Sequoia National Park 2004-2014

Kings Canyon

Taking the drive out to Kings Canyon.

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The Ranger back at Grant’s Grove sent us here. He said the squiggle rock was in every single geology textbook in the World. It’s about plates and pressure and heaving – you can kind of picture it just by looking.

I think King’s Canyon is dang spectacular but not so often visited because it is at the end of a long twisty drive from Sequoia and then you have no choice but to re-track your steps…

…still, if you’ve never seen it I propose it’s worth the drive.

A one minute walk from the road, Grizzly Falls.

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Can you even Believe this. Check out at the right edge, two thirds down and see the cars on the ledge there. Gaspingly gorgeous.

Two weeks later the fire is still burning and the Forest Service has started what they call a Prescribed Burn to meet up with the lightening fire. This is all in keeping with the policy of fire management begun in 1968.

Their bottom line is that Sequoias need fire – more later.

We’re driving along and there by the side of the road is a Forest Service Fire Truck and a Forest Service cutie with postcards and brochures, there to serve the public, our tax dollars at work, to explain what was going on to anyone who stopped, which was a good idea since there was Fire right there by the side of the road.

In preparation for setting the Prescribed Burn, they cleared a few trees.

The idea now is to let naturally occurring fire burn itself out and to set prescribed burns, to keep the brush and tinder under control so that the natural fires don’t threaten people or structures.

Sequoias usually live 2,000 years and often more than 3,000. John Muir wrote ‘nothing hurts the Big Tree. Baring accidents, it seems to be immortal.’ Chemicals in their bark protect them from disease and insects. They survive fire because their thick layer of bark protects the ‘alive’ layer inside and then the bark grows in folds back around the fire scars. The bark doesn’t harbor flammable sap and it holds water, adding to its fire survivability.

The sounds, walking along a forest trail with fire all around was a-MAaa-zinG. The Forest Service was keeping the fire to a snappy sizzle and that’s what you could hear, like a fajita just out of the kitchen sizzle, punctuated by huge thunderclaps and scattered machine gun fire.

And they need fire to make more little baby sequoias. Fire releases the seeds from their cones, provides nutrient-rich ash and mineral soil for germinating the seeds and burns down the competing trees so the sequoias can hog up all the sunlight.