Conifers Archives - Michael Kauffmann

July 30, 2025July 30, 2025

Conifer Forests of Whistler, BC

Subalpine fir in the high elevations of the Coast Mountains near Whistler, BC

Exploring the unique high-rainfall, glacially sculpted forests of the southern Coast Mountains

Whistler, British Columbia is famed for its mountains, but just as magnificent are the ancient forests draped across their flanks—wet, wild, and woven with a diversity of conifers that whisper of deep time. Tucked in the southern Coast Mountains, the forests surrounding Whistler are shaped by a cool maritime climate, abundant precipitation, and a legacy of glaciation that has carved basins, ridges, and deep alluvial valleys. These physical forces, coupled with nutrient-rich colluvial and glacial soils, give rise to complex plant communities where conifers reign.

July 15, 2025July 15, 2025

Among Ancient Pines on Mount Linn

As spring transitioned to summer, we traveled deep into the Coast Range to the headwaters of the Bigfoot Trail. Mount Linn—at 8,098 feet, the highest point in California’s Coast Range—rises like an island above a sea of rugged ridges and folded drainages. Here, the Bigfoot Trail begins, and here, we spent our days working to open the path for future hikers—treading, clearing logs, and feeling that familiar rhythm of shared labor in wild places.

May 24, 2025June 28, 2025

Revisiting a Research Natural Area in the Klamath Mountains

There’s a quiet magnetism in Research Natural Areas (RNAs)—pockets of protected wild that call to those of us who seek to understand the living mosaic of California. These places are often the last intact natural systems on our public lands—and for decades, I’ve been drawn to them, trekking into these living sanctuaries to witness nature in its most undisturbed form, to document its story, and to carry that story forward.

March 22, 2025May 10, 2025

A Life Beneath the Canopy

How California’s Trees Shaped a Book, a Friendship, and a Calling

I first fell in love with trees as a high school student in the green underworld of the eastern deciduous forests near Williamsburg, Virginia. My teacher, Charles Dubay, believed we should know our world with both precision and appreciation. In his field biology class he taught us the trees twice—once in the fullness of leaf and light, when the crowns cast shade and shimmered in the wind, and again in the starkness of winter, when the branches and bark told their stories—bare.

I first learned about trees in swamps across the eastern piedmont of Virginia.

November 12, 2024November 17, 2024

Spruce Engraver Beetle in Northern California

In June 2023, my family and I took a trip up Russian Creek in the Russian Wilderness. This area is renowned for its conifer diversity so I was on the lookout for my favorite plants.

It was alarming to discover mortality in one of California’s rarest conifers, the Engelmann spruce due to Spruce Engraver Beetle in Northern California. Here is what I wrote:

It appears California’s Engelmann spruce are also under attack as the Blake’s Fork stand in the Russian Wilderness is witnessing ~60% mortality over the past few years from what I believe to be spruce beetles. More monitoring is needed.