This gallery is a photojournal of a research trip I was on July 2006, which took me and 2 colleagues from Victoria to Cranbrook, B.C. and then to the Pemberton and Lillooet areas, covering 3000 km. of highway and logging roads. The project involves studying the whitebark pine tree, the highest-elevation pine tree in B.C., found anywhere between about 1500m up to the tree line. We were doing an initial study to see the effect of the extensive mountain pine beetle outbreak on the whitebark pine, a much rarer and slower-growing species than the lodgepole pine. Based on our initial observations and climate-suitability data, the future of the whitebark pine looks grim. The information we gathered was very interesting though, and the behaviour of the beetle on whitebark pine seems different than it does on lodgepole. Future trips in September and hopefully the next couple of years should shed some light into this phenomenon.