Pando is not a tree. It is one quaking aspen: a single organism of roughly 40,000 stems sharing one root system across about 106 acres, commonly reckoned the most massive known living thing on Earth. Every stem is genetically identical, which is why the whole hillside changes colour in the same week each autumn, and why the trunks you walk between are closer to branches than to neighbours. Its age is a live argument rather than a rounded number. The popular figure is 80,000 years, derived from an assumed rate of spread. Other researchers put it anywhere from several hundred to about 14,000, and the disagreement is about method rather than about Pando. Nobody has settled it and we are not going to tidy it here. What is documented is that the clone is failing to replace itself: deer and cattle eat the young stems before they clear browsing height, so an organism of that age currently consists mostly of old wood, and the Forest Service manages it with that in mind. The Old Spanish Trailhead sits on Highway 25 by Fish Lake, free, no permit, and a flat 1.4 mile walk out and back goes straight into the clone. There is no single trunk to stand in front of and no way to see the whole of it at once. That is the thing you have come for.
Autumn colour
late September into early October, when every stem turns gold in the same week
Old Spanish Trailhead, Highway 25 (Fishlake Scenic Byway), Fishlake National Forest, near Fish Lake, UtahYou are looking for a hillside rather than a tree: some 40,000 identical aspen stems on one root system, all turning colour in the same week. The trail runs into it from the Old Spanish Trailhead on Highway 25.
Free, US Forest Service land, no permit needed; a flat, easy 1.4-mile out-and-back trail from the Old Spanish Trailhead walks directly through the clone, and a further overlook is reachable via the Lakeshore National Recreation Trail off Forest Road 046N.
No public transit; nearest town is Richfield, UT, about 25 minutes' drive.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.