Big Trees

In 2008, on my way from the Napa Valley to San Francisco, I stopped off for a few hours to visit Redwood National Park. My mom and dad had visited the Park a year or maybe two or three before I was in the area in '08 and my mom insisted I had to go. The trees were huge, she said. Or something like that. So I went.

I went. I saw. I walked a while. I wasn't impressed. I mean sure they appeared to be tall. But big? Ehhh...I don't know. Big is different than tall.

While I didn't know it at the time, in fact, the tallest three trees in the world are all California redwoods and they are all growing in Redwood National Park. At over 375 feet tall, they tower over the next tallest species of tree in the world (the Himalayan cypress) by a good 40 or 45 feet or so. But I swear they weren't big. It's difficult to tell how tall a tree is from the ground. I mean what's another 50 or 100 feet here and there. When you are standing next to something that high, you can't really tell the difference. Or so I'm supposing. I expected to see something that was really, really huge. I didn't get that at Redwood.

I thought about my experience at Redwood National Park for a while. Maybe years, even. And eventually I figured out the reason why I wasn't impressed with the big trees in that park was that I was expecting to find giant sequoias, not redwoods. I'd never seen a sequoia at this point in my life but I that's for sure what I was thinking of. Like tunnels-through-a-single-tree big. But sequoias don't grow on the coast of California. There is no easy stop from Napa to San Fran to go see a giant sequoia. That type of experience takes a lot more work. Like headed to the Sierra Nevada Mountains type of work. Long drive. Middle of nowhere type stuff.

Turns out 2023 would be the year I'd go try and see what I thought would be a really, really huge tree.

General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park. I get it, without something for scale it's not big, right? Read on!

The first stop on our roundabout drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco this past June was Sequoia National Park. We didn't plan it that way. We planned to spend our first full day in California in Kings Canyon National Park immediately to the north of Sequoia. But some road closures from a massive amount of rain and snow over the winter forced us to adjust a bit and Sequoia ended up being the focus of our first day out west. To see everything we had on our list we actually had to spend part of a second day at Sequoia, but that's not really relevant to our quest to see some giant trees.

To get to Sequoia last month, we had to drive down through Kings Canyon (so technically we did enter Kings Canyon first...), which from our base in Visalia was about a two hour drive just to get to the Park entrance. As we drove, we wondered: would we really be shocked by the size of these trees? Would we even notice that they were bigger than the average redwood, which seemed to be all around us as we drove? Was this worth the shock and awe factor we expected? Or would this just be another tree disappointment just like I had in 2008?

We had some driving time to wonder all this because sequoias don't grow just anywhere. They have a very, very specific environment they thrive in and they only grow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains under the right conditions. It actually makes them relatively rare as trees go. They can't just plant their roots in any sort of soil under any sort of circumstances. And driving for 90 minutes or so on our Sequoia / Kings Canyon day didn't take us through any of those places. We'd be waiting and waiting and watching while we inched closer to the right place.

When we finally saw our first sequoia on that drive, it was not like seeing another redwood. These were some seriously massive really obviously noticeable trees we were driving past. I can hug most redwoods and have my hands touch on the back side of the trunk. There's no way that I could do that with what I saw the first time I laid eyes on a sequoia. I mean, these are some seriously massive trees. It is obvious that they are much, much thicker and more massive than most trees I have ever been near to. Maybe I've seen some baobabs with larger trunks but the height of these gargantuan-trunked trees was just astonishing. I hate to put any tree ahead of my beloved baobabs but these sequoias might just do that. Just WOW!!!

The best part was, what we saw on that drive didn't really turn out to be that big. Not compared to what we saw later.

A relatively thin sequoia. Near Tunnel Log, Sequoia National Park.

