The Secret Sierra:
The Alpine World Above The Trees
By David Gilligan

What is it like to live in a place of bare rock, vertical walls, and windswept ledges, where snow covers the ground for much of the year and temperature changes of thirty degrees or more is the daily norm? The Alpine Sierra Nevada, the rugged mountain world above treeline, presents this challenge to all living things venturing into its extreme environment. From the tiny meadow vole to the delicate alpine flower growing between slabs of broken rockfall, all that live within this diverse, thin-aired landscape have developed specialized adaptations just to survive. David Gilligan describes the Alpine Sierra Nevada with a naturalist's passion for both personal observation and science. From deep inside an ice-encrusted crevasse on the Lyell Glacier to the airy heights of Mt. Ritter, The Secret Sierra: The Alpine World Above The Trees is dedicated to exploring the high and hidden world of the Sierra Nevada's alpine zone.

Author David Gilligan has made the natural history of the Alpine Sierra Nevada his life's study. A graduate of Prescott College in natural history and ecology where he now lectures (Prescott College works with the NPS in association with the American Alpine Club to clean rock-climbing routes in Yosemite Valley), David has worked with several organizations as teacher and naturalist, focusing on programs and curriculum in forest, stream and intertidal ecology, environmental awareness, nature philosophy, and natural history. He has traveled extensively throughout the Sierra Nevada backcountry on trips of a hundred days in length by foot, ski, and snowshoe. Integrating his skills as an observer with his education as a scientist, he has studied and practiced primitive and pioneer skills such as fire making, shelter building, edible and medicinal uses of wild plants and animals. When David is not teaching natural history, ecology, and landscape geography, he is in the field studying the alpine zone of the Sierra Nevada.

The Secret Sierra:
The Alpine World Above The Trees
By David Gilligan
288 pages
ISBN 1-893343-01-4
$18.95

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