Sequoia / Kings Canyon NP, CA
2022 Parks Road Trip Diary: Days 66-70
Kings Canyon and Sequoia are technically two separate parks, but they’re adjacent and have similar attractions, so as a visitor it feels like one place. It’s known for – you guessed it – its giant sequoia trees. It’s also where the tallest mountain in the continental US, Mount Whitney, resides. Though we stuck to other smaller peaks during our time there. 😮💨
Day 66 (night): Arrive at Kings Canyon
After a four hour drive west from Pinnacles plus a stop in Fresno for dinner, we pulled up to Kings Canyon NP just as golden hour approached.
Before heading to our campground, we stopped at Grant Grove Village, an area housing the General Grant Sequoia Tree, the second-largest tree in the world. Because of the layout of the park, it wouldn’t make sense to drive back to this area once we passed it, so even though it was already dark, we went to check it out.
The small walking area had a few other cool attractions too. Here was a fallen sequoia that was hollowed out to become a tunnel you could walk through!
We got to our campsite pretty late, around 9pm. It was packed! Californians sure do love their parks.
At one point, one of the nearby groups of campers started loudly cheering and yelling. I began to get grumpy (isn’t it past 10pm? quiet time!) until I realized the reason for all the noise: they were trying to scare away an intruding black bear.
For the next two or three hours, we’d occasionally hear the cacophony from some new direction as the bear’s curiosity again exceeded his fear of humans. We were in a central area of the campground, so were protected a bit more than others, but I still had a bad dream that night about him tearing down our tent…
Day 67: Twin Lakes Trail
Today, we opted for a hike whose trailhead was right near our campground, Twin Lakes Trail (14.1 mi, 3200 ft elev gain). It looked like it was going to be a nice walk through the forest, ending at a small lake.
It was pleasant, but lacked anything really special. I was tempted to go beyond the lakes up to the pass to see if we could get some nice views, but it would have been another ~2 miles and 800 ft elevation gain, and this hike was already a pretty long one.
That night, we took a park ranger up on their offer to go watch their nighttime presentation since we enjoyed the previous one we sat through in Mount Rainier. It covered a history of the park, and a review of some of the wildly unsustainable activies that used to be allowed here only a few decades ago. For example, there used to be an area where visitors would gather to watch bears eat trash!
Back at camp, the friendly neighborhood bear returned again. This time, the campers learned to use their car alarms to scare away the bear. I’m grateful for their contribution to the campground’s defense, but it didn’t feel very nature-y to have car alarms blaring around you every 10 minutes 😐
Day 68: Separate Paths
On this day, I was feeling eager for a hard hike with some views (to make up for no views yesterday), and Judy was feeling like taking it easy. There were different hikes nearby to accommodate us both, so we decided to go solo today and meet up around 2pm.
I set off on a trail up to Alta Peak though I planned to take an alternate route back so I would end up at the Giant Forest Grove, where I would meet Judy and we could finish up by walking among the giant sequoias.
We’ve separated on the trail before, but only for brief one or two mile excursions where it was easy to predict how long it would take. Timing this would would be a bit more challenging. As usual, we didn’t have cellphone service to communicate, so we had to agree on the plan ahead of time. I looked at a lot of our past hikes to try to model the duration as a linear combination of distance and elevation gain. I ended up estimating I could finish it in 5 hours. If I was too far off, one of us would be painfully waiting for the other…
I loved that instead of the typical stake marking the trail’s end, there was just this piece of carved wood sitting on the ground for you to find. I almost missed it.
At the peak, my pace was lagging just a little behind where it needed to be to finish by 2pm, and I hoped I could make up time by jogging on the downhills.
This may be the hike I am proudest of, physically, for the whole summer. This was 15.7 mi / 4300 ft. The only other one we did close to those stats was Swiftcurrent Peak (Glacier NP), which was 16.9 mi / 3700 ft. But that one took me 6.5 hours, and this one took 5. And I mean, yeah, I was definitely jogging a lot on the way back. It wasn’t a walk in the park. 😉
And I don’t write this to boast. It’s just really satisfying to see the physical improvement happen in yourself over such a short time period, once you really focus on it. (And hiking makes that easy to do.) I’m sure this would happen for most anyone by day 68 of a hiking trip.
I was only a few minutes late in meeting up with Judy. Hooray! We toured the big Sequoias as planned, including the General Sherman tree, the #1 largest tree in the world by volume:
After this, we hopped in the car to drive to our next campground in Sequoia, Cold Springs campground in the Mineral King area of the park.
In our research about the park, we read that Mineral King is in a pretty remote place that you can only get to by driving for an hour down a bumpy one-car-wide two-way road.
Not a fun drive. I scratched the car on a bush on the way when I tried to pull to the side for an oncoming car to pass.
That’s not the only reason this might have been a questionable decision. We also read that marmots are so prevalent in the Mineral King area that you need to wrap the underside of your parked car with a tarp, or else they’ll climb in and try to drink your radiator fluid. We had the tarps, and hopefully would figure out how to wrap the car…?
Fortunately, the tarps weren’t needed; according to the park ranger it was late enough in the season that the marmots were now gone. 🙌
We were all set up around 4pm and took it easy for the rest of the day. I definitely needed the rest anyway.
Day 69: Monarch Lakes
For our first hike at Mineral King we decided to do the Monarch Lakes Trail (9.7 mi, 2900 ft elev gain). Most of the hikes in the area are hikes up to lakes like this one, and we chose this for its good length and elevation for a day hike.
The Monarch Lakes were the endpoint of the hike. There are two lakes, one elevated above and behind the other, and the climb up to the second was more of a rock scramble than a hike. Probably the most fun part!
The area around the lower lake had a surprising number of marmots and deer. At this point we’ve seen lots of these animals, but not hanging out together!
Day 70: Actually, bye!
For today, I had proposed doing Eagle Lake (6.8 mi, 2200 ft elev gain) in the morning before starting the drive to the next park, Death Valley. Should be about a 3-hour hike.
But the drive was 7 hours, plus whatever time it takes to get dinner. And we needed to find a place to shower; there weren’t any for us to use in Sequoia. 💩
Fitting Eagle Lake in before all that would require some serious determination to move quickly, not to mention the need to keep energy high for the long drive. Judy convinced me this was not a good idea, so we decided we’d just pack up and go.
In retrospect, I am glad we didn’t push it. The first night in Death Valley would be its own challenge.
post originally written 12/22, backdated to match reality