Now, to be perfectly transparent here, the California redwood and the giant sequoia are both, in fact, sequoias. The California redwood's scientific name is sequoia sempervirens and the giant sequioia's scientific name is sequoiadendron giganteum. But for the purposes of this discussion and for the rest of this post, when I write sequoia, I mean sequoiadendron giganteum. Redwood = tall and thin. Sequoia = a little less tall but really, really massive. Like super massive. Have I used massive enough in this post yet?

So about that environment. The sweet spot for a sequoia is between 5,000 and 7,500 feet above sea level. Any lower and it's too dry for the trees to live. Any higher and it's too cold for the trees to live. There are a number of spots primarily in Sequoia National Park, but also in Kings Canyon National Park, which are ideal for the growth of sequoias. The Park calls this zone the Sequoia Belt and some of these trees have been here before the arrival of white men in the forests where these behemoths grow. I know what you are probably thinking...that means that some of these trees are more than 500 years old. Yep, that's right. In fact, that's pretty young. Some of these trees are estimated to be more than 3,000 years old. Seriously. If I have my choice of what to come back to this planet as when I get reincarnated, I might just choose a sequoia.

Although hold onto that thought just a bit. There's a huge asterisk on that statement for me. We'll get there.

Felled sequoia and fire damaged bark. Sequoia National Park.

Our day in Sequoia National Park started at Crescent Meadow deep inside the Park. When we visited, it was as far into the Park as we could get. We figured why not start at the most remote spot earliest in the morning and work our way backwards, particularly with the easiest route to that spot from Visalia washed out with the winter flooding. Sure, a 5:30 a.m. departure time isn't what I want to be doing every morning, but it was our second day out west and we were still on east coast time. Let's hit the road at dawn.

There are a lot of sequoias to be found along the roadside to Crescent Meadow. There are also a good number of pretty large-ish specimens right along the path of the Crescent Meadow loop trail, which we had targeted as our first of a few hikes that day. As a first encounter type of experience, this area of the Park was a great introduction, as was seeing Tunnel Log, the downed tree which was converted in the 1930s to a tunnel which you can drive through still today and which is pretty close to Crescent Meadow. There are some lone impressive looking sequoias near Tunnel Log that are worth gazing at in awe of their mass. 

We had only just begun to scratch the surface.

We didn't go to Crescent Meadows to see sequoias. Not really. Seeing trees there was just a bonus. But we did get two of our signature looks at these giants on the way back. There is a group of trees just past Tunnel Log (just past on the way out, that is) called the Parker Group, a group of eight sequoias clustered together and named for the family of Captain James Parker, who served as superintendent of the Park in the 1890s. Because of their proximity to each other, they give a different perspective on how big these trees are. Sure it's cool to stand next to one of these trees in isolation and feel small. Try it standing among eight. You are dwarfed by the living masses all around you. It puts you in your place a bit, and that's exactly what I wanted to experience here. The first picture of this post is just that view.

The Parker Group is also an excellent spot to take some souvenir pics. Just saying...

The other wow(!) moment we had coming back from Crescent Meadows was a stop we made at a downed tree that had fallen over and and in the act of doing so had ripped its roots right out of the soil. We'd stand next to some bigger trees later in the day but we had to pull over and check out these roots. I'm guessing these things were at least 15 tall. On a small-ish sequoia, if there is such a thing. Look, I know I keep saying this and will continue to keep saying this...but the size of these trees is incredible. I should have parked the car next to it before taking the picture above.

Medium-sized sequoia with scale figure (top) and sequoia eating a rock (bottom). Sequoia National Park.

Our intentional quest to see some really, really large and enormous trees started at the Giant Forest Museum. The Giant Forest (so named by naturalist John Muir) is the largest stand of sequoias in the world with an exceptionally large number of giant trees in its midst. Maybe that is obvious from the name. If you want to see lots and lots of sequoias, head to the Giant Forest. Maybe that's obvious too. 

