| The Clark Mountains are a remote mountain range in the untraveled southeastern part of California. The highest peak, Clark Mountain, is over 7000 feet high. The range is special in that the highest elevations contain a few white firs, growing in a cooler, north-facing canyon on the mountain's flanks. They are relics from the Ice Age, when it was cooler and wetter and the many mountain ranges in the area were covered in conifer forest. Now these few firs cling to life near the peak, banking on a climate change which might let them reclaim their past range. Interestingly, they are genetically related to the firs in the Rocky Mountains many miles away, and not to simiar firs in the relatively close Sierra Nevada. |
