Sequoia

The size of the giant sequoias is pretty awe-inspiring. When we first arrived I was taking pictures of practically every tree. It is just amazing. Unfortunately, the photographs do not convey this very well without some sort of reference point.


The above picture gives you an idea of just how enormous these trees are. Look at how tiny Becca looks at the base of that tree.

The picture below also gives you some idea of the scale. The tree pictured is General Sherman. It is neither the thickest tree nor the tallest tree, but it boasts the greatest volume of any tree in the world at 52,508 cubic feet.

The top of the tree is dead, so it no longer grows upwards, but it does still grow outwards. If you look closely at the base of the tree in this photo, you can see people, which will give you a reference point with which to judge its girth.


We never found the place where you can drive your car through a fallen sequoia, but walking through one is pretty neat too.

Becca standing inside the hollowed trunk of a Sequoia.

Sequoias are very resilient to fire. Many, perhaps most, of the giant sequoias in the park had some signs of fire scarring at the base. I am not sure, but I believe that this is intentional. There are a few reasons why fires are beneficial to the giant sequoias.

First, it is one of only a few ways in which the seeds are released. The cones need to be destroyed or dried in order to free the seeds. In addition to fires, squirrels free some seeds. There is also a species of beetle which is responsible for freeing some of the seeds. It lays its eggs on the cone. When they hatch, the larvae bore into the cone. This allows it to dry and the seeds to come free.

The other reason that fire is important to the giant sequoias is that for the young sequoias to grow, they need a great deal of sunlight and little competing understory vegetation. Historically, this situation was created by wildfires.

Due to fire-suppression from the Park Service, for an extended period of time there were no significant fires in the area, and there were also no young sequoias. In the 1970s they began to correct this by instituting prescribed burns as well as allowing natural wildfires to run their course.

This is a picture of Becca climbing up the fire-hollowed trunk of a fallen sequoia.

I like this pair of photos because these look like normal trees until you put a reference in.


And then they look pretty giant. Or it looks like I photoshopped a tiny Becca into the picture. And these aren't even sequoias.

Here's a picture of the Senate. Along the Congress trail there was also a President Sequoia and a larger grove called the House.

Sequoia was full of bears. At Yosemite we saw a bear from the bus, and we were pretty excited. While walking the Congress trail at Sequoia we had five bear sightings. Apparently the only bears around are black bears, but their fur was pretty light in color. And they are all pretty docile and accustomed to people walking around. They just ignored us.

This one was snoozing forty yards or so off the trail.

This was my favorite of the bear sightings. This guy was tearing the bark off of this fallen tree, I imagine he was looking for bugs to eat.

At the end of the day we stayed at a campground located in the park. We had the prettiest campsite I've ever seen. On one side we had no neighbors, and behind us was a little gully with a creek. Below are a couple pictures of the campsite.