What is the oldest tree in Fish Lake, Utah?
The oldest living thing at Fish Lake is Pando, a single quaking aspen made up of roughly 40,000 stems sharing one root system across about 106 acres, entered from the Old Spanish Trailhead on Highway 25 in Fishlake National Forest. Its age is disputed and we are not going to narrow it: the popular figure of 80,000 years comes from an assumed rate of spread, and other researchers argue for anything from several hundred years to about 14,000. What is not disputed is the mass, which is why Pando is commonly described as the largest known living organism on Earth. A flat 1.4 mile out and back from the trailhead runs a spur directly through the clone. Free, no permit, US Forest Service land.
Pando lies beside Highway 25, the Fishlake Scenic Byway, on the southwest side of Fish Lake in Fishlake National Forest, central Utah. The nearest town is Richfield, about 25 minutes away; there is no public transport, and the byway can close with snow. Parking is at the Old Spanish Trailhead, which is signed, free and needs no permit. From there a flat 1.4 mile walk out and back on the Lakeshore National Recreation Trail runs a spur directly through the clone, and an overlook reachable off Forest Road 046N shows the extent of it from outside. The Forest Service manages the site, and researchers are actively studying whether the clone can still replace itself, because deer and cattle browse the young stems before they clear head height. Nothing here is closed to visitors. The one thing to understand before arriving: there is no single trunk and no viewpoint that holds the whole organism, so you walk into it rather than up to it, and the stems on either side of the path are all one thing.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.