California,  Monday walks,  Mountains,  Trees, forests and woodland

More giant trees and giant vistas

Colonel John White, Park Superintendent, at a gathering at the ‘Nation’s Christmas Tree’

Following it he wrote to the president, Calvin Coolidge, suggesting that an annual ceremony be held here each year. As a result, in April 1926, the President Coolidge designated the General Grant as the Nation’s Christmas Tree.

But Coolidge isn’t the only president to have played a part in building the fame of this tree. Thirty years later, in 1956, President Eisenhower declared the General Grant Tree to be a National Shrine. It was dedicated ‘in memory of the men and women of the Armed Forces who have served and fought and died to keep this Nation free’.

Grant Grove walk

We had already seen and been awed by the coastal redwoods in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. But while those are the tallest trees to be found anywhere in the world, they are not the most massive overall. That honour belongs to their cousins, the giant sequoias (as measured by a combination of height and width).

Kings Canyon / Sequoia National Park was one of the first places marked on the map in planning our California road trip, as it had been skipped with some reluctance on our 1991 visit due to lack of time. We arrived in the park around midday and stopped just inside the entrance to eat our picnic snacks. We read on a notice board there that was to be a ranger talk by the famous General Grant tree, and as we’d planned to go there next in any case, we made sure to arrive in time for that.

The talk, by ranger Brett, was really interesting. We learned a lot about the life cycle of the sequoias and had the chance to handle some sequoia cones, bark and wood, the latter surprisingly light, like balsa wood! Brett also pointed out a mountain pocket gopher digging nearby, which I would never have noticed otherwise.

We then walked round the trail which, although a short walk, was full of interest so I hope will make a suitable Monday Walk. It passes several other monarchs, as the oldest trees are called, and also the Fallen Monarch and Centennial Stump, reminders of others that once stood here.

Panoramic Point

Later that afternoon we made the drive up to the Panoramic Point trail, 2.4 miles up a narrow winding road. At the end a steep but thankfully short path (half a mile) led up to the appropriately-named viewpoint. And the view more than rewarded us (Chris for handling the tricky drive, me for tackling that path!)

We were looking over miles of largely unspoiled wilderness. In the valley below us we could see Hume Lake, an artificial lake created in 1908 to feed a flume that floated timber down to the valley. Beyond it rose the peaks of the High Sierra sheltering the deep glacial gorge of the Kings Canyon which we planned to visit tomorrow. It was a great spot from which to appreciate the scale of this mountain range before immersing ourselves in it.

We could see a fire burning, the so-called Happy Fire (I don’t know how it got that name) which we later read was burning in a remote valley and not threatening people or property. The authorities were therefore monitoring the fire rather than try to put it out.

This fire was started by natural causes, lightening, rather than arson as was the case with the Park Fire whose impact we had seen in the Lassen area. We had already learned from Brett that the sequoias need low impact fires; they clear the undergrowth to give their seeds a better chance of producing saplings and they produce ash to enrich the soil. I read later that the fire continued to burn and was managed by the authorities, containing it away from roads and populated areas, until winter weather (snow or rain) would extinguish it.

I visited Grant Grove in October 2024

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