Giant Sequoia Tour

To celebrate our 15 year wedding anniversary, my wife and I took a trip to see the entire native range of the Giant Sequoia tree. The Giant Sequoia only grows naturally on a 260 mile portion of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The farthest north trees are in Tahoe National Forest not far from Lake Tahoe. The farthest south are in Sequoia National Monument between Fresno and Bakersfield.

The farthest north grove does not have many sequoia. It has 5 or 6 mature trees and a couple of large downed trees. There are some younger trees hiding with the rest of the pines and incense cedars. It's also not the most scenic grove. You'll see more and bigger trees in the groves farther south. This stands out as a curiosity more than anything. If you are going to California specifically to see giant sequoia trees, don't go to this grove. It takes a long time to get there and the trees aren't very impressive. If you are a completist or a nerd that likes seeing plants at the margins of their range, then go. You'll appreciate it for how rare these trees are in the wild.

The next place we visited was Calaveras Big Tree State Park. This park was near Stanislaus National Forest and is worth the time and effort to visit. There are two large groves here. The North Grove near the visitor center is more developed with boardwalks and interperative signage. The South Grove is larger and less developed and has a couple of smaller trails near it that lead to some random large sequoias. Parking is at a premium in the south grove. Get there early if you don't want to be stuck waiting for a parking space.

Our next stop was the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. We visited Yosemite in 2017 for our 10 year anniversary. We could not see the Mariposa Grove in 2017 because it was closed for habitat restoration and infrastructure improvement. We could only see the Tuolumne and Merced groves in 2017. I highly recommend this grove. If you visit Yosemite, do not leave before seeing this part of the park. It's beautiful.

Not far from the Mariposa Grove is the Nelder Grove in Sierra National Forest. This grove is a let down compared to Mariposa. Most of the big trees were logged in the late 19th and early 20th century. It's a nice place to visit if you want to see huge stumps. It's maddening how short sighted people were back then. They probably killed a large percentage of the largest trees and turned them into garbage products like grape stakes. Grape stakes can be made from any old tree. You don't need to cut down the largest trees in the world for that. The loggers left a few old growth trees, but the landscape has been destroyed. It will be centuries before this are recovers to what it looked like before the logging operations. There is a trail there that is supposed to still have some impressive trees, but it is still closed to the public because of fire damage.

Our next stop was Sequoia National Park and some of the northern section of Sequoia National Monument. We walked the North Grove trail which is by the Grant Grove. The Grant Grove is a nice grove and gets a lot of visitors. The North Grove is also nice, but gets far fewer visitors. This area has burned and there is a lot of new growth there. The large sequoias seem to have survived mostly unscathed which was nice to see. We also visited the Converse Basin Grove, but that is only a grove in the academic sense. This was an area that was as scenic as the Mariposa Grove at one point but was clear cut in the late 1800's. Another area that was destroyed to make low value timber products. This wouldn't be so sad if the tree grew to their old growth from quickly. They do not and it will be another 1000 years before the Converse Basin Grove can recover to its pre-logging form.

We continued moving south and visited some sequoia groves we did not get to see the last two times we visited. We visited the Atwell and East Fork Groves. These were also quiet areas since they are not close to Giant Forest and the General Sherman tree. There is a really nice waterfall cutting through a group of sequioa in the East Fork Grove. The Atwell Grove is home to the highest elevation giant sequoias and is quite scenic. The trails switchbacks up the mountain side and you get some nice views of the trees. Another spot we visited in Sequoia National Park was the Wolverton Cutoff pass. The trail starts out on the mountainside looking east onto the Sierra Nevadas. There is a fork in the trail that leads you back into Giant Forest and the views of the trees are fantastic. This was another quiet trail. We couldn't see the entire trail because were doing prescribed burns. The only person we saw was one of the firefighters from the hot shot crew. There were other groves in Sequoia National Park we wanted to see, but they were still closed because of fire damage from previous years. The fire damage was bad even from the roads. There were sections of the park that were unrecognizable from the last time we visited. They went from green forests to burned matchsticks on a hillside.

We also visited some groves in the southern section of Sequoia National Monument. We hiked almost all of the Freeman Creek Trail on a cold rainy day. We started in Three Rivers where it was about 75F and it was only about 45F when we got to the trailhead. This was neat walk because there was a lot of fog in the forest. Normally, you would expect a coast redwood forest to be cold and foggy, not a giant sequoia grove. There were still quite a few large trees here, but recent wildfires left their mark. There were lots a of black stems and dried out understory plants. Instead of green and brown, there was a lot of black and beige. There were also some sections where large old growth sequoias had been killed. Despite the carnage, the trail was still worth the visit.

The two farthest south groves we visited were the Trail of 100 Giants and the Deer Creek Grove. The Trail of 100 Giants is a more developed trail and popular visitor destination. There is a parking lot and all the trails through the grove are asphalt. The trees are impressive. The Deer Creek Grove is the farthest south you will find Giant Sequoias growing natively. This was another spot with a lot of fire damage. There is an upaved road that leads to the trailhead. The trail is hard to follow since it doesn't get much traffic. The fire damage also didn't help. There were spots where the trail looked like it kept going, but there was so much ash on the ground, it felt like walking a up a sand dune. More black and beige forest instead of brown and gray. The few sequoia trees that were there seemed to be ok. This is another spot that is only worth visiting if you enjoy ecological oddities or plants on the margins of their range. The groves in Sequoia National Park, Yosemite, and the Calaveras Big Trees Sate Park are much more impressive. I'm glad we took the time to visit since the trees there may not make it if the wildfires in California continue to be intense.

Our final stop was the McKinley grove in Sierra National Forest. This grove has a parking lot, toilets, and all the trails are paved. The trees are nice, but the grove is well loved. People walk all over the place there and the understory is non-existent from people running up to the trunks of the trees to get a closer look and to touch them. It's a nice grove but it's not going to feel like pristine wilderness.

This was one of my bucket list trips and I'm happy we were able to do it sooner than I thought. We still didn't see everything we want to see there. We will need to wait for some of the groves to reopen. The distances between groves can be large too, so it can take a long time to get from one to the other. We ran out of time.