Granite Majesty

---

Today, I have a choice to make.

Sequoia National Park borders another national park called Kings Canyon.

This park protects the namesake canyon, a dramatic glacial gorge.

Measured from the canyon floor to the top of the surrounding peaks, it’s the deepest in the world!

Kings Canyon is an unusual park in that very little of it can be seen from a road.

The trails are long.

If I try to see much of it, I won’t have time for anything else.

Reading my guidebook, Sequoia National Park also has trails into the backcountry, and they are shorter.

I decided to hike where I am instead; this should leave time for more trees and a taste of Kings Canyon afterward.

Tokopah Falls Trail

Lodgepole Campground marks the trailhead for a hike up the Marble Fork of the Kanewa River.

It reaches a waterfall, Tokopah Falls, in about two hours, passing fantastic granite cliffs along the way.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the parking lot for day hikers also has bear boxes.

The trail head has an unusual warning sign, about swimming in the river.

The water is ice cold and fast, so people cramp up and drown if they wade in.





The early part of the trail crosses granite ledges near the river, surrounded by trees.

Although they are old growth, none of these are sequoias.

It climbs a rock slope on a series of steps and then enters more dense forest.





Less than a minute after entering the forest, I saw something on the trail ahead.

It was big, black and furry, a bear.

This particular bear was followed across the trail by two smaller bears.

This is a mother bear with cubs, the most dangerous bear of all.

The grizzly that killed a hiker in Yellowstone earlier this year was a mother protecting her cubs (see So This is What A View Looks Like).

It hasn’t detected me, so I quickly moved away, trying to not jump out of my skin.





I now face a dilemma.

The bears appear to be heading somewhere else, so if I wait I can probably get by.

On the other hand, the consequences of being wrong are rather severe.

While deciding what to do, a group of hikers came up the trail.

Bears are far more likely to run away from a big group than someone hiking solo, so I asked to join the group for a while.

They accepted, and we tiptoed past the bear crossing.

The bears are nowhere in sight.





Now in the forest, the trail passes through groups of granite boulders and endless pine trees.

Surprisingly, the trees have no undergrowth.

The grade is pretty gentle.

The trail reaches a more open area of more granite slabs with trees growing in cracks.

The slabs reveal the first view of the canyon, beautiful glacial carved granite cliffs like those in Yosemite.

These cliffs are much smaller.





Back in forest, the trail reaches an astounding sight.

The forest floor is now completely covered in yellow wildflowers.

The flowers appear to go on forever.

They appear under the trees and in an open meadow next to the creek.

I suspect they would grow on the rocks if they could.

The open meadow shows a view of another granite cliff in the distance.





Further still, the trail reaches another set of granite steps.

These steps are wide, and the river flows over them through a series of little cascades.

More trees grow where they can.

The rock is all granite.

The river and trail then enter another section of dense forest.

Instead of flowers, the floor is now covered in ferns.

This leads to another open area of granite slabs, with a much closer view of the cliff from earlier.

It has grooves carved in the side from the glacier.

Pine trees cling to the rock in some of them.





That cliff marks the entrance to a glacial cirque.

After much work, the trail rounds a corner and enters the cirque.

The view now reveals steeply slanted rock walls between the trees.

It is straight out of every travel guide to the Sierra Nevada, steep slopes of pure grey granite with the occasional pine tree.

This particular set of cliffs is called the Watchtower.

As the trail continues up the cirque, the view rotates along the wall to reveal a steep cascading waterfall down the granite wall, framed by the trees.

The waterfall has at least six distinct drops.

This is Tokopah Falls.

Since I’m here in the fall, the water level is very low.





The trees finally fade out at a huge pile of rocks.

The trail goes over them.

Scrambling up the rocks gives an unobstructed view of the cirque.

It’s a steep bowl of granite majesty, so beautiful the waterfall is almost an afterthought.

It’s nearly as beautiful as Cascade Canyon in Grand Teton (see The Still of the Night).

Pine trees cling to cracks in the granite, looking like sticks by comparison.





