3 Sierra Sugar Pines added to among world’s largest

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A big tree hunter who has been charting some of the largest trees in the West for more than a decade has added three in the Sierra Nevada to the list of tallest sugar pines known to exist in the world.

Michael W. Taylor recently documented two in the Tahoe National Forest west of Lake Tahoe nearly as tall as the length of a football field. At 267 feet, 6 inches (81.5 meters) and 267 feet, 1.8 inches (81.4 meters), they are the second and third tallest sugar pines ever recorded, the Tahoe Daily Tribune reported.

The third, found in the Stanislaus National Forest, checks in sixth on the all-time list at 253 feet, 2 inches (77 meters).

The largest of the three, dubbed the “Redonkulous” tree, measures 10.5 feet (3 meters) in diameter 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) above the ground — a universal measurement known as diameter breadth height.

Taylor, a longtime partner of the Sugar Pine Foundation in South Lake Tahoe, California, located and hiked to the growing behemoths based on satellite sensing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Geological Survey.

The nonprofit supports his exploration as it works to combat the effects of bark beetles and blister rust in western forests.

Taylor said the tallest sugar pines he has found tend to be on the western slope of the Sierra

Nevada and up into Oregon, where there isn’t as heavy of a snow load. He doesn’t like to give the exact location of the trees out of fear that the public will “love them to death.”

“For me, it’s like a new frontier, but it’s also a treasure hunt,” Taylor told the Daily Tribune earlier this month.

Taylor also was responsible for finding the tallest sugar pine in 2015, the Tioga Tower, measuring 273 feet, 8.9 inches (83 meters). In 2006, he co-discovered the tallest known living tree on Earth, the Hyperion, a Coast Redwood in Redwood National Park that since has grown to 381 feet (116 meters).

Tressa Gibbard, program manager for the Sugar Pine Foundation, said the discoveries allow them to learn more about the sugar pine.