Sequoia National Park

"Comically large." Those were the two words that kept coming to mind as we explored Sequoia National Park.

Imagine the that only fruit you had ever seen was grapes and apples. You consider grapes normal, and apples are pretty big. Now imagine someone showed you a watermelon. You'd think it was comically large, right? You may even think it was fake. It's a poor analogy, but it's the best I can do.

Giant sequoia trees are not just a little larger than the biggest trees I had ever seen before (which are probably oaks); they are significantly larger. We often felt like we were walking in some kind of fairy tale land where a giant was about to come out of the forest. They are that big.

But let me back up a bit...

Did you notice anything odd in the picture above? Look behind us.

It's all dead.

If you've been paying attention, you know that California has been seeing more and bigger wildfires than in the past. Last fall, a massive fire hit the Sequoia/Kings Canyon area: it was a lightning-sparked fire called the KNP Complex Fire. It burned thousands upon thousands of trees (if not hundreds of thousands), including an estimated 2-3 thousand giant sequoias, which represents about 3-5% of the entire population (the trees in the picture are not sequoias).

This is bad, obviously, but it's also abnormal. Sequoias are actually quite fire resistant. They have thick bark (up to 2 feet), little sap (which is highly flammable), and their lowest branches are often 100 feet or more in the air, where most fires never reach. Sequoias actually need fire to thrive. It helps their cones open, and it clears smaller plants from around their base, which eliminates competition for nutrients for trees with very wide and shallow roots. These trees are thousands of years old, and they've survived dozens, if not hundreds of fires.

So why are they burning now? This state is hotter and drier than it has historically been, which is killing the trees, most of which are acclimated to a very specific altitude and climate zone. Many of the trees that burned in the KNP Complex Fire were already dead. Dead trees burn hotter and bigger than live trees (as we've repeatedly discovered while trying to start campfires using gathered wood). Therefore, the fires of today are hotter and bigger. 

It was really sad driving through the park and witnessing the sheer amount of destruction. Yes, things will regrow, and it won't look as bad two or three years from now when there is more green and less brown and black, but it will take a very long time to fully recover, if it ever does.

But enough depressing news. There are a lot of big trees left, and they were really spectacular!

We started by visiting the Mark Twain stump. That's right, stump. It used to be the Mark Twain tree, but it was cut down so that a few slices could be shipped east to prove to skeptics that these massive trees actually exist (the rest was turned into grape stakes and fence posts). You read that right. They cut down a 1,341 year old tree to prove that it exists. You can see one of the slices today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Another is in London.

It's distorted because I had to do a panorama to get it all!

After the stump, we stopped by the Lodgepole Visitors Center. It was closed, but that didn't matter, because across the street we found...

Snow!

Jordan had been asking that morning if she was going to get to play in snow. I knew there was snow in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada range, but I didn't think we'd be near high enough to see it. I told her it was unlikely. I was apparently wrong. Under-promise and over-deliver!

There wasn't much of it, and it was only in places where the sun didn't directly shine, but there was enough to keep the kids happy for hours. In fact, had we let them, they would have played all day and we wouldn't have seen any more of the park!

Once we finally pried them away, we set off to hit the main tourist attraction within the park: The General Sherman Tree.

This tree is not the tallest (coastal redwoods are taller) and it's not the widest (some trees in Mexico are wider, as are other sequoias), but it has the most volume, which also makes it the heaviest.

It is the largest living organism on the planet. And it's big. Very, very big.

The largest branch on the tree is about 6 feet in diameter (after a 7+ foot one fell a few years back). Let that sink in. Branch! We had a mature hardwood forest behind our last house, and the largest tree was maybe 4-5 feet in diameter.

Like I said, comically large.

So large you can drive through them, in fact.

After visiting General Sherman, we hiked the Big Trees trail. Yes, that's what it's very originally titled. It was a very easy walk around a meadow surrounded by dozens of mature sequoias. I don't know how many times I said "my goodness, look at that" during the day, but it was a lot.

To finish the day, the kids and I hiked up to the top of Moro Rock. Julie made it about 25% of the way there and then bailed. Moro Rock is a granite dome. This was basically a staircase tacked onto the face of that dome. It had a solid handrail (which wasn't the case when it was first built 100 years ago), but that still wasn't going to cut it with Julie. She chose to stay behind and watch a slackliner that was walking between Moro Rock and an adjacent ridge, a span of about 500 yards.

I don't mind heights, but I'm not sure I'd do this

The kids and I were rewarded with a 360 degree view upon reaching the top. It was beautiful and a wonderful way to end the day.

Looking east into the Sierra Nevada range

It was a little hazy looking towards the Central Valley