RE: RE: [Leica] Uncertainty Principle

["Kit McChesney | acmefoto" <kitmc@acmefoto.com>]

Well, that's not what our National Park says. They call it alpine tundra,
and so that's what I call it, too. Here is a quote from the National Park
Service Web site about what you'll find there:

"There is the alpine tundra, the land above the trees. More than 100 square
miles of the park lie above treeline. Trail Ridge Road and Old Fall River
Road offer easy summer access to this windswept ecosystem where the views
seem to span forever."

I've been visiting RMNP for 20 years and I've seen the words "alpine tundra"
written on exhibition signs hither and yon all through the park, in
guidebooks, and the rest. I've crawled on the ground on trails and looked at
the plants up close, and see with my own eyes what the guidebooks describe.
Have you ever been there? We are talking about landscapes that are above
12,000 feet in elevation.

There is arctic tundra, which you refer to, and alpine tundra, which we have
here. The plant life of both is very similar, though the conditions of the
climate may be quite different.

Be careful when you say "nowhere in Colorado," unless you've seen it with
your own goggles.

Kit


- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Henning
Wulff
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 8:52 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: RE: [Leica] Uncertainty Principle


At 12:52 PM -0600 4/17/03, Kit McChesney | acmefoto wrote:
>Doug--
>
>That's true, unless you are stomping all over the tundra, which people do
>here in the Rocky Mountains, especially at Rocky Mountain National Park.
>They always want to get out there, off the trails, at high altitude, and
get
>a picture. I find myself yelling "get off the tundra!" quite a bit to folks
>who are smashing plants that will probably take 100 years to regenerate.
>Same thing with the cryptobiotic soil in Canyonlands. Very fragile stuff,
>and takes generations to recover once it's been smashed.
>
>Kit

Tundra, besides being in barren or treeless zones, also generally by
definition require long dark winters and precipitation less than
15cm/yr., which doesn't even happen in Canada's portion of the
Rockies. Nowhere in Colorado is there tundra. Alpine climates of
various sorts, which are also often very fragile, yes. But no tundra.

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    *            Henning J. Wulff
   /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
  /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
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