These trees are literally everywhere you look around the museum and along the nearby Big Trees Trail. We found the stop in the Museum to be quick and informative while also being a good departure point for our second hike of the day along Big Trees. Both are worth doing. In the Museum we learned about the sequoia's unique environment for sustained growth along with the distribution of the various groves in the Parks and the fire resistant properties of the trees' astonishing trunks. Indeed, there are many, many trees in the Parks where you can see evidence of the scars of forest fires but the sequoias are uniquely adapted to resist such events with a moisture-retaining, sponge-like bark. Hey, if you are going to live for over 3,000 years, you better have a trick or two up your sleeve.

It was also at the Giant Forest Museum that I had a damper but on my reincarnation plan. There's a wheel inside the museum that you can spin with about 50 or 60 outcomes for a sequoia seed with spaces for things like eaten by a squirrel or landed in the wrong place to take root or whatever. There's only one space where the seed actually makes it to a tree. The odds for survival of a seed are very long. It's a bit daunting, but I guess that's why trees have a lot of seeds. I'm still going with a sequoia as my reincarnation plan but I want to be one of the seeds that survives.

Standing outside the Museum is a sequoia called the Sentinel Tree. It was the first really massive tree that we would encounter in the Park. Those trees on the Crescent Meadow loop trail that seemed solid and big seemed actually quite small when compared to the Sentinel Tree. We could tell that it was important in some way because it was fenced off. It was the first tree we came across that we couldn't walk up to and touch. It wouldn't be the last.

Looking up at Sentinel Tree. Massive, right?

So I realize I'm about halfway or more through this post without really discussing how big these trees are. Maybe we should cover that before we move on.

We have spent the better part of ten years seeking out the largest living things on our planet. We've seen grizzlies and moose in Alaska, which are really some pretty big animals. We've done those two one better by spending time with bison (the largest mammal in present day North America) in Yellowstone National Park and the states of North and South Dakota. Looking abroad, we've made three trips to sub-Saharan Africa to see hippos, giraffes, rhinos and elephants, the latter of which is the largest land mammal on the planet. To top that, we've taken to the oceans to find humpback whales off the coast of Alaska and in the San Francisco Bay and beaten that by a close encounter with a blue whale, the largest mammal to ever inhabit the Earth, last September off the coast of Los Angeles. 

But none of those things is the largest living thing on our planet. And spoiler alert: the largest living thing ever is the giant sequoia. Mammals aren't even close. A medium sized one of these trees dwarfs a blue whale. They are three times or more the length of the largest blue whale and can best that cetacean's mass by a factor of six. And a blue whale outweighs and elephant by about a factor of 40. That's how big these trees are. Feeling small yet? Go stand next to one. It will alter your perspective, I swear.

Double sequoia, Big Trees Trail, Sequoia National Park.

We by no means covered all of the sequoia-related hikes that both Sequoia and Kings Canyon have to offer but the Big Trees Trail, combined with the Sentinel Tree, was a pretty perfect snapshot of what things are like in the Giant Forest. There are many, many good-sized sequoias arranged around the perimeter of a marshy meadow (where you might see bears looking for food...just saying) which is sort of a hallmark environment for at least Sequoia National Park. There are also some giants that you can walk right up to and a sequoia about halfway round the right side of the trail that appears to be growing around a giant boulder. That and Sentinel Tree, which is just a huge monster, give a pretty good picture of how big these trees can get individually and in groups.

So after Big Trees Trail, we just had two last stops: the two generals.

There is an awe factor to being around these trees and personally, I think we sequenced our way through the Parks perfectly. We started by driving past a lot of redwoods until we came to our first sequoia which was clearly just much, much more giant. We then added a walk past some good-sized specimens near Crescent Meadow and in the Parker Group before hitting a really massive tree (Sentinel Tree) and an amazing grouping of tons and tons of trees on Big Trees Trail. Our experience built. We went from big solo to bigger solo to group to gigantic solo and tons and tons of really bigs. 

The generals would take that progression to the next level. And after the generals there would be nowhere to go. We'd be at the biggest. Ever.

