April 9th: Sequoia Nat Park: the Big Trees

Presenting ourselves at the Park entrance today, the ranger said that the road is now open. So up we go, past Hospital Rock, yesterday’s furthest point, after which the road starts to climb steeply in a series of hairpin bends. The weather’s good, but a little hazy, so photo long shots look a bit flat, which is a shame because there are some great viewpoint pull offs. 

The snow line starts around 5,000 feet, as do the sequoias. The sequoia is also known as the giant redwood and grows naturally in a limited area high up on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The coastal redwood, the other species, grows taller but less bulky and is naturally only found along a narrow coastal strip of central and northern California.  

The first sequoias we come to look massive, for example these flanking the road. Sudden thought- does the hire car insurance cover collision with a giant redwood? 

At 6,400 feet altitude there’s a visitor centre full of sequoia information. They can live for over 2,000 years and grow over 300 feet tall. The visitor centre used to be run as a souvenir shop and cafeteria until the Park authorities decided to de-commercialise their operations. Very commendable you might say, but Jane and I could murder a coffee and bun right now. See photo of non-commercial visitor centre and, on the left, what’s labelled as an “average size” sequoia. Average size elephants still look impressive.

Leaving the visitor centre, we drive on upwards a further 3 miles to walk in the Giant Grove. From the car park the path leads through patchy snow for half a mile to where these big trees are scattered within a forest of mixed, but mainly pine, trees. The car park was quite full, say 100 cars, and it’s amazing how many people are walking to the Grove dresses in shorts and flip-flops or trainers.

Many of the big trees are set back in the forest where the snow is still deep so we don’t venture off the path. Some are next to the path, like “The Twins”. It’s always handy to have a couple of people nearby to give a sense of scale.

But now for the really big one, General Sherman. Jane is standing in the middle of a paved area that is an exact replica of the size of the of the tree’s base. It has a girth of 103 feet.

The General Sherman tree is estimated to be 2,200 years old, and is 277 feet tall, weighing 1,256 tonnes. It is the largest single-stemmed living thing on the planet. Luckily again, there are some people in the photo to give it scale. It would certainly fill a lot of matchboxes.

The sequoia are now protected but were logged profusely in the past even to the extent of cutting down a number in the 1880’s to send back intact to the East to prove to the sceptics there that such huge trees existed. It took two men 13 days to saw one of the trees through, such was its size.

As we plodded back the half mile to the car park along the slushy path we realised that we had had a unique encounter. We almost forgot about the coffee and buns.