Sequoia National Park

As you can see from the previous post it was not an easy trip to get to the park, but it was entirely worth it.

The Sequoia Park shuttle picked us up and dropped us off at the hotel. It was a one and half hour trip each way to the park and there were free shuttles to take you around the various main attractions all for $15 each. It didn’t make sense until our driver, Ralph, explained that the Federal and State governments realised that the multitude of cars visiting the attraction was actually damaging the trees so that the shuttle service is subsidised to encourage people not to drive around the park. Ralph had lots of interesting stories about the history of the sequoias and the park.

When we entered the Forest of Giants we started to see the giant trees. The first ones we saw looked huge, but as we got further in we realised they were only young trees.

When dropped of at the visitor centre we were confronted with the tree in the photo below. A sign near this tree explained that this was a very average example of a sequoia.

After a brief visit to the museum we chose not to catch the shuttle to the next attraction but to follow a 2km walk through the forest up to Hanging Rock and Moro Rock. No, Peter didn’t manage to push the rock over the edge. While you can’t see it from the photo the drop off the ledge just off to the left side of the hanging rock was about 1000 feet straight down.

The next photo is taken from Hanging Rock up to Moro Rock which is 4000 feet above the valley floor (only slightly less than the drop to the valley floor at the grand canyon). It’s difficult to see in this picture but the tiny little dots at the top on the right hand side are people. We were going to climb up there.

So here were are at the top appearing as two tiny dots to the people at Hanging Rock. We should have taken the shuttle to save our legs for the climb.

From the pictures of these magnificent specimens it’s difficult to get an idea of the size of them. This tree below was not cordoned off so Claire could get close and give you an idea of the size. My guess is that this tree was about 7/10th of the size of the General Sherman.

This is the General Sherman tree and we are standing about 20 metres in front of it, so it does not quite do it justice. It is estimated to be about 3000 years old and is the largest tree, by volume, on the planet.

There are lots of fallen trees, that are left where they fell. Many have tunnels cut into them.

We had a wonderful day exploring the park. The US National Parks that we have visited are very well run.