General Grant Tree, Kings Canyon National Park.

The General Grant Tree is the star sequoia attraction at Kings Canyon National Park. According to a sign in Sequoia National Park, it is the widest sequoia in the world at 40 feet. Now I'm not sure how they are measuring width but there is no way General Grant is 40 feet wide, unless they are measuring circumference. Look, it's really, really big. There's no question. And I believe it was way bigger than any other tree we saw except for one other in the two parks. It might be 40 feet around at its base but I'm not sure. Maybe I'm wrong. 

Now before you go thinking I've gotten overly cynical in my old age (I am, after all, 55 now...) and am just dis-believing the signs in national parks placed by our federal government employees, there were discrepancies between the signs in the two parks. But suffice it to say that this is a big tree. I mean think about a tree that is 40 feet around at its base. This is just a gigantic living thing. It is humbling to be near to something this big. It just...I mean...it's bigger than words can describe. It's what I expected to see in Redwood National Park all those years ago but also way, way bigger than I could have possibly imagined.

But it's not the biggest. The honor of the biggest sequoia (and therefore largest living thing ever anywhere) goes to the General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park.

General Sherman. Sequoia National Park.

So, yeah, I know, it's not a great picture. The tree is in shadow. But look, there's only so far away you can get from something this large and take a picture of it and that distance required to get the whole thing in just wasn't available on the sunny side of the tree. In fact, it wasn't available on the shady side of the tree either and I have to believe I got 100 or so feet away or more. It's that big. The top of the tree wouldn't fit in the picture. The size of this thing staggers the imagination.

General Sherman takes a bit of a walk to get to. It's in a fairly dense grove of sequoias down a pretty steep hill from the trailhead parking lot. That means it's easy to get down and a bit of an effort to get back up. It was actually a pretty tough hike. Definitely more physically stressful (but maybe not emotionally stressful...we'll get to that in another post) than any other hike we did in any of the three national parks we visited in California.

Our walk down was a bit of a repeat of our morning drive. Would we really think this tree was that much bigger than the others? Would we even be able to recognize it as significantly larger than other sequoias when it came into view? We thought these exact same things about sequoias vs. redwoods a few hours earlier.

Big Trees Trail, Sequoia National Park.

The answer to our question, of course, was yes. There is a viewing spot towards the bottom of the trail and the General Sherman Tree is clearly the biggest thing in the forest. It's not even close. There's no competition. I know it's supposed to work that way. I mean this is the largest living thing on the entire planet but seeing it from that viewpoint was still shocking. It's just way bigger than I could have imagined.  This tree weighs 1,385 tons. That's 2.77 MILLION pounds. That kind of size is just not even relatable. Being in this tree's presence is just so humbling. I guess we sometimes think there is no limit to what humans can do on this world of ours but we can't do what these trees do. We can't get that big and keep living for thousands of years. It's just so impressive.

I can't even imagine what this tree has seen over the centuries it has been growing. It's older than our calendar. It has scars on its trunk from fires that occurred more than 150 years ago. Just think about what the history of man was like when this thing first sprouted. It's been alive since about 200 years before the time of Christ. I mean, really?

There is a sign near the General Sherman tree that says us standing next to that tree is like a mouse looking up at a six-foot tall human. One of the reasons we travel is to get a different perspective on our world and I have to say that having a mouse's perspective on the day we were in Sequoia National Park was worth every minute and hour of all the time we spent in planes and cars to get there. This experience, and by that I mean just standing next to one (OK so maybe not just one) of these trees was just awesome. Of the three parks we visited on this trip, Sequoia was the one that blew us away and the trees were a huge (no pun intended...) part of that experience.

Redwood National Park in 2008? Yeah, this is what I expected to see. I'm glad it paid off in Sequoia. There's nowhere to go but down now.

More trunk pics: The sunny side of General Sherman (top) and the grove near the parking lot for General Grant.