Exploring Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks - 8/9/16

Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks - 8/9/16

A day of several, shorter hikes ... Adding up to 9 miles of trails through both Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

We began with a walk to the General Grant Tree, third largest tree in the world, largest sequoia in girth (40 feet across) ... Too hard to capture with a camera as the crown just drifts above the forest level ... Even the branches look as if they'd be over-sized trees in their own right.  We continued our hike along the North Grove Loop to walk more peacefully among the giant sequoias tucked in with their other pine, cedar and fir friends, but again the damage by fire and the pine bark beetle was ever present, distracting from the forest grandeur.

We took a drive to a panoramic vista point overlooking Kings Canyon and Hume Lake ... A narrower, one lane, steep climbing, switch backing road and a short hike to a vista point.  The view gave a glimpse into the High Sierras, even some sightings of snow on the slopes of the higher (13,000+ feet) mountains, but also wide swaths of pine bark beetle devastation and fire damage.

Our next hike took us on the Big Stumps Trail ... Sort of a graveyard of the remaining stumps of huge sequoias that were harvested for lumber.  Even one stump, the Mark Twain Stump, from a sequoia that was cut down just to harvest a cross-section for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to show the size of a grown sequoia.  This was a bit of a sad, almost bewildering hike, looking at the stump of one gigantic tree after another ... Wondering what was going through the minds of the lumberjacks ... Was it just a job or did they have an appreciation of the other worldly aspect of this botanical equivalents of dinosaurs (Paul's phrase)?

We finished the afternoon with a late hike to the General Sherman Tree, the world's largest tree, and then took the loop along the Congress Trail.  I must admit that it was my favorite trail ... We left the hordes of vacationing folks behind and wandered through a quiet forest populated by these enormous sequoias tucked in with other forest trees ... The forest appeared to be healthy, minimal fire damage, limited pine bark beetle, sequoias of all ages interspersed in a cool, temperate forest ... Away from the throngs of visitors ... Quite a treat for us!