Fuller forest on the benches under the treeline

Pine stands now fill gentle benches and flats in the high country, leaving bare granite where it really is bare.

Development: October 27, 2026Environment

A pale granite bench with fine cracks in the foreground, a stand of tall pines on the right and a pale granite peak rising behind the trees under a blue sky — Development capture · A granite bench with its pine stand, October 27

TryStart a new world, climb to a granite bench in the high country and look back across the stand.

High country 150 to 800 m below the treeline reads as forest and rock the way real Sierra country does. Benches, gentle slopes and hollows between the granite carry full stands of pine, taken from measured canopy cover, while the slabs between them stay bare. A further round filled the flats 150 to 500 m below the treeline and the far mountainsides just under it.

Bare slabs were still plain up close when this landed, and the granite basins that read as dry steppe have held forest down to the water since October 31.

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