Every year , I care to get out of town for my birthday . Last twelvemonth , the hub and Iheaded down to our breakers shack in Baja . The year before that , wehiked and live tubbed in the wilderness around Florence Lake . And the year before that , wetrekked through the snow in the Mammoth Basin .
This class ? After an exhausting five months ofcooking , shot , and writing , I did n’t even want tothinkabout organise an outing . I was very much depicted object with bumming on the beach with a beer in bridge player , and had planned to do so up until two day before we decided to drive up to Sequoia National Forest .
As a California resident for the last 12 - plus years , I could n’t think that I had n’t made it to the sequoia groves yet . I ’d drive through the park many clip on my way up toKings Canyonor down to Kern River , and had listen of giant trees you could labor through and bears that freely roamed the roadside , but since it was right in my backyard , so to speak , I always set aside the trip for “ one day . ”It’ll still be there , I ’d say .
And of course , a grove of 2,000- to 3,000 - twelvemonth - onetime trees is n’t go anywhere . But “ one daylight ” is a silly rationale when I could be doing it today — and that today materialise to be on my natal day last weekend . ( gamey - five to all the other Flag Day babies out there ! )
I turned 34 . But compared to a redwood , I have n’t even outgrown the baby stage yet ! Ah , nothing like a giant redwood to make you feel young .
Since we had a short weekend , we spent most of our time in the Giant Forest , an surface area spanning almost 2,000 acres and self-praise 5 of the 10 largest trees in the populace . The jumbo sequoias are tucked in and among a woodland of Jeffrey , sugar , and lodgepole pines , nearly incognito , until you look up and pull in you ’re standing next to tree trunk 10 to 20 foot across .
tree are measured not by height or width , but by total volume of all the wood above ground . That ’s why the great General Sherman tree , named after the American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman , currently admit title to the reality ’s most massive tree diagram , even though it ’s neither the marvellous nor the widest tree diagram on earth . But with a height of 275 feet , a breadth of 25 feet , and a bole volume of 52,513 three-dimensional feet , it ’s sure a biggie .
And this tree is right here in California , just a poop - mile stroll from the route ? suck me aside .
We see some other no - less - telling sequoia along the Congress Trail , include the President , named after President Warren G. Harding . It ’s considered the third large tree diagram in the world by criterion of bulk of its proboscis , but if measured by the total amount of wood in the tree , it ’s actually the second largest . aboveboard , it looked a lot like the Sherman Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , but without the crowds .
The Chief Sequoyah , named after a Cherokee silversmith , ranks on the listing as number 26 .
Then there were two disjoined stands of humble sequoias , the House and the Senate , which grade — you judge it — the Congress cluster .
We passed uprooted redwood and burnt sequoias , and even stood inside a hollow redwood that had been completely gutted by fervidness .
We made it all the way to Crescent Meadow , the sort of idyllic grassy meadow that I have a go at it . It was filled with corn lily and rimmed with sequoias , and so quiet compared to the Sherman blockade .
The trail coil around the meadow to the Chimney Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , an honest-to-god sequoia that was waste by attack in 1914 , leaving behind a melanise vacuous trunk .
Further up the trail was Tharp ’s Log , a hick cabin build by pioneer woodsman Hale Tharp and lived in for 30 year until Sequoia National Park was create in 1890 . When the great unwashed talk about sustainable building and recycled materials these days , they could stand to larn something from Tharp ; his abode was contained almost entirely within a 50 - foot - long hollow sequoia trunk . He make a door , window , stairway , and even a stone fireplace and chimney inside the log . The adjoining meadow was where he pasture stock and grew food crops . What a life .
Coming out of the sequoias , we mount up Moro Rock , a granite monolith in the centre of the green between Crescent Meadow and Giant Forest .
At 6,725 feet above the forest floor , we had talkative prospect of the Giant Forest to the left hand and the Great Western Divide right in front . All those snowy peaks were part of the Sierra Nevada range that organise the border between Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks . On one side flowed the Kaweah River , and on the other , the Kern . It was enchanting to think how I ’ve been on both incline at some point , looking up at the same tiptop .
On the other side of the dome , we looked down over the relentlessly curvey Generals Highway and the Kaweah River .
Sequoia is known for being bear country . And in all the years I ’ve been in the backcountry , whether it be Yosemite Wilderness or John Muir Wilderness , I ’ve never , ever figure a bear . Not even from a space . unknown as it sounds , I ’d always wanted to see one up close with my own eyes .
That day , we saw not one , butfourbears within a three - hour stop ! The first two were lark about right by the wayside . We could n’t believe it . We ’d reckon them from the shuttle , just a few yards from the museum , and immediately have off and crept back to where they were . Two American bleak cubs were no more than 30 feet away , take care at us curiously when we go about , but otherwise uninterested . We marveled at them from our rod on the road before they lumbered off .
The other bears appear near the end of the day , also cubs , and also uninterested in the 12 or so people that had pull over to the side of the road to ascertain them .
We ended the weekend with a quick climb up Beetle Rock for some beers with a view , and drive out the southern park entrance to do something I ’d always wanted to do since I go to California — repulse through a come down redwood log !
With zero cars around , we of form had to drive back and forth through the “ burrow ” a few time , just to verify we got a right stroke . That experience alone was deserving the trip ! And one that every Californian — scratch that , every American — needs to do at least once .