The bottom of the bowl is filled with boulders, split off the surrounding cliffs by winter ice.

The trail clamors over them as it works its way through the cirque.

The trail finally ends right at the base of the lowest drop of the cascades.

The drop is about thirty feet high.

It’s a curtain of multiple strands.

With the low water the waterfall is underwhelming, but the incredible setting alone justifies the hike.





The trail ends at the waterfall, so the only way back is to reverse my steps.

With the gentle trail grade, it felt like exactly the same hike.

On the way back, I saw a large rodent like creature next to the trail.

This is an alpine marmot, a genetic relative of the type I saw in the Olympics (see Wildflower View Fest).

Unlike the Olympic version, hikers absolutely hate this marmot.

It craves salt, and will get it by chewing through parts of peoples’ cars.

Regular visitors consider them even more dangerous than the Sierras’ bears.





Speaking of bears, I need to pass the same bear trail I dealt with on the way up.

As I approached the spot, I made lots and lots of noise.

Noise usually scares bears.

I also kept a hand on the bear spray in my pocket while apprehensively scanning the surrounding forest.

I got through without seeing them.





After getting back to Lodgepole, I retrieved my stuff from the trailhead bear box and headed north.

Disappointingly, the road passed very few sequoia trees.

It went through one single grove, and that was over quickly.

What it does have is lots of view of granite slopes covered in pine trees.

Several overlooks showed views the surrounding mountains.





One overlook gave a view of a huge valley.

This is Redwood Valley, the largest grove of sequoia trees in the world.

The trees are very hard to spot.

A signboard explains the wisps of smoke often seen in the valley; deliberately set fires to clear out deadfall (see yesterday).

Another overlook gives a view of a row of high peaks with a deep gash in front of them; this is my first view of Kings Canyon.

Grant Grove

The road finally reaches another group of tourist facilities, Grant Village.

Soon afterward, a side road goes to the source of the name, Grant Grove.

This grove is another famous collection of sequoia trees.

The same army officers who named the General Sherman Tree (see Wide Trees) named the largest tree here for Ulysses S Grant.

This grove is rather odd.

It was established as its own little national park around the same time as Sequoia.

Later, it was merged into Kings Canyon National Park even though it both contains sequoia trees and borders the other park.





A loop hiking trail goes through the grove.

Like the Giant Forest, it contains lots of other types of trees intermixed with the sequoias.

The sequoias stick out more here.

Giant Forest has more trees, but this grove has larger ones near the main trails.





Most of the largest trees have names.

Most are named after US states.

Next to the parking lot is “The Couple”, two huge trees growing right next to each other that look like twins.

The “Tennessee” tree has incredible fire damage at the base, covering over half the tree.

It is still alive and thriving.

Near it is General Grant, the largest tree in the grove and the third largest in the world.

Like General Sherman, it is surrounded by other big sequoias, so it’s hard to tell the tree is the record holder without being next to its impressive girth.





Further along the trail sits the Centennial Stump.

In the late 1800s, people did not believe the reports about huge trees on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada.

They called them the “California Hoax”.

State promoters decided to do something about this, but cutting one down to showcase at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.

This stump is the remains of that tree.

Amazingly, at the exposition people still did not believe the tree existed even when they looked right at it!

Like the wood slab yesterday, the stump shows the incredible width of sequoias in an incredibly visceral way.

The stump is so wide that someone taught a Sunday school class on it for a while.





The trail then reaches the California Tree.

This one is well known in park history.

It was struck by lightning in 1967, which set the crown on fire.

Remember that fire at the crown of a sequoia will kill it.

Park managers became concerned that the fire would spread to other trees, ultimately killing the entire grove.

A forest fire crew climbed up a nearby sequoia tree dragging a hose.

Since the first branch of a sequoia is far above the ground, this was hard work!

Once near the top, they swung over to the California tree under the fire.

From this perch, they could extinguish the flames.

These days, the tree would just burn.





The final notable item on the hike is an incredibly large and long fallen sequoia called the Fallen Monarch.

