When planning a trip to the Sierras, it's important to check the weather and road conditions and closures before heading out. Smog is often an issue in the Sierras as weather patterns push the air pollution inland from the cities. If everything checks out, go for it.

Yosemite NP, CA

The drive up to Yosemite National Park (pronounced yo-sem-it-ee) is a winding road as you leave the agricultural area of California's central valley. I'd wanted to go to Yosemite for years, but was unable to make the trip as it's around a 4-5 hour drive from the San Francisco. As soon as I entered Yosemite Valley, everything changed. I was in utter awe of the massive white granite cliffs that surrounded the valley.

I'd arrived at the park around noon and it was packed. The parking lot had several overflow lots which is where I ended up parking. There's a shuttle system that takes you around the park, but I decided to walk to the Visitor's Center. All the campsites were full which meant all that was left was the option to camp in the backcountry. I headed to the Wilderness Office and got a permit to camp. It's free to camp in the backcountry as long as you have a permit. A bear proof food container is required and costs $5 to rent one if you don't have one already.

The valley was beautiful and is everything you read about. The one thing that was missing was the water due to the drought. As a result, the waterfalls were reduced to a trickle.

I spent maybe a day and a half in Yosemite and was done with the mass of people in the park.

Sequoia NP, CA

Just south of Yosemite is Sequoia National Park, home of the largest single stem tree in the world, General Sherman. As the park's name implies, Sequoia National Park is known for it's sequoia trees. Sequoias are the largest of the three types of redwood trees. They are so big their branches look like the trunks of the largest trees back home.

That said, instead of uploading a bunch of pictures of extremely large trees (of which I have many), I'm going to highlight a few of the things I learned on a nature hike through the Mariposa Grove.

Fire Scars

Redwoods are extremely resistant to fire. However, when you walk around a grove of sequoias, you'll notice that many of them have huge black marks near the base of the tree. Those scars are caused by fire. Repeat forest fires will burn through the bark leaving the tree susceptible to fire damage. Eventually, the fires destroy the core of the tree killing it. There are many redwoods still standing with their cores completely burnt out. Those stand testament to the resilience of the bark which still stands long after the tree is dead.

Fuel Ladders

Fuel ladders are living and dead vegetation that allows fire to climb higher into the forest canopy from the ground. The reason the fire scars of the redwoods only goes up so far is because the fire was unable to reach higher. Redwoods start their first set of branches pretty far up, so the height of the fire scar is about the height of the surrounding vegetation.

Fire can climb higher by jumping from lower branches to higher ones

Big Tree, Little Cones

Several years ago, I took a picture of redwood cones in Redwoods National Park which were around the size of a quarter. The sequoias are bigger than their coastal brethren and their cones are pretty small.

Sugar Pine Cone (below) vs Sequoia Cone (above) — Sugar Pine Cone (below) vs Sequoia Cone (above)

Urge To Merge

When separate Sequoias come into contact with each other, they merge into one tree. This is different than trees (like aspen) that shoot up clone trees from their lateral roots.

So think about this: Sequoias grow to be over a thousand years old, some are closer to two thousand years old. Their roots must be comparable in size to the tree above ground. Maybe the whole forest is connected and the trees have a collective knowledge like in the movie, Avatar.

If you were to look at the base of the Faithful Couple (picture above), you'd think it was one tree. However, upon examination of the upper story, you see that it is two trees fused together.

Kings Canyon NP, CA

Kings Canyon National Park seemed like a mesh of the white granite cliffs in Yosemite National Park and the sequoias in Sequoia National Park. The granite canyon was carved out by glaciers and is one of the deepest canyons in the United States. The best part was that there weren't that many people in the park!

On a brilliantly hot day, I decided to hike up to the top of a waterfall. At the top of the falls, I met Courtney. It turned out she was also a solo traveler roadtripping around the US and Canada. We chatted all the way back down from the falls and camped together for the night. As it would turn out, we met up later on in our respective travels in Oregon.

Happy Travels!