholz.
The bristlecone pine, being exceptionally long-lived and slow growing, has been used for this purpose, with still-living and dead specimens providing tree-ring patterns going back thousands of years.
In the sub-alpine zone of the mountains spruce and fir predominate, and they are succeeded near the timber line by larch, whitebark pine, limber pine and bristlecone pine.
The bristlecone pine population on this mountain is divided into at least two distinct sub-populations, one of which is accessible by a popular interpretive trail.