The tree has rotted from the ground up to produce an eight foot high hollow log.

It has looked like this since American explorers first found it.

One early entrepreneur turned it into hotel!

After the army took over, they used it as a horse corral.

Visitors can now walk through the entire log.

One note of caution: the log supports several bee hives in the outer wood (away from where people walk), and these bees are the aggressive kind.

Drive to Kings Canyon

After General Grant Grove, I drove into Kings Canyon itself.

The first part of the road is a normal mountain road, over little hills, surrounded by pine trees.

Side roads go to a few sequoia groves, including the notorious “Big Stump” grove, which was clear cut in the late 1800s.

The road then reaches an overlook, and all that changes.





California has a large number of scenic roads.

A significant percentage are roads where the unobstructed views from a convertible far exceed those through the windows of a regular car.

The Pacific Coast Highway (see California Coast and Open Road) is the one most people think of.

The next ten miles into Kings Canyon rank with the very best.

The overlook reveals a vast view of Sierra peaks in all their majesty, with a steep V shaped canyon in front.

The size is nearly incomprehensible.

Over the next ten miles the road drops from here to the bottom of that canyon.

The scenery swallows up visitors until they got lost in this huge landscape.





Soon after that first view, the road reaches the rim of the canyon itself, and the trees disappear.

The huge view stretches in all directions.

Nearly every inch of this road provides a perfect photograph.

Thankfully, the road has lots of pullouts to get them safely.





It also has warnings to check engine heat and take frequent breaks.

This area gets really hot in summer, when cars’ radiators blow.

The road has barrels of spare radiator fluid every few miles for emergencies.

In case it isn’t obvious, it also has signs to use low gear practically every mile.





Past the rim, the road drops, steeply and continuously.

Like the Medicine Wheel Scenic Byway (see The Highway in the Sky) it never lets up.

The road is filled with curves as it weaves in and out of side gullies and canyons on the way down.

Surprisingly, it has zero switchbacks.

The view just grows and grows as the road drops for the initial stretch.

One signed overlook marks Junction View, where the Middle Branch of the Kings River joins the main stream.

The overlook has a perfect view up this canyon, which is nearly as good as the main event.





The view begins to shrink and change starting in the middle of the descent.

Like other western canyons, Kings Canyon is a series of nested valleys.

The walls of the lower valleys block the view further up, so the canyon views become smaller as people descend.

The sloping walls further up are replaced by steep rocky cliffs.

Some of these rise directly over the road!

The cliffs get higher and closer together.

In one stretch the road crosses a shelf, which was blasted directly into the side of a cliff, then twists through a sharp corner, the Horseshoe Bend.

Soon after this, the road crosses a bridge and I saw the Kings River for the first time.

I have reached the bottom, which is ironically the least scenic part of the entire drive.

(LATE UPDATE)

People have posted video. See it!

The bridge has a sign that wading in the river is prohibited, no matter how calm it looks.

The river is filled with rocky rapids.

It also has a swift current, so people who enter the river in calm sections quickly find themselves swimming in rocks.

Despite the warnings, people die in the river every year.





The road now follows the river, with rocky cliffs on either side.

A pullout marks the one specific sight along this stretch, Grizzly Falls.

A stream drops down the side of a cliff, hits the rocks at the bottom, and cascades over them.

At this time of year, when the Sierra is very dry, the drop is very narrow.

It is still pretty.

During spring snowmelt, when the water spreads over the cliff, it must be quite impressive.





Finally, the road enters Kings Canyon National Park.

The scenery changes soon afterwards.

The cliffs become taller and further from the river.

The V shaped canyon has now become a U shaped glacial gorge.

Soon after passing the visitors’ center, the road reaches on overlook with a view up the canyon.

This viewpoint is the only view of this part of the canyon from a car.





From here, the canyon is incredibly impressive, a deep gorge with steep granite walls surrounded by high mountain peaks.

John Muir (see The Golden State) stated that this view looked very similar to the appearance of Hetch Hechy before it was drowned by a reservoir in 1912.

His statement is truer than he thought; California leaders proposed to inflict the same fate before the National Park was established in 1948.

Thankfully, popular sentiment had shifted by then and the plan was defeated.





After the viewpoint, the road passes a number of campsites.

It then reaches a huge parking lot and just ends.

This place is called, naturally, “Roads End”.

As noted at the beginning of the entry, virtually all of Kings Canyon is backcountry only reachable on trails.

This huge parking lot marks the main trailhead.

Roaring River Falls

The park has only two short hiking trails.

Both of them start along the road (at different points) between the viewpoint and Roads End.

Given the daylight I have left, I chose the shorter of the two, a quick hike to Roaring River Falls.

The trail twists through pine trees into a side canyon.

It ends at a pool in front of a cliff, where a six foot waterfall drops from a narrow ravine.

Glacially carved cliffs further up the ravine tower over the waterfall.

At this time of year, when the water is low, they far overshadow the waterfall itself.





After seeing what I had time for in Kings Canyon, I had a long drive back out.

The drive is just as tricky as the other direction, with lots of tight curves and a constant uphill grade.

Night fell so I missed most of the views.

While driving the part along the river I suddenly saw a large brown shape on the road.

I hit the brake, stopping roughly twelve feet in front of a bear.

In an open car, this is a scary situation!

It looked at me briefly and then continued across the road.





Once out of the canyon proper, I had much more to deal with.

For some reason, the only way from the southern Sierra to any other part is to drive to the Central Valley and then back into the mountains.

This part of the drive was filled with curves with no view whatsoever.

Suddenly, it revealed a view of a long string of glowing lights in the distance, Fresno and the Valley.

At night, the glow is impressive.

The curves continued as the road twisted down the Sierra foothills to Fresno.





Now in the Valley, I headed northwest to Modesto.

My goal is the northern Sierra Nevada, the sites of the gold rush that turned California into a state almost overnight.

I found Modesto easily enough, but then got really lost.

The map shows a state road from this town to where I want to go, but the highway signs are missing!

I spent a good half hour driving the main streets looking for one.

I finally stopped, found a wifi point, and looked the place up on google maps.

The road I need does exist, but it turns all over the place within city limits.

After fifteen minutes of carefully reading street signs at every corner, I finally reached a stretch of pavement with a state sign on it.

Getting out of this city added an hour to my night.

Yuck!





Now heading where I needed to go, I finally reached the old gold rush town of Jameson.

I found the hotel I booked earlier this night (good thing, the office is closed by now) and can sleep.

---

Photos

Tokopah Falls Trail
Early part of the trail to Tokopah Falls

Wildflowers
Seemingly endless sea of yellow wildflowers along the Tokopah Falls Trail.

Tokopah Falls
Tokopah Falls, one of the tallest in California, in very low water

All Along the Watchtower
The Watchtower cliff, overlooking the cirque containing Tokopah Falls

Tokopah Falls, final drop
The final drop of Tokopah Falls close up

Marmot Varmint
Alpine Marmot, the most feared animal in the southern Sierra Nevada. It eats car parts, backpacks, and anything else it can get its paws on

Grant Grove
Sequoias tower over the parking lot at Grant Grove

The Couple
Two huge sequoia trees at the entrance to Grant Grove

General Grant
The third largest tree in the world

Centennial Stump
Remains of a sequoia cut down to show at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876

Fallen Monarch
The largest hollow log in the world

Junction View
Junction View overlook of Kings Canyon. The canyon in the center of the picture is the Middle Fork, not the main canyon

Kings Canyon
Kings Canyon from a pullout along the scenic highway

Horseshoe Bend
The notorious Horseshoe Bend into Kings Canyon, from the pullout before the entrance

Grizzly Falls
Grizzly Falls in very low water. The rock stain shows how large it can get

Canyon View
The only view of the heart of Kings Canyon from a car

Roaring Brook Falls
Roaring Brook Falls and the spectacular canyon behind it. The falls is in the lower center of the photo